‘Why Doesn’t Anybody Talk About That?’: Bill Maher Says Most Shootings Are ‘Young Black Men’ Killing Each Other thumbnail

‘Why Doesn’t Anybody Talk About That?’: Bill Maher Says Most Shootings Are ‘Young Black Men’ Killing Each Other

By James Lynch

Comedian and HBO Host Bill Maher discussed the perpetrators and victims of inner city crime and potential solutions during a panel on his late night show Friday.

Maher talked about crime with Brown University economist Glenn Loury and international relations scholar Daniel Bessner in the context of Chicago electing a soft-on-crime mayor and shoplifting in New York City.

“It seems like crime is kind of out of control, I was reading that in New York, a third of all the shoplifting cases are by 327 people in a city of 8 million, because they keep getting returned to the streets, which has to be terrible for the morale of the cops, that they keep arresting people and the same people. It’s groundhog day for them, I mean I know we have problems with the cops. I’ve certainly not been shy talking about them on this show, but I don’t understand how we’re going to get this situation under control unless they feel like what they do has some meaning as opposed to just a turnstile,” Maher said.

Loury, a black Chicago native and longtime commentator on racial issues, advocated for tougher prosecution and enabling cops to do their jobs. Bessner disagreed and said redistribution would be needed to reduce incarceration rates without condoning individual criminal behavior.

“Like Chicago: Most of the shootings are young black men killing other young black men. Is that not correct?,” Maher responded. “Much more than what the cops do. Why doesn’t anybody talk about that? I mean, why aren’t there, you know, 100 giant black celebrities who would have the respect of those people saying ‘What are you doing to yourselves? Why are you killing each other?’”

Loury agreed with Maher, saying “it’s no way to live, this dishonors our community, come on, we’re better than this.”

“Right!,” Maher interrupted. “I feel like it’s never addressed,” he continued.

Bessner advocated for material wealth distribution to address the problem and criticized the media for refusing to talk about it. Maher challenged his belief that giving people more money would reduce crime and pointed to the money America has spent on welfare designed to fight poverty.

Bessner went on to criticize capitalism and the negative individual behavior he attributes to it. Loury called Bessner’s claims “speculative” and said reducing crime would be needed for voters to support Bessner’s reforms to capitalism.

Loury encouraged Chicago’s next mayor Brandon Johnson to come out against criminal behavior and support the city’s police officers.

*****
This article was published by The Daily Caller and is reproduced with permission.

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Activists’ Harassment And Threats Force Venue To Cancel Austin, Texas “Identity Crisis” Film Screening About The Harrowing Stories Of Detransitioners thumbnail

Activists’ Harassment And Threats Force Venue To Cancel Austin, Texas “Identity Crisis” Film Screening About The Harrowing Stories Of Detransitioners

By Press Team Independent Women’s Forum

AUSTIN, TX — An upcoming “Identity Crisis” film screening and panel discussion event faces a targeted harassment campaign being conducted by radical transgender activists. Identity Crisis documentary films, produced by Independent Women’s Forum, tell the stories of individuals who’ve experienced the harms of the gender ideology movement firsthand. Activists sought to intimidate the business owners and employees of the venue where the event was originally scheduled to take place on Wednesday, April 19, in Austin, Texas. Due to those threats, Independent Women’s Forum and its partnering organizations for this event had to secure a new venue and employ increased security for guests and attendees.

After promoting the “Identity Crisis” Austin screening online, bigoted haters launched a coordinated campaign to cancel the event, in which they doxxed the names and personal phone numbers of the venue owners and employees that Independent Women’s Network’s Round Rock Chapter, along with Partners for Ethical Care (PEC), and the Leander Area Republican Women (LARW), had booked for the event.

A flood of phone calls, voice messages, and emails with direct threats against the business led the owners to cancel the event out of fear for the safety of themselves, their employees, and their business.

“The agitators don’t want the public to hear the stories of detransitioners, they want to deny their existence,” said Michelle Evans, Independent Women’s Network Round Rock Chapter Leader.

“It is deeply misogynist and anti-feminist to shut down an event organized by women to tell the stories of how transgender ideology has harmed women and girls,” said Executive Producer Kelsey Bolar, who works for Independent Women’s Forum. “The fact that pro-transgender agitators would harass, doxx, and even threaten an innocent small business into shutting down our event shows the extent to which those pushing this ideology are willing to go in order to cover up for its catastrophic effects.”

“Let’s be clear: Any attempt to shut down the voices of the brave subjects we’ve featured in our ‘Identity Crisis’ series will only strengthen our resolve to continue telling these stories and ensuring the voices of detransitioners and parents whose children have fallen prey to this ideology are heard,” Bolar continued. “Independent Women’s Forum prides itself on fostering compassionate, civil debate surrounding difficult issues, and on the issue of gender ideology’s impact on vulnerable children, we won’t be bullied into silence.”

“We are not afraid,” said Jeannette Cooper, mother and co-founder of Partners for Ethical Care. “There is nothing that will stop us from exposing the gender industry. One event at a time, one person at a time, we will tell our stories, and people will come to realize the harm happening to children and families.”

“Children and their parents will be the victims when the truth about this ideology is suppressed. Children are seen as an easy target, and the mothers and grandmothers in our community will not tolerate bullying of those who have suffered at the hands of those who want to deceive these vulnerable kids,” said Kate McDonald, president of Leander Area Republican Women. “These ladies are exercising their right to free speech. If we don’t fight for free speech in Leander, we can’t fight for it in our state, or our nation. We will always speak up for injustice.”

A new venue has been secured, and the host groups will move forward with holding the event with extra security in place tomorrow evening.

This marks the second screening for IWF’s documentary series to show the public what’s happening inside school systems, doctors’ offices, and beyond.

EVENT DETAILS

WHAT: Identity Crisis Film Tour: Real-life stories from victims of the transgender movement

WHEN: Wednesday, April 19, 2023

6:00 PM | Reception

6:30 PM | Screening

WHERE: Cedar Park, TX

Exact location will be provided upon RSVP

WHO: Event Hosts:

  • Independent Women’s Forum and Independent Women’s Network (Austin, TX Chapter)
  • Leander Area Republican Women (LARW)
  • Partners for Ethical Care (PEC)

Participants Available for Interview:

  • Prisha Mosley: Mentally Ill teen betrayed by health professionals who left her ‘mutilated’ and ‘broken”
  • Chloe Cole: a young teen who pursued puberty blockers, hormones, and surgery to remove her breasts which failed to address underlying struggles with anxiety, depression, and undiagnosed autism
  • Jeannette CooperChicago mother loses custody of her daughter – for insisting that her daughter is a girl
  • JenniferA mom from Washington state who took on her local public school after teachers attempted to ‘transition’ her 11-year-old daughter without her consent

The reception and screening are on the record and reportable.

To RSVP, contact press@iwf.org

ABOUT THE DOCUMENTARY SERIES: 

“Identity Crisis” seeks to change that by offering perspectives—mothers whose daughters fell victim to gender ideology, detransitioners who warn of the harms of socially and medically transitioning, and a mental health professional who rails against her profession for prioritizing political correctness over public health.

Watch the series online: LINK

*****
This article was published by Independent Women’s Forum and is reproduced with permission.

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Kansas Legislature Overrides Democrat Governor’s Veto of Bill Defining a Woman as ‘a Human Female’ thumbnail

Kansas Legislature Overrides Democrat Governor’s Veto of Bill Defining a Woman as ‘a Human Female’

By Debra Heine

Kansas on Thursday became the first state to pass a bill defining a woman as “a human female,” preventing courts and government officials from redefining the word to include biological men who identify as women.

The measure, which is being called “the most sweeping transgender bathroom law in the U.S.,” defines a person’s sex as their “biological sex, either male or female, at birth” based on their reproductive systems.

The Kansas Legislature voted 84-40 and the Senate voted 28-12 to override Democrat Governor Laura Kelly’s April 20 veto of Senate Bill 180, known as the Women’s Bill of Rights.

“The terms ‘woman’ and ‘girl’ refer to human females, and the terms ‘man’ and ‘boy’ refer to human males,” SB 180 states. The new law, which will take effect on July 1, will apply to schools, locker rooms, prisons, domestic violence shelters and rape crisis centers.

The measure also has accommodations for those born with sexual development disorders.

Independent Women’s Voice (IWV) spokeswoman Riley Gaines applauded the Kansas Legislature’s achievement on Twitter.

“This bill doesn’t create any new laws or prohibit laws from being made. It simply codifies the term ‘woman’ to apply to all legislature that uses that word,” the former competitive swimmer said. “It brings clarity/uniformity to Kansas law. Thank you to @IWV for working so hard to get this passed! This is a huge win!!”

When she vetoed the bill, Gov. Kelly argued that it was discriminatory and would hurt the state’s ability to attract businesses, the Associated Press reported.

The Kansas law is different than most other states’ laws in that it legally defines male and female based on the sex assigned at birth and declares that “distinctions between the sexes” in bathrooms and other spaces serves “the important governmental objectives” of protecting “health, safety and privacy.” Earlier this week, North Dakota enacted a law that prohibits transgender children and adults from having access to bathrooms, locker rooms or showers in dormitories of state-run colleges and correctional facilities.

Kansas’ law doesn’t create a new crime, impose criminal penalties or fines for violations or even say specifically that a person has a right to sue over a transgender person using a facility aligned with their gender identity. Many supporters acknowledged before it passed that they hadn’t considered how it will be administered.

The bill is written broadly enough to apply to any separate spaces for men and women and, Kelly’s office said, could prevent transgender women from participating in state programs for women, including for female hunters and farmers. As written, it also prevents transgender people from changing the gender markers on their driver’s licenses — though it wasn’t clear whether that change would occur without a lawsuit.

“As a woman and a female athlete, I can attest first hand to the importance of women having private spaces when safety and fairness are at risk,” said Gaines. “Now that the Women’s Bill of Rights will be Kansas law, women have clarity that when they enter a space labeled for ‘women’, biological men will not be inside.”

*****
This article was published by American Greatness and is reproduced with permission.

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Maybelline Gets Burned by the Latest Round of Dylan Mulvaney Boycotts thumbnail

Maybelline Gets Burned by the Latest Round of Dylan Mulvaney Boycotts

By Suzanne Bowdey

While Anheuser-Busch reels from the backlash over its partnership with Dylan Mulvaney, another brand is jumping feet-first into the fire.

Over the weekend, media personality Oli London retweeted a post of Mulvaney “getting glam” with Maybelline, which has apparently joined the ranks of companies like Nike who think the best way to sell products to women is by mocking them. But if Bud Light’s $6 billion nosedive is any indication, the damages will be much more than cosmetic.

Within hours, the March 13 video went viral, lighting up social media with calls to #BoycottMaybelline. Several of London’s followers were at a loss, trying to make sense of the company’s rationale. “Why are all of these companies so intent on insulting women?” one asked. This is “a dude who portrays women as ditzy bimbos,” another fumed.

Melanie Johnson agreed, pointing out that “craziest thing about all of this” is that “we do not act like this when we put on our makeup [and] workout and honestly most of us don’t have time for a six pack of bud light while taking a bubble bath… We are usually taking care of children, our homes and working. This is not a representation of women at all. WTF[.]”

Several couldn’t believe Maybelline’s folly, insisting that the L’Oréal-owned line will become the new Budweiser. Together, they derided the brand’s longtime slogan: “Maybe she’s born with it. Maybe it’s Maybelline.” In this case, consumers pointed out, “He definitely wasn’t born with it.”

Of course, this isn’t the first cosmetic company that’s gotten torched for its relationship with Mulvaney. Back in October, Ulta Beauty brought the 26-year-old on its podcast to talk about “The Beauty of … Girlhood,” triggering an instant, nationwide uproar.

Along with “gender-fluid” host David Lopez, “You had two grown men tell actual women what it’s like to be a girl, as if they could have any earthly idea,” “Relatable’s” Allie Beth Stuckey tweeted. “That has nothing to do with beauty; it’s lunacy, and it’s insulting.”

Frankly, Madeleine Kearns argued on National Review, “transgenderism is the new blackface.” “Perhaps the greatest silver lining of the transgender movement has been how it exposes the follies of disregarding sex and sexual difference. ‘Womanface’ is the new blackface. It’s time to get outraged.”

Meanwhile, in St. Louis, the cautionary tale that is Anheuser-Busch continued in full disaster-recovery mode. After a two-week shellacking, CEO Brendan Whitworth finally took the hint and put marketing VP Alissa Heinerscheid on leave for her prominent role in the fiasco. The millennial executive, who insisted hyping gender dysphoria was the way to grow the brand, was quickly disabused of that notion by everyone from national distributors to country music stars.

“Given the circumstances, Alissa has decided to take a leave of absence which we support,” an Anheuser-Busch spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal. “The decision,” the Journal notes, “wasn’t voluntary, according to people familiar with the matter.”

Her boss, Daniel Blake, also didn’t escape the senior management’s wrath. Blake, “who oversees marketing for Anheuser-Busch’s mainstream brands,” had been with the company almost a decade when he and Alissa approved the Mulvaney-faced cans that plummeted the company into global chaos and made the beer a mainstream pariah.

According to the latest numbers from NielsenIQ, Bud Light sales were down an astonishing 17% in dollars and 21% in volume for the week that ended April 15. “These numbers are staggering,” Insights Express insisted. “Right now, this is an extremely difficult scenario for Anheuser-Busch, the Bud Light brand, and for AB distributors.”

Budweiser’s implosion should have scared off plenty of CEOs, but as The Political Forum’s Stephen Soukup has argued, most executives fall into two categories: the true believers (the honest woke) and a much larger group of executives who don’t buy the radicalism they’re embracing. But the honest woke are the dangerous ones. They’re the group that doesn’t care about money nearly as much as ideology. If they need to financially kamikaze to advance their agenda, they’ll do it.

“I think we’re way past the point where companies are dabbling in trans activism simply to appeal to a wider audience in order to grow their bottom line,” Family Research Council’s vice president for branding, Jared Bridges, told The Washington Stand.

“They think they’re doing a moral good by making people like Mulvaney as the face of their brand. And in their ‘moral’ universe, this is more important than the company’s profit margin. Corporations who are still beholden to shareholders should take a long look at whether or not they want these ideologues running their brands,” Bridges warned. “They might just run them into the ground.”

Misery loves woke companies. And if Nike, Disney, Bud Light, and others can’t quit their trans extremism, recent history proves: Americans will quit them.

*****
This article was published by The Daily Signal and is reproduced with permission.

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Four Underused Tools to Stop School Shootings thumbnail

Four Underused Tools to Stop School Shootings

By James D. Agresti

In the aftermath of school shootings, media outlets often amplify calls for gun control while ignoring or spurning evidence-based ways to protect students. Here are four life-saving tools they are missing or dismissing.

Shatter-Resistant Entryways

As documented in the academic journal Victims & Offenders, an “immediate and economical” way to protect students “is to tighten” access to school buildings. Many school administrators have done this simply by locking doors. However, there are roughly 460 million firearms in the U.S., and the bulk of them will quickly shatter the glass entrances that are a common feature of schools, allowing killers to enter in a few seconds.

That is precisely what happened in the Covenant Christian school shooting in Nashville where the killer took the lives of three 9-year-old children and three staff after shooting out the school’s glass doors and walking into the building.

Likewise, the perpetrator of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Newtown, CT broke into the building by shooting out a glass panel at the school’s entryway. He then proceeded to slaughter 20 students and 6 adults.

These and other such tragedies may be prevented if schools took a simple and affordable action: apply a security film that prevents glass entryways from shattering when bullets hit them.

Note that the treatment doesn’t make glass bulletproof or impenetrable. Instead, it makes the glass shatter-resistant. This slows down intruders and affords precious time for students to flee or help to arrive.

Nor does every piece of glass in a school need to be treated. Just installing the film on exterior entryways can substantially improve safety, and selecting other strategic locations can help as well.

Security film is relatively inexpensive and quickly installed. From large public schools to small private ones, the cost of this potential lifesaver is typically less than 1% of a school’s annual budget. Once applied, it lasts for the lifetime of the glass.

For example, it took one day and cost $5,000 in materials and labor to treat a church with more than 20 glass entryway panes on the front, side, and back of the building. Similarly, public school administrators who were hesitant to install security film due to cost concerns found they were able to apply it in a lot more locations than they originally anticipated because it was so affordable.

Seemingly unaware of this life-shielding opportunity, ABC News recently reported:

Brad Garrett—a retired FBI agent and an ABC News contributor, who has done security audits on schools—said fortifying entrance doors with material like bulletproof glass, is cost prohibitive for most schools, especially a small Christian school like Covenant. He said metal doors are a cheaper option, but they make schools feel dark and “prison-like.”

Thus, it appears that a massive media outlet and a former FBI agent who specializes in school security are unfamiliar with an option that addresses those concerns.

Don’t Make Celebrities of Mass Murderers

The 1999 Columbine High School massacre was the first mass shooting that received wall-to-wall media coverage, and ever since then, the press has made the perpetrators of such slaughters into household names. During this same era, fatal school shootings have occurred every year in the United States.

Documenting the impact of this and offering a simple solution, Dr. Peter Langman, a Ph.D. psychologist and one of the world’s leading authorities on the “psychology of school shooters and other perpetrators of mass violence,” writes that:

because of the frequency of mass killers citing previous perpetrators as role models or sources of inspiration, it is critical that media outlets give careful consideration to how they cover such incidents. It seems likely that the more the media focuses on the perpetrators rather than the victims, the more people who are at risk of violence will be influenced to commit their own attacks, whether due to imitation, inspiration, idolizing, perceived similarities, sympathy with the cause, or their desire for fame.

Compulsory Mental Health Treatment

While the vast majority of people with mental illness are not violent, the perpetrators of mass shootings are far more likely to suffer from serious psychiatric disorders than the general population. This is especially true of people who commit indiscriminate mass shootings in which an attacker wantonly kills people in a public setting like a school, park, or church.

A study published in the journal Criminology & Public Policy found that 35% of people who committed indiscriminate mass shootings from 1976 to 2018 had paranoid schizophrenia, and 60% of the shooters “had been either diagnosed with a mental disorder or demonstrated signs of serious mental illness prior to the attack.” Some examples include the perpetrators of the slaughters at:

  • Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
  • Sandy Hook Elementary School.
  • Virginia Tech.
  • Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.
  • the Orlando Pulse Nightclub.
  • an Aurora, Colorado movie theater.
  • a Boulder, Colorado grocery store.
  • Fort Lauderdale International Airport.
  • the Tucson, Arizona “Congress on Your Corner” event with Gabby Giffords.

In comparison, less than 1% of the U.S. general population have schizophrenia or a related disorder, and 4.6% of noninstitutionalized U.S. adults have a serious mental illness.

Perhaps more telling, the Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology published a study of people who committed a mass shooting from 1982 to 2019 and survived. The study focused on the survivors, as opposed to those who died, because the ensuing legal proceedings revealed “the most reliable psychiatric information.” Among the 35 mass shooters who survived, 51% had schizophrenia, and 80% had a psychiatric diagnosis.

Although 18.8% of U.S. adults received mental health services in 2021, people who desperately need such help often refuse care. For instance, the:

  • Parkland killer “received extensive mental and behavioral health services until he turned 18 and decided himself to stop treatment.”
  • Sandy Hook killer “refused to take suggested medication and did not engage in suggested behavior therapies.”
  • Virginia Tech killer “was the biggest impediment to stabilizing his mental health.”

It is important to understand that correlation does not prove causation, but there is a very strong correlation between the rise of indiscriminate mass shootings and the mass deinstitutionalization of psychiatric patients that occurred in the U.S. from 1955 to around 2010.

During that period, the portion of the U.S. population in public psychiatric hospitals declined by 96%. Highlighting the implications of this, a 1997 academic book about “America’s mental illness crisis” explains:

  • “The magnitude of deinstitutionalization of the severely mentally ill qualifies it as one of the largest social experiments in American history.”
  • About “763,391 severely mentally ill people (over three-quarters of a million) are living in the community today who would have been hospitalized 40 years ago.”

Over the periods before, during, and after the U.S. experiment in mass deinstitutionalization, the rates of indiscriminate mass shootings sextupled.

With no regard for those facts and without presenting any evidence to support his claims, U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D–CT) has declared, “Spare me the bullshit about mental illness. We don’t have any more mental illness than any other country in the world. You cannot explain this through a prism of mental illness, because we don’t—we’re not an outlier on mental illness. We’re an outlier when it comes to access to firearms and the ability of criminals and very sick people to get their hands on firearms. That’s what makes America different.”

Likewise, media outlets such as the Washington Post and New York Times allege that the only material difference between the U.S. and developed countries with vastly lower murder rates is that America has more guns. Thus, they conclude that guns must be the problem—commonly using Japan as a comparator because it has very low gun ownership and murder rates.

In reality, however, a major difference is that the U.S. has one of the lowest rates of psychiatric institutionalization in the developed world, and Japan’s rate is about 10 times greater.

It is not easy to craft policies to ensure that people who seriously need help get it without forcing others to undergo unnecessary mental health treatments. However, cases like the Virginia Tech massacre—the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history—show there is much room for improvement. As detailed in the official report of this tragedy that cost the lives of 32 students and faculty:

  • “It is common practice to require students entering a new school, college, or university to present records of immunization. Why not records of serious emotional or mental problem too? … The answer is obvious: personal privacy.”
  • In social and classroom settings, the student engaged in a pattern of “threatening behavior,” such as taking out a knife at a party and “stabbing the carpet.”
  • A poetry professor “began noticing that fewer students were attending” her class, so she “asked a student what was going on, and he said, ‘It’s the boy … everyone’s afraid of him’.”
  • While the chair of the English department was personally working with the student, she wrote a letter to a dean stating that “all of his submissions so far have been about shooting or harming people because he’s angered by their authority or by their behavior. … I am encouraging him to see a counselor––something he’s resisted so far.”
  • After numerous incidents and a finding by a clinical social worker that the student “was mentally ill, was an imminent danger to self or others, and was not willing to be treated voluntarily,” the student was involuntarily hospitalized for one night. However, he was released after he falsely denied “any previous mental health treatment.” The psychiatrist took his word for this because that’s the “standard practice” and “privacy laws impede the gathering of collateral information.”
  • Upon his release, a special justice ruled that the student “presents an imminent danger to himself as a result of mental illness” and ordered him “to follow all recommended treatments.” However, the counseling center he went to had a “policy” of allowing “patients to decide whether to make a followup appointment,” and the student did not.

Similar circumstances surrounded the mental health of the mass murderer in Parkland and the perpetrators of other such massacres.

Arming Selected Teachers

Despite knee-jerk reactions to arming teachers, this action can significantly and discretely improve the safety of students for a fraction of the cost of employing officers or security guards. This is because teachers and other school employees:

  • who are willing and able to protect students can be quickly trained to be as safe and proficient with a firearm as police.
  • are ubiquitous in schools and can provide ample coverage of buildings and campuses, something that has been severely lacking in school massacres.
  • would covertly carry, giving them an advantage of surprise over would-be attackers.
  • can be seriously trained, appropriately armed, and generously paid for about 1% of what is already spent on schools.

Large crowds—like those found in schools, concerts, and sporting events—are prime targets for mass murderers. That’s why the Superdome in New Orleans—which has a seating capacity of 73,208 people—has more than “900 public safety personnel” on duty in the stadium and surrounding area during “large events such as football games.”

That amounts to one security personnel for every 80 people, including “armed public safety officers, non-armed game day security guards along with officers from the Louisiana State Police, New Orleans Police Department and Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Department.”

In comparison, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School—which had about 3,200 students at the time it was attacked—had only one armed guard on duty. This is about 1/40th of the security per person at the Superdome.

Columbine had about 1,900 students and one armed guard, or 1/24th of the Dome’s.

During the Virginia Tech slaughter, the campus had 26,370 students and “131 major buildings spread over 2,600 acres,” while “only 14” officers were on duty, including “5 on patrol and 9 in the office.” In other words, each patrol officer was responsible for protecting about 5,000 students, 25 buildings, and 500 acres.

Such security is grossly inadequate because killers can easily find a soft spot without guards. This need not be the case. Given that the average pupil/teacher ratio in public schools is about 16 to 1, arming one out of five teachers would equal the Dome’s ratio of 80 to 1.

Moreover, teachers would carry the weapons covertly, making it nearly impossible for assailants to determine who is armed and who is not. This can provide an element of surprise crucial to saving lives.

Contrary to claims spread by CNN and NBC, teachers can rival the firearm skills of police officers. This is because even recreational shooters fire as accurately as police, and most officers only receive a modest amount of firearm training.

In 2015, the International Journal of Police Science & Management published a study on the risks of “deadly police shootouts.” This involved testing “the level of shooting accuracy demonstrated by law enforcement recruits upon completion” of “their firearms training in comparison with novice” recruits who had not yet received this training. The study found:

  • “no difference” in accuracy at any distance between recruits who had completed law enforcement or military handgun training and those who only had “recreational” handgun experience.
  • trained officers were “only 10% more accurate” than recruits with “minimal/no experience” at ranges of 3 to 15 feet, which is where a “majority of gunfights and critical situations will likely” occur.

On average, police receive 71 hours of firearms instruction in their initial academy training and less than 15 hours per year thereafter. They also get very little real-world experience with firing guns. A 2017 Pew poll found that “only about a quarter (27%) of all officers say they have ever fired their service weapon” in the line of duty.

These facts point to the conclusion that selected and well-trained teachers would be very effective in protecting the lives of students. Even the general public saves far more lives with guns than are lost in accidents. U.S. civilians use guns to stop potentially lethal violence more than 100,000 times per year, while there are less than 600 fatal firearm accidents per year.

Despite claims that arming teachers would be too costly, it would amount to a drop in the bucket of current school spending. Even under a high-cost scenario where teachers receive five times more gun training than police and are well paid for their training time, the annual cost of equipping, training, and supervising one out of five teachers would be about 1% of government spending on schools.

Summary

Assumptions, politics, and sentiments aside, people can quickly and inexpensively reduce the risk of school shooting deaths by:

  • hardening the glass entryways to schools by treating them with films that prevent the doors from shattering if shot.
  • limiting the amount of fame bestowed on the perpetrators of mass murders.
  • implementing policies to ensure that people with serious psychiatric disorders get the help they need, even if they are unwilling to be treated.
  • arming and training selected teachers who are willing and able to protect students.

*****
This article was published by Just Facts and is reproduced with permission.

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The Transgender Cult Owns the Democratic Party thumbnail

The Transgender Cult Owns the Democratic Party

By Matt Margolis

Make no mistake about it, the transgender cult owns the Democratic Party. On Thursday, the United States House of Representatives voted to pass the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, but not a single present Democrat voted in favor of it.

The legislation, introduced by Rep. Greg Stuebe (R-Fla.), would amend Title IX by codifying protection based on biological sex, by making it “for a recipient of Federal financial assistance who operates, sponsors, or facilitates athletic programs or activities to permit a person whose sex is male to participate in an athletic program or activity that is designated for women or girls” and to clarify that “sex shall be recognized based solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth.”

The final vote was 219 to 203, with 13 House members abstaining from voting.

“Today is a great day for America, for fairness for families, and most importantly for female athletes,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said after the bill passed. “House Republicans pledged before the last election our commitment to America to protect women and girls in sports. Today, we kept that promise.”

He added, “Unfortunately, today on the floor, not one Democrat could stand up for Title IX, or stand up for women in sports. I believe that’s wrong.” McCarthy then acknowledged a number of female athletes who testified before Congress and told their stories about how they were robbed of opportunities they’d worked so hard for because biological males were allowed to compete with them.

“These incredible women have dedicated their lives to the sports they love. We watched in hearing after hearing to hear their stories. For years of waking up early and training late into the evening. They pushed themselves to the limit as humanly possible, made sacrifice and they never gave up. They strive for excellence and they achieved it. And they learn the value of teamwork and hard work. But because they were forced to compete against biological men, they lost out on opportunities that they deserved. They watched their peers lose out on opportunities they deserved as well. So these women did something courageous: they spoke out. They spoke out for equal opportunity for privacy. For safety. For truth. For everything the previous generations of women who fought hard for Title IX. They are the current champions of those women 50 years ago, who fought for equality and fought for fairness in sports. And today, they had victory.”…..

*****

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Musk to Build New Chinese Factory, Despite CCP Crimes and Abuses thumbnail

Musk to Build New Chinese Factory, Despite CCP Crimes and Abuses

By Catherine Salgado

Twitter Inc. has apparently changed its name to the highly unimaginative X Corp., but that, in my opinion, isn’t the most important news this week related to Tesla and Twitter CEO Elon Musk. Musk is once again selling out his supposed pro-free speech humanitarian principles for profit.

If a country’s government is committing genocide and religious persecution, runs a tyrannical censorship regime, demands every major business answer directly to the government, and is openly hostile to your country (the U.S.), would you be worried about doing business there? If you’re Elon Musk, the answer is an emphatic “no.” The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) many and ongoing crimes evidently do not disturb Musk, who is planning to expand his Tesla China branch with a huge new factory.

CCP state media outlet Xinhua News excitedly announced on April 9, Easter, that Tesla would be building a new “mega factory” in China to produce Megapack, the company’s huge energy-storage batteries. I guess labor really is a lot cheaper in China. So much for Musk calling himself a “free speech absolutist” and pontificating that he “love[s]” humanity; it’s profit over principles for the Tesla and Twitter CEO.

Musk’s hypocrisy is not shocking, however. Tesla workers were reportedly being forced to work in very inhumane conditions during China’s insane zero-COVID lockdowns in early 2022, and Musk endorsed the CCP’s unjust claims on Taiwan.

Tesla is set to break ground on the new battery plant in 2023’s third quarter, per Xinhua. The plant will then begin production in 2024’s second quarter, according to Tesla representatives at a signing ceremony in Shanghai and Xinhua. All major businesses in China are surveilled by and answerable to the CCP, and the CCP practices “civil-military fusion”–where everything in the economic and tech spheres is accessible to the Chinese military. The CCP is also history’s greatest mass murderer, having killed over 500 million people.

Musk is acting like a greedy traitor. It is time American businessmen started putting principles and patriotism ahead of profit and power.

*****
This article was published by Pro Deo et Libertate and is reproduced with permission.

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EXCLUSIVE: This Department Was at the Center of COVID-19 Overreach. Here’s What a Conservative President Should Do With It thumbnail

EXCLUSIVE: This Department Was at the Center of COVID-19 Overreach. Here’s What a Conservative President Should Do With It

By Tyler O’Neil

A coalition of conservative leaders and former federal government political appointees has compiled a game plan for the next conservative president to restore the Department of Health and Human Services to a focus on health care rather than forcing a leftist agenda down Americans’ throats.

From the COVID-19 pandemic to abortion funding and transgender mandates, HHS has twisted federal law and the pursuit of public health to marginalize people of faith and promote bureaucrats and leftist activism, warns a report edited by Roger Severino, former director of the HHS Office of Civil Rights under President Donald Trump. He argues that the next conservative president must reverse these abuses and return HHS to its proper role: the promotion of public health.

“Few areas of life are more important, and more subject to abuse, than public health,” Severino, vice president of Domestic Policy at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal in a statement Monday. “Unfortunately, our public health agencies have replaced science and medicine with politics and ideology, and Americans now face shorter life spans as a result. Reform can only happen if entrenched special interests, from lawless bureaucratic leaders and Big Pharma, are reined in and rooted out.” (The Daily Signal is The Heritage Foundation’s news outlet.)

Severino organized and edited a major report in the book “Mandate for Leadership,” compiled by the 2025 Presidential Transition Project, noting that after the COVID-19 pandemic was over, U.S. life expectancy continued to drop precipitously. A copy of the report on HHS was provided exclusively to The Daily Signal for this article.

The Heritage Foundation helped launch the 2025 Presidential Transition Project (also known as Project 2025) to equip a potential conservative president to govern effectively from Day One.

HHS has an outsized impact on the federal government, from its role in declaring public health emergencies to its management of Medicare and Medicaid to its $1.6 trillion annual budget. Under Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama, HHS has also used its power over health policy to promote abortion and transgender ideology.

Severino’s team lays out five overarching goals for a conservative president intent on reshaping HHS: (1) protecting life from conception, protecting the rights of conscience of health care workers, and defending biological reality against gender identity ideology; (2) empowering patients to make their own health care choices, enabling providers to offer more options, and unleashing markets to drive down costs and improve quality; (3) promoting stable and flourishing married families instead of LGBT activism and single motherhood; (4) correcting the errors of the COVID-19 pandemic and preparing for the next health emergency; and (5) closing the “revolving door between government and Big Pharma,” where regulators leave government and work for companies they have regulated and pharmaceutical executives move from industry into regulatory agencies.

Severino’s team breaks down the massive bureaucracy of HHS and presents specific recommendations for each branch of the behemoth agency. This article focuses on a few of the specific issues that motivate the major changes he recommends.

1. COVID-19
Many of the report’s critiques and recommendations for a future HHS trace back to the department’s abuses during the COVID-19 pandemic. It notes that while the HHS secretary declared a public health emergency, “the threshold for what constitutes a public health emergency—how many cases, hospitalizations, deaths, etc.—was never defined.”

Severino’s team recommends that Congress “restrict HHS’s ability to declare indefinite public health emergencies,” in part by establishing a set time frame for any emergency.

The report also recommends that the HHS secretary “investigate, expose, and remediate any instances in which HHS violated people’s rights by” colluding with Big Tech companies to silence dissent on COVID-19.

Severino’s team says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention should be broken up into two separate organizations: one dedicated to gathering scientific data and one responsible for making public health recommendations—”an inescapably political function.” The report notes that the CDC previously held back public health information on COVID-19 partially due to “fear that the information might be misinterpreted.”

“CDC should report on the risks and effectiveness of all infectious disease-mitigation measures dispassionately and leave the ‘should’ and ‘must’ policy calls to politically accountable parties,” the report suggests. “Congress should ensure that CDC’s legal authorities are clearly defined and limited to prevent” an “arbitrary and vacillating exercise of power,” as the U.S. experienced during the pandemic.

Severino’s report recommends that the Food and Drug Administration, not the CDC, should regulate vaccines, and calls for reforms to prevent the National Institutes of Health’s “inappropriate industry ties that create serious conflicts of interest.”

The report notes that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases—Anthony Fauci’s division of the NIH—”owns half of the patent for the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, among thousands of other pharma patents.” According to NIH documents, NIH Director Francis Collins, Fauci, and Fauci’s deputy director, Clifford Lane, all received royalty payments from pharmaceutical companies between 2009 and 2014.

The report faults NIH for funding “gain-of-function viral research that may have been responsible for COVID-19.”

2. Abortion
Severino’s team recommends HHS change many policies to protect unborn life and maternal health and to honor the religious convictions of Americans who object to the use of aborted baby body parts in medical research.

The CDC “should fund studies into the risks and complications of abortion” and require states to report abortion complications and babies born alive despite an attempted abortion, the team writes. It should prohibit research on aborted baby body parts, since such research can be “easily” replaced with research on adult stem cells. And it should avoid promoting abortion as health care.

The report condemns the CDC’s current abortion and maternal mortality reporting systems as “woefully inadequate,” since states provide those statistics on a voluntary basis. “Because liberal states have now become sanctuaries for abortion tourism, HHS should use every available tool, including the cutting of funds, to ensure that every state reports exactly how many abortions take place within its borders, at what gestational age of the child, for what reason, the mother’s state of residence, and by what method.”

Severino’s team urges the FDA to reconsider its approval of chemical abortion drugs, an approval that currently faces a court challenge. The report notes that the complication rater for chemical abortion is “four times higher” than that of surgical abortion and that the chemical abortion drug mifepristone has been associated with 26 deaths of pregnant mothers, over 1,000 hospitalizations, and thousands more adverse events. It also calls the approval of this drug “politicized and illegal from the start.”

The report also calls for the FDA to loosen its restrictions on foreign-made vaccines that were not derived through or tested on aborted baby cells, reinstituting a Trump-era waiver for Japanese-made vaccines.

It urges the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to block Planned Parenthood from receiving Medicaid funds and to redirect funds to “health centers that provide real health care for women.”

Severino’s team urges HHS to audit the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for compliance to the Hyde Amendment, which prevents federal funding of abortions, and to perform a “full review” of HHS efforts to promote abortion in the wake of the Supreme Court’s overturning Roe v. Wade.

The report also urges various HHS departments to rescind “ideologically motivated fearmongering” guidance that the Biden administration released in the wake of the court’s ruling, such as warnings about state governments “targeting” women for getting abortions.

3. Transgender Ideology
“Radical actors inside and outside government are promoting harmful identity politics that replaces biological sex with subjective notions of ‘gender identity,’” Severino’s team warns. The report urges a potential conservative president to reverse this trend.

Biden’s HHS has interpreted Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare), which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in health care, to forbid discrimination on the basis of “gender identity” and sexual orientation as well. Severino’s team urges a future HHS secretary to explicitly revoke this guidance, as HHS did under Trump.

The report says that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services should reissue and expand upon its 2016 decision that it cannot recommend “gender reassignment surgery” for Medicare beneficiaries, citing the “growing body of evidence that such interventions are dangerous.” (Many doctors recently testified in favor of a Florida rule blocking Medicaid coverage for experimental transgender interventions.)

The report also urges HHS to withdraw guidance allowing taxpayer funds to pay for cross-sex transitions.

It faults the NIH for having been “at the forefront in pushing junk gender science,” and encourages the agency to “fund studies into the short-term and long-term negative effects of [cross-sex] interventions, including ‘affirmation,’ puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries, and the likelihood of desistence [abandoning the desire to change one’s sex] if young people are given counseling that does not include medical or social interventions.”

4. Restoring Religious Liberty
Severino’s team notes that under liberal administrations, the office of HHS that he led, the Office for Civil Rights, “has amassed a poor record of devoting resources to conscience and religious freedom enforcement and is often complicit in approving or looking the other way at the administration’s own attacks on religious liberty.”

The report encourages a prospective conservative president to direct the Office for Civil Rights to return to the Trump-era policies that “initiated robust enforcement of these conscience laws.” It urges HHS to reestablish waivers for state and child welfare agencies, especially for faith-based adoption and foster care agencies, which had previously been excluded from federal programs because they were unwilling to place children with same-sex couples.

5. Restoring Medicare and Medicaid
Severino’s team warns that Medicare and Medicaid operate “runaway entitlements that stifle medical innovation, encourage fraud, and impede cost containment, in addition to which their fiscal future is in peril.”

The report urges the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to increase Medicare beneficiaries’ control over their own care; reduce regulatory burdens on doctors; ensure sustainability and value for both beneficiaries and taxpayers; and reduce fraud, waste, and abuse. It favors Medicare Advantage and urges Medicare to pay the same amount for outpatient procedures that it does for inpatient hospital services. It also encourages Medicare to reform payments along the lines of intensity and value of service, as opposed to a fee-for-service model.

Severino’s team warns that Medicaid has a higher percentage of improper payments than any other federal program, and encourages the program to stop covering nonmedical services like air conditioning and housing. The report says the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services should give states more flexibility to strengthen program integrity and to incentivize personal responsibility through work requirements and private insurance.

6. Medical Ethics
Severino’s team encourages HHS to decommission the CDC and NIH Foundations, nonprofit entities “whose boards are populated with pharmaceutical company executives.”

“Private donations to these foundations—a majority of them from pharmaceutical companies—should not be permitted to influence government decisions about research funding or public health policy,” the report urges.

“We must shut and lock the revolving door between government and Big Pharma,” it adds. “Regulators should have a long ‘cooling off period’ on their contracts (15 years would not be too long) that prevents them from working for companies they have regulated. Similarly, pharmaceutical company executives should be restricted from moving from industry into positions within regulatory agencies.”

Severino’s team recommends more changes to HHS, including a prioritization of fatherhood in the many social programs HHS controls, and the elimination of the Head Start preschool program and the NIH Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion.

Correction: This article has been corrected to reflect the authorship of the Project 2025 HHS report.

*****
This article was published by The Daily Signal and is reproduced with permission.

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Transgender Inc.: A Running List Of Corporate Gender Insanity Insulting Women, Kids, And Reality thumbnail

Transgender Inc.: A Running List Of Corporate Gender Insanity Insulting Women, Kids, And Reality

By The Federalist Staff

Rather than highlight the dangerous and irreversible procedures associated with transgenderism, such as chemical castration and genital mutilation, many major corporations have opted to champion trans ideology — even for unsuspecting children. In order to help Americans hold these companies financially accountable, The Federalist has compiled a list of major businesses promoting and glorifying gender dysphoria.

24. Ulta
The women’s beauty company, Ulta, featured two men on its new “Beauty Of…” podcast last fall, including transgender-identifying TikTok star Dylan Mulvaney.

23. Calvin Klein
Calvin Klein has been advertising its underwear line with transgender models for years.

In May last year, the company celebrated Mother’s Day with a feature of transgender partners, one of whom was pregnant and bearded.

22. Nike
The athletic fashion company advertised its women’s products through a paid partnership with woman-imitator and TikTok star Dylan Mulvaney.

21. Build-a-Bear
The once family-friendly toy company decided to throw its hat in the rainbow ring with the March 2023 launch of a teddy bear inspired by drag performer RuPaul. According to Breitbart, the bear comes with “exaggerated drag make-up” and “a gold-sequined dress, gold pumps, and a flowing blonde wig.” On the Build-a-Bear website, the company refers to the bear with female pronouns.

20. The Hershey Company
For International Women’s Day 2023, the popular chocolate company put the face of Fae Johnstone, a man who masquerades as a woman, on its candy bar wrappers.

19. Anheuser-Busch
In a statement provided to Fox News, the beer company confirmed that its Bud Light brand has officially partnered with Dylan Mulvaney, a man who parades around in women’s clothes. On April 1, 2023, Mulvaney revealed on social media that Bud Light had sent him a beer can with his face on them to celebrate a year of “girlhood,” calling it his “most prized possession.”

18. Country Music Television
Several days after a woman who apparently identified as transgender killed six people, including three children, in a shooting at a Nashville Christian school, country singer Kelsea Ballerini took the stage at the 2023 CMT Awards to perform “If You Go Down (I’m Going Down Too)” alongside drag performers from “RuPaul’s Drag Race.”

In an Instagram post, CMT declared itself and Ballerini to be “proud supporters” of the Trevor Project, an activist organization that assists young people in obtaining so-called “gender-affirming care,” meaning “hormones and genital surgeries rather than counseling to accept one’s biological sex.”

17. Apple
Apple users who visited the App Store on International Women’s Day 2023 were greeted with a giant poster of Naomi Hearts, a man who pretends to be a woman. Clicking on the poster directed users to an article detailing Hearts’ campaign for “self-love” and advocacy for dangerous trans procedures.

16. Google
Google India released an ad on International Women’s Day 2023 that featured Prakriti Soni, a man “who expressed the belief that he was a woman starting in 2020.”

15. Seafolly
The notable Australian swimwear company chose a bearded man posing as “nonbinary” to be the star of its advertising campaign prior to International Women’s Day 2023.

14. KitchenAid
Ahead of Women’s History Month, KitchenAid featured woman-pretender Dylan Mulvaney on the cover of its 2023 Color of the Year campaign launch and newsletter.

13. Disney
Arguably the most notable child entertainment corporation in the world, The Walt Disney Company has become obsessed with forcing leftists’ radical gender theory on unsuspecting children. In March 2022, unearthed videos revealed Disney’s plans to incorporate a “not-at-all-secret gay agenda” into its children’s programming. Around the same time, the company publicly denounced Florida’s “Parental Rights in Education” law, which prevents school officials from instructing students in kindergarten through third grade on concepts such as “sexual orientation” and “gender identity.”

The company has bent over backward to insert LGBT characters into its programming in recent years, including the Disney Plus show “Baymax!” and Marvel’s “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.”

12. National Hockey League
In November 2022, the professional sports league posted a tweet promoting a tournament “comprised entirely of transgender and nonbinary players.” In response to fan criticism, the NHL doubled down, tweeting “Trans women are women. Trans men are men. Nonbinary identity is real.”

11. Netflix
In March 2023, the streaming platform released an episode of “Ridley Jones” — a Netflix Jr. cartoon show created for preschoolers — in which a bison character comes out as “nonbinary” and explains the concept of pronouns.

10. M&Ms
In January 2022, the candymaker announced that the M&Ms in the company’s television ads would “dress and act in more gender-neutral ways.”

“We took a deep look at our characters, both inside and out, and have evolved their looks, personalities and backstories to be more representative of the dynamic and progressive world we live in,” said Jane Hwang, the global vice president for M&Ms.

In September 2022, M&Ms separately announced the creation of its purple “spokescandy,” an M&M “designed to represent acceptance and inclusivity.”

9. Cartoon Network
After President Joe Biden declared March 30, 2023, to be “Transgender Day of Visibility,” the children’s entertainment network posted a tweet commemorating the so-called holiday.

“Addressing someone using their pronouns and name shows that you RESPECT them as their authentic self!” the tweet reads. “We celebrate the journey of our trans and gender-non-conforming friends on this #TransgenderDayofVisibility!”

8. Paramount
The company’s streaming service, Paramount Plus, celebrated 2023’s “Trans Day of Visibility” by posting a tweet highlighting trans-identifying characters in its programming. The Paramount Plus Twitter account also posted a video of former “RuPaul’s Drag Race” contestant Kylie Sonique Love, who claimed “we are born this way, obviously.”

7. Black Entertainment Television
On March 31, 2023, the entertainment outlet posted a tweet highlighting Bré Rivera, a man pretending to be a woman who is purportedly the first so-called “Black Trans woman to lead a Black Trans fund.”

“There’s power in knowing who you are not only on #transdayofvisibility but every day,” the BET account wrote.

6. Twitch
In celebration of 2023’s “Trans Day of Visibility,” the streaming platform posted a tweet highlighting four transgender streamers.

5. Freeform
The television network posted a banner on its Twitter account that reads, “Trans Rights Are Human Rights,” to commemorate “Trans Day of Visibility.”

“This statement stays true 365 days, but using #TransDayofVisibility to make sure y’all are aware that this is and will always be a safe space,” the tweet reads.

4. WNBA
“Today we support #TransDayOfVisibility,” the NBA-subsidized league wrote in a March 31, 2023, tweet. “To our trans and gender-fluid community, we celebrate and will continue to stand with you.”

3. NASCAR
The motor sports organization announced it was partnering with the Carolinas LGBT+ Chamber of Commerce in January 2022. The Christian Post reported that the latter “describes itself as ‘an organization of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and LGBT+ and allied businesses, corporations and professionals throughout western North Carolina and most of South Carolina’ with a mission to ‘foster equity, inclusion and economic prosperity for the LGBTQ community through strategic policy, professional enrichment, ally partnerships and economic development.’”

2. Kate Spade
Similar to other major corporations, Kate Spade has partnered with social media influencer and woman-wannabe Dylan Mulvaney. In March 2023, Mulvaney posted a TikTok video of himself prancing around the company’s New York store, while promoting the Kate Spade 2023 women’s spring fashion line.

1. Nickelodeon
For “Pride Month,” the children’s entertainment network released a video in June 2021 in which drag queen Nina West sings about the meaning behind each color on the “pride flag.” That same month, the network also confirmed it had cast its first transgender-identifying teen actor in one of its children’s shows.

The network released a separate video featuring West as a cartoon that same year in its most recent adaptation of “Blue’s Clues.” During the sing-along, West discusses different kinds of families, including “those with trans, non-binary, lesbian and gay parents,” as the New York Post noted.

*****
This article was published by The Federalist and is reproduced with permission.

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The US Government Creates New Races thumbnail

The US Government Creates New Races

By Craig J. Cantoni

It has the divine power to create races but can’t fix the serious problems facing Americans.

The Book of Genesis has nothing on the US government.

The book tells the biblical story of how God created Adam, and, using one of his ribs, created Eve.  This happened in the Garden of Eden, which was probably located in sub-Saharan Africa, thus making the couple and their billions of descendants African.

Using its supernatural power, the US government is thinking of creating new “races.” It is not known if any ribs will be involved.

It is known, however, that one of the new races would be split off from an existing race, similar to how God split Eve from Adam.  The existing “race” would continue to be called White, and the new “race” would be called MENA, which stands for Middle East and North Africa.

The cockamamie notion behind the proposed split is that European Whites are a different race than MENA Whites.

At the same time, the current ethnic category of Hispanics would be miraculously transformed into a separate and distinct race.  In other words, the numerous ethnic groups, nationalities, and skin shades in the Hispanic category would become homogenous by decree. Hey, if Jesus could turn water into wine, the government can turn ethnicity into race?

These changes would leave the US with seven races:  White, MENA, Black, Hispanic, Asian, Pacific Islander, and Native American.  This means that the hundreds of unique ethnocultural groups in the world and in the US would be reduced to these arbitrary seven, in a mockery of diversity.

There is little basis in science for any of this, whether it is the science of genetics, anthropology, ethnography, or sociology.  But the all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving US government doesn’t have to follow the science.

If the new races were to come to be, almost all of America’s institutions and citizens would obediently follow the government’s lead and, without question, begin to categorize themselves and everyone else accordingly.

After all, most Americans didn’t question the original six racial categories when they were first created.  Nor did they understand how the categories came to be and how they would be used for nefarious purposes.

I know the history, for the simple reason that over my career I was at the vanguard of equal rights and equal opportunity.  I saw firsthand how the categories interfered with those goals.

David E. Bernstein knows the history even better than I do.  He details the history in his scholarly book, Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America.  What began as a noble effort to help African Americans overcome the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow turned into identity politics, in which other groups lobbied to be classified as disadvantaged races and minorities.  That in turn led to a feeding frenzy in which the groups fought for such racial spoils as race-based set-asides, small business loans, government contracts, and college preferences.

Today, the racial categories are used in diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, which is a misnomer, because the programs are intended to exclude Whites, even the roughly 30 million ones in poverty, and increasingly, to exclude Asians.

Admittedly, I take the exclusion personally.  You see, my impoverished and unskilled immigrant grandparents were considered non-White and treated accordingly when they immigrated to America.  The same for my working-class parents for much of their lives.  And the same for other Southern Europeans, as well as for Eastern Europeans, Jews, Armenians, and many others.  Now all of us are considered White, privileged, and racist.  It’s as if our DNA had been suddenly replaced by the DNA of Anglo-Saxons.

Curiously, Hispanics are not seen as White in the new racial scheme, although many of them have ancestors from a part of Europe that is at the same latitude as most of Italy, which is considered White by those obsessed with color.  As such, Hispanics escape being stereotyped as privileged and racist and aren’t blamed for slavery, although Hispanics brought more slaves to the Americas than the English and Dutch did—and began doing so long before 1619.

So, what is my real race?  The answer can be found in history and geography, but the government’s race classifiers apparently don’t know history and geography.  For example, they don’t seem to know how close North Africa is to Italy, or that invaders and traders from the Middle East and North Africa spread their DNA across the Italian peninsula over millennia, as did Greeks, Persians, Goths, Gauls, Neanderthals, and others.  Romans also spread their DNA in other lands, including in England, where they taught the locals how to bathe.

Anyway, to answer the question, my race is a mongrel.

It’s a similar story of cross-fertilization and genetic exchange throughout history and throughout the world.  Take the most prolific DNA spreader in history, Genghis Khan.  One of every 200 people alive today has some of Khan’s DNA. His empire, the Mongolian Empire, covered the largest amount of contiguous territory in history, stretching from the Pacific Ocean to the Danube, to the Persian Gulf.  Mongolians were colonizers par excellence.

Present-day Mongolians are not into cancel culture and the removal of statues of notorious people in their history.  They are proud of their warrior history and their subjugation of other peoples.  That’s evidenced by the stainless steel statue of Genghis Khan on horseback, which is located 33 miles from the nation’s capital.  The statue is 130 ft. tall and is on top of a three-story museum/monument.  Visitors can walk up a stairway through the horse’s chest and neck to reach a vantage point with a panoramic view of the countryside.

So, what race are Mongolians?  Are they Asian?  Well, in spite of what the US government believes, Asia is a geographical area, not a race.

These questions about Mongolians are very germane to the issue of the government’s seven races.  That’s because the word “Mongoloid” is derived from the word “Mongol” and was once used to designate a race.  Here’s what Wikipedia says about that:

Mongoloid is an obsolete racial grouping of various peoples indigenous to large parts of Asia, the Americas, and some regions in Europe and Oceania. The term is derived from a now-disproven theory of biological race. In the past, other terms such as “Mongolian race”, “yellow”, “Asiatic” and “Oriental” have been used as synonyms.

The concept of dividing humankind into the Mongoloid, Caucasoid, and Negroid races was introduced in the 1780s by members of the Göttingen School of History. It was further developed by Western scholars in the context of racist ideologies during the age of colonialism. With the rise of modern genetics, the concept of distinct human races in a biological sense has become obsolete. In 2019, the American Association of Biological Anthropologists stated: “The belief in ‘races’ as natural aspects of human biology, and the structures of inequality (racism) that emerge from such beliefs, are among the most damaging elements in the human experience both today and in the past.”

Mongolian Americans expose the fallacy and lie of DEI, which claims to want social, economic, and political justice for so-called minorities.  Mongolian Americans are a true minority, in that they have small numbers and little political power.  Yet they are forgotten in pushes for diversity on boards of directors, in college admissions, and in political offices.  Virtue-signaling companies don’t feature them in TV commercials and ads.  No one takes to the streets on their behalf.  And, to add insult to injury, their heritage is erased by force-fitting them into one of the official “races.”

Mongolian Americans are not the only forgotten people.  Scores of other true minority groups are also forgotten.  The “minority” groups that are not forgotten are the ones that have large numbers and considerable political and media power.

I’ll end on a personal note

My immediate family includes a married couple who would be characterized as an interracial couple by those who see everyone in terms of the government’s official races.  My wife and I see them as loved ones and good people.

They will soon be the parents of a baby girl.  She will not fit into any of the official racial categories, but the government and the DEI industry will want to assign her to one.

They should mind their own business and stop playing God.

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Former Champion Swimmer Riley Gaines Assaulted While Advocating For Women in Sports thumbnail

Former Champion Swimmer Riley Gaines Assaulted While Advocating For Women in Sports

By Rick Moran

The scene at San Francisco State University was surreal. A champion female athlete speaking about maintaining the integrity of women’s sports was shouted down, assaulted, and chased from a speaking engagement sponsored by Turning Point USA.

The woman screaming “Trans rights are human rights” needs some sort of intervention — or a straitjacket.

Gaines has become a leading advocate for women in sports and has thus had a bullseye stuck on her back by radicals.

The Independent Women’s Forum issued a statement of support for Gaines and condemned the violence against her.

“We strongly condemn the violence perpetrated against [IWF] spokeswoman Riley Gaines on SFSU campus. Riley was violently accosted, ambushed, and physically assaulted during a speech on sex discrimination women face in their own single-sex sports category,” the group wrote on Twitter.

Gaines’s agent, Eli Bremer, said the attack would not prevent Riley from speaking out.

“Instead of a thoughtful discussion tonight at SFSU, Riley was violently accosted, shouted at, physically assaulted, and barricaded in a room by protestors. It is stunning that in America in 2023, it is acceptable for biological male students to violently assault a woman for standing up for women’s rights,” Bremer said in a statement. “This will not stop Riley from boldly educating people of the dangers of biological males in women’s sports. She will continue to speak the truth against the radical left that no longer understands the difference between men and women.”

After being physically assaulted and driven from her speaking venue, Gaines was forced to barricade herself in a room for three hours while police tried to get the mob to disperse. She was finally able to leave with a police escort…..

*****

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REVEALED: The Real Reason Why Fake Woman Dylan Mulvaney Is Suddenly Everywhere thumbnail

REVEALED: The Real Reason Why Fake Woman Dylan Mulvaney Is Suddenly Everywhere

By Robert Spencer

At last we know why the corporate world has fallen in love with pretend woman Dylan Mulvaney. As I noted Thursday, he seems to be everywhere all at once, and it seems unlikely that corporate giants are suddenly so taken with Dylan’s charm and wit that they are spontaneously all at once falling over themselves to make him their pitchman. But now we know why there is this sudden imperative to make this man America’s sweetheart: corporations are being strong-armed into featuring him, or else.

The New York Post reported Friday that “executives at companies like Nike, Anheuser-Busch and Kate Spade, whose brand endorsements have turned controversial trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney into today’s woke ‘It girl,’ aren’t just virtue signaling.” Instead, they’re paying the modern-day equivalent of Mafia protection money, trying to keep the heat off their business: they’re hiring Dylan and making other displays of wokeness “because they have to — or risk failing an all-important social credit score that could make or break their businesses.” If they don’t inflict woke advertising campaigns on us, they’re liable to do damage to their Corporate Equality Index (CEI) score, which could be disastrous for their business.

Watching corporations and tallying up their CEI score is the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), which the Post describes as “the largest LGBTQ+ political lobbying group in the world,” noting that it has gotten “millions” from George Soros’ far-Left Open Society Foundation. HRC gives corporations points for being gay-friendly and subtracts them for daring not to toe the woke line. It does this based on “rating criteria” that award up to 100 points for workplace features such as a “gender-neutral dress code” and “data collection forms” that feature “optional questions on sexual orientation and gender identity.”

The main CEI categories include “Workforce Protections,” “Inclusive Benefits,” “Supporting an Inclusive Culture,” “Corporate Social Responsibility,” and “Responsible Citizenship.” According to the Post, “businesses that attain the maximum 100 total points earn the coveted title ‘Best Place To Work For LGBTQ Equality.” The corporate giants have eagerly fallen into line: “Fifteen of the top 20 Fortune-ranked companies received 100% ratings last year, according to HRC data.” Nor is it just the top corporations: “More than 840 US companies racked up high CEI scores, according to the latest report.”

HRC doesn’t give a company a chance to dissent politely from the LGBTQ agenda: a sure way to get a low CEI score is, for example, not using a “supplier diversity program with demonstrated effort to include certified LGBTQ+ suppliers.” Compliance is strictly enforced. According to political commentator James Lindsay, the HRC “sends representatives to corporations every year telling them what kind of stuff they have to make visible at the company. They give them a list of demands and if they don’t follow through there’s a threat that you won’t keep your CEI score.” Entities such as the HRC issue threats because threats work, as we can see from the ubiquity of Dylan Mulvaney…..

*****

Continue reading this article at PJ Media.

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‘Her Brain Was Gone’: Parents Describe Horror of Daughter’s Marijuana-Induced Psychosis thumbnail

‘Her Brain Was Gone’: Parents Describe Horror of Daughter’s Marijuana-Induced Psychosis

By Ryan Mills

Cat Mayberry grabbed her backpack and ran out the door.

With no jacket, hat, or gloves, she ran through snow flurries on a cold Minnesota day. She ran down the street, and down the hill. She ran down the nature trail near her family’s home in Eden Prairie, a southwest suburb of Minneapolis.

Trent Mayberry, Cat’s dad, ran after his 20-year-old daughter. He caught up to her and grabbed her by her backpack, stopping her. They sat together on the frozen ground. Trent cried. Cat was scared but otherwise expressionless.

“Catherine, I love you so much,” he told his daughter. “We’re trying to help you.”

“You’ve got to let me go,” Cat replied softly. “Just let me go.”

Trent guided his daughter home, holding the straps of her backpack and using it to direct her, like a joystick. How could this girl, walking like a zombie, be the same girl who just a few years earlier had been a sunny honor student and varsity athlete with the world at her fingertips? Sure, she’d been using marijuana, but to Trent, it was just pot, basically harmless.

Trent sat Cat in the backseat of the family’s car with her mother, Jane, and drove her to a nearby Hazelden addiction treatment facility. Cat had agreed earlier to go, communicating mostly with nods. But when it came time to leave, she ran. And when her parents eventually got her there, she wouldn’t — or couldn’t — engage with the center’s staff.

“We can’t force people to be here,” Trent recalled a staff member telling him. “Your daughter won’t talk to me, hasn’t said anything. There’s just nothing we can do.”

Desperate, Trent and Jane took their daughter to the emergency room. It was there, in the fall of 2018, that they got the first real understanding of what was troubling her: schizophrenia.

For six years, Trent and Jane Mayberry had a front-row seat to their daughter’s spiraling descent into psychosis — her inability to communicate, her increasingly disheveled appearance, the piercings and tattoos. She heard voices. She had friends who likely weren’t real. Her descent ended in methamphetamine use and ultimately, a deadly overdose.

Both Trent and Jane are convinced that their daughter’s heavy marijuana use is to blame.

“I’m 100 percent certain that it came from cannabis,” Trent told National Review of his daughter’s psychosis. “If she never used cannabis, there’s a very high likelihood she would not have had these types of symptoms.”

Catherine Mayberry was born in June 1998, when inhaling marijuana was still potentially disqualifying for presidential candidates. Over her lifetime, shifting public opinion has increasingly backed legalization of the drug for medical and recreational use — a political position that has tended not to follow neat partisan fault lines.

In pop culture, marijuana users have tended to be portrayed as harmless slackers who just want to make a White Castle run or get high in their parents’ basement. The drug has acquired such a benign reputation in American culture that then-senator Kamala Harris felt comfortable joking about her history of use on a live radio broadcast while running for president in 2019…..

*****

Continue reading this article from National Review.

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Phoenix School Board Discriminates Against Teachers—Goldwater Stands Up for Religious Freedom thumbnail

Phoenix School Board Discriminates Against Teachers—Goldwater Stands Up for Religious Freedom

By John Thorpe

The government should never retaliate against private groups or individuals on the basis of perceived religious views—it’s not just wrong, it’s unconstitutional. But that’s exactly what Arizona’s largest elementary school district did when it cut off a reliable, longstanding source of new teachers from Arizona Christian University (ACU) because it didn’t approve of ACU’s religious beliefs. Now ACU is suing the Washington Elementary School District in federal court for religious discrimination, and last week the Goldwater Institute filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of the university, explaining how the school district flouted the U.S. and Arizona constitutions, as well as its governing board’s central educational mission.

Amid a historic teacher shortage, the school board voted in February to sever an eleven-year teacher-training relationship with ACU, contrary to its staff’s recommendation and without any relevant evidence or investigation. Instead, the board based its decision solely on a handful of statements one board member read on ACU’s website referring to the university’s Christian identity and beliefs. The school board member said:

When I go to Arizona Christian University’s website, and I’m taking this directly from their website, “above all else be committed to Jesus Christ accomplishing His will in advancing His kingdom on Earth as in heaven.” Part of their values, is “influence, engage and transform the culture with Truth by promoting the biblically informed values that are foundational to Western civilization, including the centrality of family, traditional sexual morality, and lifelong marriage between one man and one woman.” I want to know how bringing people from an institution that is ingrained in their values… will… impact three of your board members who are a part of the LGBTQ community.

The school board’s rejection of qualified teachers over ACU’s religious beliefs and its graduates’ perceived views violates the constitutional rights of both ACU and its students to free speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of association. Also, as the Goldwater Institute explains in its brief, the board’s actions also violate the Arizona Constitution’s “religious test” clauses, which prohibit the government from discriminating based on religion when making hiring decisions.

As Goldwater also pointed out, ACU and its students are not the only victims of the school board’s discrimination. The district’s message to thousands of children, families, and staff was loud and clear: if you share ACU’s values, you aren’t welcome here. What’s more, by prioritizing its own prejudices over practical hiring considerations during a nationwide teacher shortage, school officials hamstrung the district’s hiring efforts and wasted tax dollars.

A private organization like ACU should be free to espouse its beliefs without fear of retaliation from the government. And K-12 students should not have to go without teachers simply because their school board refuses to hire qualified candidates based on those candidates’ perceived personal beliefs and convictions.

In Arizona and across the country, the Goldwater Institute will always stand up for Americans’ individual liberties, and fight to hold government officials accountable when they trample on constitutional freedoms.

*****
This article was published by Goldwater Institute and is reproduced with permission.

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VICTORY! Arizona Judge Declares Phoenix’s Homeless ‘Zone’ an Illegal Public Nuisance thumbnail

VICTORY! Arizona Judge Declares Phoenix’s Homeless ‘Zone’ an Illegal Public Nuisance

By Timothy Sandefur

A Maricopa County judge this afternoon [3/28] found that the city of Phoenix is maintaining an illegal “public nuisance” by encouraging a population of over 1,000 homeless people to reside in tents in a vast swath of downtown referred to as “The Zone.” The decision, a preliminary ruling in a case brought against the city by law-abiding property and business owners in the area, finds that the city has “intentionally stopped—or at least materially decreased—enforcement of criminal, health, and other quality of life statutes and ordinances in [T]he Zone,” effectively making it “off-limits to [law] enforcement.” In fact, the city has not only declined to enforce laws against public defecation and urination, drug use, and even violence, but it has regularly transported people to The Zone to live there indefinitely. And those actions, the court said in its 23-page ruling, constitute an illegal “public nuisance,” which the city has until July 10 to eliminate.

Throughout the lawsuit, Phoenix officials have rationalized their refusal to enforce the law by claiming their hands are tied by the Ninth Circuit’s 2019 ruling in Martin v. City of Boise, in which the court held that it’s “cruel and unusual punishment” to arrest people for “involuntarily” sleeping on the streets. Since “human beings are biologically compelled to rest,” the Ninth Circuit declared, punishing people for “involuntarily sitting, lying, and sleeping in public” was cruel—like punishing them for “an illness or disease.”

But that case has little to do with the Phoenix situation, where people have been permitted to live indefinitely on the streets—even when they refuse to accept room in a homeless shelter. In fact, today’s ruling rebuked Phoenix for its “glaring misinterpretation” of the Martin decision. The “most glaring” example of that misreading, the court said, “is in the inference that anyone who has erected a tent or other structure in the public rights of way is intrinsically unable to otherwise obtain shelter.” Such a notion is nonsense: people can choose alternatives, and in fact virtually all of the people now residing in The Zone are not there because they are “biologically compelled” to be. What’s more, even if its interpretation of the Martin decision were correct, “the city could readily [fix the problem] through the creation of structured campgrounds. But the city has refused to pursue this viable, cost-effective option despite admitting its viability.”

Particularly significant was the court’s emphasis on environmental pollution in The Zone, which was the subject of the Goldwater Institute’s friend-of-the-court brief supporting the business and property owners. “The Zone has evolved into a serious environmental nuisance—a biohazard,” the judge declared. “Homeless individuals defecate and urinate in the open on the streets, sidewalks, lawns, and buildings. Property owners are forced to clean up the human waste each day.” And when this waste is washed into the storm drains, “that discharge ends up in the rivers, washes, and retention basins of the state.” Not only does it violate Arizona law to commit such pollution, but it’s expressly illegal for the city to allow it—yet the city has consistently refused to act.

Today’s ruling offers hope not just for the homeless themselves—who, after all, don’t deserve to be left in a ghettoized section of the city’s roads—but to the ignored small-business owners in the area, who are forced to try to earn a living in the midst of such chaos. Their tax dollars are supposed to pay the city for police services to protect their rights; instead, their rights have been disregarded by a city policy that allows homeless people—many of them mentally ill or addicted to drugs—to scare away their customers, assault their employees, and pollute their property. Today’s decision will not cure the problem overnight, but it is a welcome and long-overdue first step.

*****
This article was published by Goldwater Institute and is reproduced with permission.

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The Boy Crisis Is Bad News For Girls thumbnail

The Boy Crisis Is Bad News For Girls

By Hadley Heath Manning

I’m not a #BoyMom, and I’m not a #GirlMom. I’m abundantly blessed; I’m a #BothMom. So naturally, I want every opportunity for my daughters and my son. I don’t see the world as a zero-sum game in which my children can only be successful at the expense of someone else. I do my best to love my children equally and instill in them a sense of pride in who they are. But I’m concerned for all three of my children because of the way boys, especially, are struggling today.

My children are constantly inundated with messages about “girl power,” and these messages are even louder during the month of March, women’s history month. My six-year-old daughter recently learned that in history — as well as in some parts of the world today — girls have not had equal opportunities to learn, to work, to own property, to be financially independent, or to be free.

The struggle for women’s equality is an important part of our history and our present. But today, in the United States, it’s not my girls I worry about most. It’s my son. He’s only four years old, but already I am wondering: Does he see great men being celebrated in our culture? Does he see masculinity valued and elevated? What messages is he getting about what it means to be a boy — or to be a man? Does our society value the lives of men and boys?

And perhaps most relevant to my daughters: Does our society recognize that men’s and women’s interests are tied?

Richard Reeves’s Of Boys and Men is the latest book to catalogue the crisis facing males. It is preceded by similar books including The Boy Crisis by Warren Farrell, The War Against Boys by Christina Hoff Sommers, Boys Adrift by Leonard Sax, and others.

So the crisis facing men and boys has been widely documented. Consider:

In the world of education, boys have fallen behind their female classmates: Six percent more girls graduate high school than boys. Two-thirds of students in the top 10 percent of their high-school class are girls, while two-thirds of the bottom 10 percent are boys. Fifteen percent more women graduate college than men. Women also earn more master’s degrees,MDs, and JDs.

Men’s labor-force-participation rate has decreased starkly in recent decades: It was 97 percent in 1960; today, it’s 87 percent. Most men who are not in the workforce report bad health as their reason for not working. Forty-four percent of men who aren’t working are taking painkillers. Men’s real wages have declined 14 percent since 1979.

Sharp increases in suicide rates among male adolescents are alarming. As the CDC reports, a man in the U.S. takes his life every 13.7 seconds. Young men are four times more likely to commit suicide than their female counterparts. Likely related, today, 15 percent of men say they have no close friendships at all. This represents a fivefold increase since 1990.

Recent increases in crime, too, disproportionately affect men, who are more likely to be the victims, as well as the perpetrators, of violent crime. The inmate population is overwhelmingly male, and researchers have also pointed to incarceration as a factor in men’s reduced labor-force participation.

These facts are widely known. But is anyone in public leadership taking note of the ways boys are failing? Is anyone doing anything about it? It’s one of many crises fighting for public attention at this moment. Women and girls are facing problems as well. Women, particularly during the Covid pandemic, have had higher-than-ever rates of depression and anxiety. Many women are struggling financially because of the burdens of single motherhood.

But, of course, men’s and women’s interests are connected. It’s not as if when men’s earnings decrease, women’s earnings increase. This only appears true when women’s wages are presented as a proportion of men’s wages — not in absolute terms. The obsession with pay parity (on full display on “Equal-Pay Day”) focuses on dividing the economic pie into equal slices. It ignores the size of the pie: If my husband earns less money this year, it’s not as if I get a raise as a result. To the contrary, our household earnings have decreased, and I am worse off as a result.

It’s also not as if when a man commits suicide, a woman doesn’t. When men’s suicide rates go up, women’s do not go down. In fact, something like the opposite is true: The problems and pain afflicting men spill over and affect the women in their lives. Widowhood increases mortality. Fatherlessness increases mortality. When men suffer, women do too, and of course the same is true in reverse.

Family life, in particular, demands partnership. I worry that my daughters, in spite of the fact that the world’s their oyster, will struggle to find good mates. In entering higher educational and professional arenas, women took on more and more work and responsibility. This represents a huge expansion of opportunity for women, but, without partnership with men, this can be burdensome — particularly in the presence of children. Women want to have it all — but to have it all alone? This can also mean doing it all alone, and this was never the ideal.

One of the themes (or lies) of the sexual revolution was that women could be just like men. We could work like men, act like men, even have unencumbered sexual relationships just like men. We’ve learned that this didn’t work out well for women, who inherently and on average, want different things out of life, work, and relationships.

Today, I fear we are making the same mistake, only in reverse, by telling men (or boys) that they should be like women. They should like princess power. They should do more housework and perform more of the child care. They should work less and “lean out.” Men should go to therapy like women, cry like women, and be less assertive and more deferential.

When will we learn that we cannot work against nature? Let men be men and let women be women, for the sake of both sexes. Deep down, women don’t want men to be like us; we want them to be complements to us. Who wants conformity, anyway? What a boring world it would be without the diversity in people — and the two sexes are just another part of humanity’s diversity on display.

Just as individual women need individual men (and vice versa), the two sexes need one another in society. Our society has notably become more feminized, from gentle parenting and discipline, to sit-still education, to inclusivity and safetyism (never more on display than during the Covid pandemic). We desperately need more of the stereotypically masculine influences that stormed the beaches of Normandy, put men on the moon, and took down a gunman on a French train. We need risk-takers, sacrificers, protectors, providers, and people who will not back down from a fight.

Today, it seems to be a woman’s world. I just hope that my son (and other boys in his generation) can be a man in it. Not just for his sake, but for the benefit of our daughters, too.

*****
This article was published by Independent Women’s Forum and is reproduced with permission.

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5 Takeaways From House Hearing on COVID-19 School Lockdowns thumbnail

5 Takeaways From House Hearing on COVID-19 School Lockdowns

By Fred Lucas

Federal and state officials—as well as teachers unions—should be held accountable for the consequences of school closures, lawmakers on the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic said Tuesday.

“Long-term closing of schools proved to be harmful for students—their academic, mental, and social development, and overall success,” Chairman Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, said. “We need to make every effort to not let this happen again for the sake of our future.”

In a March 8 hearing, the subcommittee probed the origin of COVID-19 in China.

The hearing held Tuesday by this subcommittee of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee peered into several aspects of the pandemic, including evidence ignored by public health officials, how COVID-19 aid dollars were spent, and how other countries addressed the public health crisis.

Here are five key takeaways from the hearing.

1. Masks, Social Distancing Not ‘Science Based’
Both masking and social distancing policies for schools weren’t based in science, Dr. Tracy Hoeg, an epidemiologist in the University of California-San Francisco’s department of epidemiology and biostatistics, told the subcommittee.

“Were those necessary to keep schools open?” Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., chairman of the full House Oversight and Accountability Committee, asked.

“We had evidence prior to the pandemic that masks were largely ineffective at preventing community transmission of influenza and other upper-respiratory viruses,” Hoeg replied. “We did not obtain any new, high quality evidence in the COVID-19 pandemic that masks were effective strategy in schools or outside of schools.”

Comer followed by asking: “The mask guidance was not scientifically sound?”

“Correct. It wasn’t science based and the 6 feet of distancing was arbitrary. That was based on basically just looking at how far certain size droplets spread,” Hoeg replied, adding:

We ended up getting some pretty good observational data not finding correlation between 6 feet and 3 feet [of] distance and [COVID-19] case rates in schools. It wasn’t evidence based. It wasn’t necessary and wasn’t evidence based. We should have, by default, been keeping our schools open. Instead, we were requiring these non-evidence-based mitigation measures [and] strategies as a prerequisite for getting our children back in school. That’s a very harmful prerequisite.

2. COVID-19 Relief Goes to DEI, Anti-Racism Training
Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y., questioned the total expenses of COVID-19 aid that was intended to help schools reopen in a healthy way.

Instead, this money was diverted for other reasons, Malliotakis said, specifically calling out New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat.

“Instead of using that funding for its original intent, we see states like New York spending it on all sorts of stuff,” Malliotakis said, adding:

New York City allocated $12 million to go for a restorative justice program. They did implicit bias, anti-racism training. New York State Ed [the New York State Education Department] decided to put more money into diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. I don’t know what that stuff has to do with COVID.

Malliotakis also pointed to money allocated for other specific purposes that is going elsewhere.

“The inflationary American Rescue Plan, which the Democrats passed in 2021 with their one-party rule, was billed as a necessity for reopening schools after the COVID pandemic,” Malliotakis said. “They decided to spend this money despite $1 trillion sitting there unused from the previous packages. This provided another $122 billion for elementary and secondary schools. It was so critical. They needed this money. They couldn’t open the schools without it. Guess what? As of November, only 15% of that money has been spent.”

3. What Experts Would Tell CDC and Teachers Unions
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., said she wished that Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, was answering questions from the panel.

Greene said she would like to hear from Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“I’d also like to point out how the teachers union—who by the way were getting paid to stay home and didn’t have to go to work—were the ones talking to the CDC about ‘When should schools open?’” Greene said.

The Georgia Republican asked each witness what he would say to Weingarten or Walensky if given the opportunity.

“I would ask Dr. Walensky why the evidence that existed in front of us, the real world observational evidence, was dismissed or ignored and instead we focused on projections and models about what would happen,” testified David Zweig, a journalist who writes for The Atlantic, New York Magazine, and The Free Press and the author of a forthcoming book on school lockdowns called “An Abundance of Caution.”

Hoeg said she had questions for both Walenksy and Weingarten.

“I would like to discuss with Randi Weingarten both the perceived risk to teachers and children, as I think there was a misunderstanding and a miscalculation about the many risks that our children face and also the risk that our teachers face from children,” Hoeg said.

“I would like to ask Dr. Walensky why, when she was issuing guidance for reopening schools in 2021, she was using the wording of the teachers unions in terms of requiring 6 feet of distance and not actually consulting the scientists and physicians that were doing the actual research looking at the distance and transmission in schools,” the epidemiologist added.

Virginia Gentles, director of the Education Freedom Center of the Independent Women’s Forum, directed her questions at the head of the American Federation of Teachers.

“If I had the opportunity to speak with Randi Weingarten, I’d ask her about what her conversations are like with teachers in urban districts that were closed and did not serve students,” Gentles said. “What is it like to talk to teachers in Baltimore in schools that have zero percent students proficient? What is it like to talk to students in Newark who have less than 2% proficiency in math?”

Everyone should look at taking a preventive approach, said Donna Mazyck, executive director of the National Association of School Nurses.

“From the federal, state, and local level, ask for a way to communicate lessons learned; after-action plans are very common in dealing with emergencies,” Mazyck said. “That needs to happen on all levels so that we know what to do the next time we have a pandemic.”

4. Increase in Abuse, Depression
Wenstrup, chairman of the subcommittee, said each state and school district should have asked how to keep schools open.

“In the case of the COVID-19 pandemic, the lingering effects have been many—academic, mental, economic,” Wenstrup said. “There are also secondary harms from school closures that fell upon children. For example, abuse [and] poor nutrition [were] among them. We must strive to never let this happen again. Our children among us have paid the price and are continuing to pay the price.”

Zweig, during his opening remarks, said the school lockdowns had dire consequences.

“Educators represent around 20% of all official reports of child abuse or neglect. When kids were prevented from attending school, teachers were no longer able to act as a safety net for children being abused. Reports from New York to Chicago to California saw massive drops in reports of abuse,” Zweig said.

Rosado said depression and anxiety increased during the pandemic. He cited data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that shows body mass index—a measure of body fat based on height and weight—almost doubled compared to a pre-pandemic period for children in grades K-12.

Meanwhile, researchers from Johns Hopkins and Columbia universities found that from December 2020 through April 2021, “screen time” for kids ages 4 to 12 increased by about 50% compared to pre-pandemic levels.

5. What About Europe?
Most European countries kept their schools open and didn’t see an upsurge in problems for youth, Hoeg noted during her opening remarks.

“Unlike Europe, virtually all 55 million K-12 students in the U.S. remained out of school in the spring of 2020,” the epidemiologist said, adding:

In July of 2020, the CDC released a document supporting the reopening of schools; though this document has been removed from the CDC’s website, I retained a quote and the original link. Before fall of 2020, however, the CDC set reopening metrics based on community transmission and test positivity rates, without citing evidence behind them. These guidelines put about 90% of the country in a category considered ‘high risk’ for reopening schools [in] early fall of 2020. Initial data from Europe and elsewhere had shown in-school transmission to be limited and community case rates to be unrelated to opening or closing of schools.

Rep. Kweisi Mfume, D-Md., later griped about the cited comparisons to most European countries that didn’t close schools during the pandemic.

“All the evidence we have now, we did not have at the time of COVID,” Mfume said. “It was a learning process that we were all going through.”

The Maryland Democrat added:

I would also caution against always comparing what we did in the U.S. against what they did in Europe to suggest that somehow or another, it should have been the same. The United States is one country. Europe is 44 nations. So let’s be real careful about how we compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges, and make sure we are talking about the same thing here.

But Zweig, the journalist and author, said it is an entirely appropriate comparison.

“Those are human beings. They are children,” Zweig said. “I’ve lived in Europe. They have very crowded cities. They do not have sophisticated HVAC systems in all their schools.”

He added:

That is real evidence in front of us. We are talking about the difference between looking at models and looking at projections over data, looking at theory over what we actually are observing.

We had actual, real world evidence from schools in countries throughout Europe with cities with very similar demographics to our cities. The class sizes were not three kids in a giant room. That evidence, for complex reasons, was disregarded.

*****
This article was published by The Daily Signal and is reproduced with permission.

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The Costs of Romanticizing Criminals in the Black Community thumbnail

The Costs of Romanticizing Criminals in the Black Community

By Kali Fontanilla

These powerful lyrics and the melody that accompanies them are full of pathos. Together, this poignant tale of oppression brought me to tears as a liberal teen growing up in the ’90s. I sincerely thought I was hearing the story of a freedom fighter who fought the “evil empire” of America with sheer “power” and beauty. Teens can be pretty naive, and I was no exception.

It wasn’t until years later, when I became a conservative adult, that I learned the truth. Assata Shakur, born Joanne Chesimard, was a member of the notorious Black Liberation Army (BLA), a domestic terrorist organization whose “sole purpose,” according to domestic terrorism expert Bryan Burrough, was “assassinating policemen.” She was convicted of the first-degree murder of State Trooper Werner Foerster after she and other BLA members attacked Foerster during a traffic stop in which Trooper James Harper was also injured.

Celebrating Cop Killers and Domestic Terrorists

When I read the case details, years after the rap song made me think she was a hero, I was furious. I had been lied to, manipulated. No one told me that Foerster was survived by his wife and two children. I didn’t even know he was killed. The rapper Common omitted the part about Shakur being part of a domestic terrorist organization. I wasn’t told that just before this murder, BLA “had ambushed two pairs of NYPD officers in a 48-hour spree, killing two; murdered another cop in Atlanta; and executed another pair of NYPD officers in 1972.”

The picture that was painted for me was one of a righteous fighter against oppression. It wasn’t that much different from the email sent out to supporters by the nonprofit Movement for Black Lives (MBL), which celebrated Shakur as an “incredibly talented poet.” Again, the whole convicted murderer part is left out. Instead, MBL tells how “Assata was a child full of pride, joy, imagination.” It’s a puff piece for a domestic terrorist. Readers are treated with a detailed explanation of the meaning of Shakur’s chosen name. Apparently, those are details Movement for Black Lives considers more important than the lives of the police officers Shakur and the BLA took.

Since Movement for Black Lives celebrates a domestic terrorist and convicted cop killer, it should be no surprise that their website contains a section promoting bailing out protestors, even violent ones, as we saw in the so-called Summer of Love 2020 Black Lives Matter riots. “Free ‘em all,” the website declares. “The Movement for Black Lives demands all charges be dropped against protestors.” Even the most violent “protesters”? Again, those are details that don’t concern MBL. Just “free ’em all!”

Inspiring the Next Generation

Go back to those lyrics I opened with. Note the focus. The “victim” here, we’re told, is Assata. Her pain, her trauma, is what is focused on. Think of how the news media can sway public opinion by focusing on the victims of their chosen causes. An illegal immigrant rescued from dehydration in the desert—highlight that. Or a Native American smirked at by a MAGA hat-wearing teen—turn that into a week of news stories, and make sure to zoom in on that smirk. It’s the same trick here but in song form. If you only heard the song, you wouldn’t even know Foerster was murdered. Focus on chosen “victims” and pretend the others don’t exist.

This is how you romanticize a woman convicted of brutal, cold-blooded murder. And by doing this for years, even generations, you end up with the Black Lives Matter movement and this knock-off version, the nonprofit Movement for Black Lives. But if these are the heroes MBL presents to the Black community, what “virtues,” or lack thereof, are you inspiring in the next generation?

If you ask me, there should be a song about Assata’s victim, State Trooper Werner Foerster, instead.

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This article was published by Capital Research Center and is reproduced with permission.

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WaPo Writer Agrees Transgender Killer Reacted Against Christian Brainwashing thumbnail

WaPo Writer Agrees Transgender Killer Reacted Against Christian Brainwashing

By Catherine Salgado

In the wake of the tragic shooting today that left three nine-year-olds and three school employees murdered, a sick Twitter user took to the platform to claim that, while murder is wrong, the shooter was just reacting to cruel indoctrination. You see, the murderer was a 28-year-old “transgender” woman named Audrey Hale who claimed the pronouns “he/him.” Furthermore, the targeted elementary school, Covenant School, is a private Christian institution, in a state (Tennessee) that restricts transgender surgery for minors and drag shows.

And a Washington Post contributor (Mike Wise) apparently praised the assessment that the school suffering from the tragedy was pushing “religious indoctrination.” One wonders if these freaky leftists would have had the same interpretation if the targeted school had been Muslim (Islam of course also condemns transgenderism)? Or if the shooting had happened in California?

About as inappropriate a response as Joe Biden cracking jokes about ice cream before speaking on the shooting.

Wise is already using the shooting to call for more gun confiscation, even though more than 90% of mass shootings occur in gun free zones and, as of 2019, “43 percent of criminals had bought their firearms on the black market, 6 percent acquired them via theft, and 10 percent made a retail purchase.” All of which is to say that Wise is completely delusional about “gun control” making mass shootings less likely. (Also, as a side comment on Wise’s post, the number of school shootings in the listed countries is deceptive about the countries’ safety; Afghanistan, for instance, is in the grip of the terrorist Taliban and China’s government is committing mass genocide).

You can also find Wise’s profile at the Post.

And it seems transgenders have been threatening violence in reaction to Tennessee’s anti-LGBTQ policies.

PJ Media reported:

“Nashville Chief of Police John Drake has since confirmed at a press conference that Hale identified as transgender. She was a biological female who identified as a man. Police also confirmed that Hale was a former student at the school and that she had a manifesto…The victims have been identified as Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs, and William Kinney, all 9 years old; Cynthia Peak, age 61; Katherine Koonce, age 60; and; Mike Hill, age 61. Katherine Koonce was the head of The Covenant School.”

The fact that Wise and the other Twitter user immediately began bashing the victims and defending the murderess is not surprising, because leftists typically sympathize with the victimizer rather than the victim; but it is disgusting. Three young children and three adults have been tragically killed. It’s not a situation that should be exploited for shallow, woke virtue-signaling.

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This article was published by Pro Deo et Libertate and is reproduced with permission.

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Torture, Sterilization, and Brainwashing: Uyghur Camp Survivors Testify to Congress thumbnail

Torture, Sterilization, and Brainwashing: Uyghur Camp Survivors Testify to Congress

By Catherine Salgado

Sterilization, electric shock torture, and brainwashing are hallmarks of the Chinese Communist Party’s treatment of the Uyghur people, according to prison camp survivors.” Survivors of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) concentration camps for Uyghur Muslims testified to Congress this week. You won’t see much coverage of the horrendous crimes detailed in this hearing in the mainstream media, because the CCP has infiltrated our institutions. But these people’s stories need to be told. And all those US companies and politicians who want to compromise with China—they are complicit in this horror.

The CCP is the greatest mass murderer of all time, at a staggering 500 million deaths and counting. But of course that 500 million, as massive a number as it is, only represents a fraction of the number of people abused and oppressed by the CCP. The Uyghur testimony to Congress highlighted that.

“[The Daily Signal, March 23] Gulbahar Haitiwaji and Qelbinur Sidik witnessed firsthand the realities of Chinese concentration camps where Uyghur Muslims are held and tortured…Haitiwaji is Uyghur and lived and worked in China before moving to France. At the end of 2016, she was called back to China for an issue that she was told regarded her retirement pension. Upon returning to China, Haitiwaji was arrested and sent to a “reeducation” camp.

‘First they shackled my feet and then they detained [me],’ Haitiwaji said. ‘The woman’s condition in the detention centers are horrible. All women are shackled and our language… we are all prohibited to speak.’

Haitiwaji, author of ‘How I Survived a Chinese ‘Reeducation’ Camp: A Uyghur Woman’s Story,’ said she and the other women in the prison were interrogated and tortured.

‘The rooms we were kept in had bunk beds, a bucket to serve as a toilet, and cameras panning the room,’ Haitiwaji said in her written testimony. ‘There was no mattress, no toilet paper, no sheets, nowhere to wash.’

Every day, Haitiwaji underwent 11 hours of Chinese language education…’There are four types of torturing methods,’ Sidik said. ‘One is electric button, electric helmet, electric glove, and a tiger chair.’”

The next time Bill Gates, Elon Musk, or a Biden official says something pro-China, keep this in mind. Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOC) obtained revelatory documentation on the Uyghur genocide last year. In one 2017 document, a CCP official said, “If he was handcuffed, could he run away? No, he would be unable to, wouldn’t he? Shoot him dead if he run a few steps. You see, in such a situation, if they run, just kill them. There will be no problem, because we have already authorized this a long time ago.” Yet where was the explosion of outrage from the self-righteous US media and politicians?

Sidik, another testifier to Congress, is Uzbek, and she served as an instructor in the “reeducation” camps starting in 2017, when she was assigned to a “new teaching position”—helping “re-educate” Uyghurs in a concentration camp.

“‘For each meal they eat one Chinese bun and water, and even going for toilet is monitored,’ Sidik, speaking through a translator, said of her students, adding that within the six months she was there, ‘none of them had any shower.’

Sidik said her students would be called from her classroom for interrogation. Because the interrogation rooms were located near the classrooms, she would hear ‘horrible screaming sound from torture.’

‘There are four types of torturing methods,’ Sidik said. ‘One is electric button, electric helmet, electric glove, and a tiger chair.’

Every Monday, Sidik recalls that female prisoners were given an unknown medicine. ‘After they take that, those medicines [then] the period will stop,’ she said. ‘Even some woman who were breastfeeding the babies, the breast milk will stop after taking that medicine.’”

By the way, isn’t it interesting that one of the side effects of the Covid-19 vaccines is said to be damaging women’s fertility—and at least one of the major Covid vaccines, Pfizer-BioNTech’s, is manufactured by a CCP-owned company? Is the US government and Big Pharma importing CCP forced sterilization? After all, in the 20th century, there were many thousands of women forcibly sterilized with the sanction of the US government during the eugenics craze, so it’s hardly unprecedented.

“Sidik said in her written testimony that while working at an all women ‘center,’ that sometimes, when the women ‘would come to class, I could tell [by] how they walked with difficulty or were sobbing that they had been sexually abused.’

The police working in the camps were ‘raping women but also inserting batons, even electric ones, into their private parts and even men’s rectums,’ Sidik said.”

The CCP is a completely evil entity and it has to be destroyed, before it destroys the Uyghurs—and America too.

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This article was published by Pro Deo et Libertate and is reproduced with permission.

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As we move through 2023 and into the next election cycle, The Prickly Pear will resume Take Action recommendations and information.