Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice debunked critical race theory during a recent appearance on ABC’s The View.
Rice, who is now director of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, spoke bout the role of public schools in the United States during a discussion on broader education issues including homeschooling and sex education.
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Back in August, New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait blessed the strategy of the Congressional Progressive Caucus to withhold their votes for the Senate’s bipartisan physical infrastructure plan until that bill was effectively linked to a bigger, broader, and surely partisan, measure investing in a range of items from climate protection to universal preschool. He argued that “ransoming the infrastructure bill” would turn the tables on the party’s moderates:
Historically, most partisan bills are shaped by the preferences of the members of Congress closest to the middle, and their colleagues on the political extreme simply have to go along with it. … This time, the left has real power. Progressives can credibly threaten to sink a priority that moderates care about more than they do.
Twice in the past two months, most recently last Thursday, the House progressives successfully executed this strategy, blocking attempts by Speaker Nancy Pelosi to pass the bipartisan infrastructure legislation before an agreement is reached on the larger “Build Back Better” bill.
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The House Rules Committee is no longer meeting Monday to markup Democrats’ spending package, meaning that the full House vote on it and the bipartisan infrastructure bill will be delayed past Tuesday, when Democratic leadership originally sought to pass the linked legislation.
An aide said Sunday that the committee would need “additional time to craft language and get final agreement with all parties involved,” telling Punchbowl News that “extensive progress” had been made, and that the House would vote “as early as possible this week.”
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The U.S. announced it will provide an additional $144 million in aid to Afghanistan as part of efforts to help citizens in the country in a statement by Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday.
The assistance brings the total amount of aid to Afghanistan to $474 million in 2021, making the U.S. the top aid donor to the country out of any nation, the statement wrote.
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The United States Supreme Court heard arguments Monday on the constitutionality of Texas’ Heartbeat Act.
The Texas law effectively bans most abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which typically occurs around 6 weeks after conception. The law is enforced through civil lawsuits against individuals who perform abortions illegally or who knowingly help women to get abortions after the baby has a heartbeat.
The private enforcement mechanism was a response to district attorneys stating their intent to not enforce any abortion bans, according to Republican Texas state Sen. Brian Hughes. While abortion bans are frequently blocked in court, Texas’ Heartbeat Act quickly resulted in a 50% decline in abortions performed in the state, according to The New York Times.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh questioned Texas about the prospect of other states creating laws with similar enforcement mechanisms to block constitutionally protected rights such as freedom of religion.
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The Editorial Board of the University of Pittsburgh student paper recently published an article calling to get rid of the gifted program in surrounding schools.
“The gifted program segregates students — sometimes based on IQ tests conducted at an early age. The program is deeply flawed, encourages students to unnecessarily compete against each other academically and often ends up leaving behind students of color. It is time for Pittsburgh to follow New York’s example and eliminate the gifted program from local school districts,” claims the piece.
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The sheriff of Los Angeles County warned last week that there could be a massive exodus of police officers and other emergency workers over the city’s demand that all public employees take a coronavirus vaccine, as reported by Breitbart.
Sheriff Alex Villanueva said that the mandate could drive out as many as 20 or 30 percent of employees in the sheriff’s office. The vaccine mandate was passed by the city council in August, ordering that all public employees of the county submit their vaccination status in order to keep their jobs. Those who do not submit a vaccination status will be ordered to get the vaccine within 45 days or else be suspended from work for five days; they are then given another 30 days to comply, after which further action would be taken if they still refuse to get the vaccine.
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In October 2020, Nathan Jun was under fire at Midwestern State University after he wished for every policeman to be strangled with the “intestines of the last capitalist.”
Jun served as the Coordinator of the Philosophy Program and taught “Asian Philosophy and Religion,” “Philosophy of Race and Racism,” and “Ethics” at the Texas institution.
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Social media users that post certain kinds of offensive content could face a prison sentence of up to two years under a proposed United Kingdom law, The Times reported.
The Online Safety Bill, a piece of proposed legislation overhauling the U.K.’s online communications laws, will include a provision that criminalizes content that causes “likely psychological harm,” with sentences reaching up to two years, according to The Times. Examples of newly-illegal social media posts include “knowingly false communication” with the intention to cause “emotional” harm, as well as “pile-ons” in which a group of people coordinate to send unpleasant messages to one user.
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Until recently, conservatives were the party of business. They defended the business world not as a necessary evil or because of its efficiencies, but because they thought it exemplified an enterprising, individualist morality. It respected rights of contract, served as an arena for creativity, and allowed socially useful competition. Even now, Republicans condemn the Left’s programs as creeping socialism, seemingly forgetful of the last decade in which corporations became the vanguard of the cultural revolution.
Part of American conservatives’ embrace of capitalism comes from its historically central place in American life. Americans had tamed the wilderness and become an industrial powerhouse by the middle of the 20th century. Most of this activity was rooted neither in the pursuit of glory nor religious conviction—as, perhaps, with Spanish colonialism—but by ordinary economic self-interest, the spirit of Yankee ingenuity.
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Michael Regan began his tenure as President Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency administrator by dismissing dozens of outside scientific advisers appointed during the previous administration — part of an effort to “ensure the agency receives the best possible scientific insight to support our work.”
At the time, Regan (pictured) called it a “reset.” Opponents grumbled that it looked more like “a purge.” Now, one of those advisers, Stanley Young, has filed a lawsuit in federal court accusing the agency of violating U.S. law; the suit also seeks an injunction to halt the work of his former committee.
The legal dustup is the latest rearguard action from the right on environmental issues. Conservatives see the case as their best chance to thwart the Biden administration’s multi-agency approach to combating climate change, seen as hostile to the fossil fuel industry.
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American Airlines canceled 340 flights on Monday after cutting almost 2,000 flights during the weekend due to staffing shortages and weather delays, multiple sources reported.
The airline cut 343 flights Friday, 548 Saturday, and over 1,000 Sunday, according to American Airlines data obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The company canceled 2,291 flights as of Monday morning, representing over 10% of its schedule.
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Transcripts of 911 calls last year from the San Marcos, Texas, police department show officials turned down multiple requests for assistance from a 2020 Biden campaign bus that was being harassed on the road by pro-Trump vehicles.
Individuals inside the bus at the time of the incident have filed suit against the police and the transcripts are now evidence in the case.
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We are a year overdue for the true story of the 2020 elections. Mollie Hemingway has at last delivered it to us in one tidy volume.
It’s a complex story, which makes for a weighty book. The research is thorough, the writing is evidentiary, the style is clinical—like investigative journalism and social science used to be. The endnotes alone run nearly 100 pages.
Reading Rigged, one isn’t jarred by hyperbole, conjecture, or spin. Hemingway is unequivocal on progressive malice, yet she can be scathing of Republicans, too. She is particularly critical of Rudy Giuliani’s attempts to publicize fraud nationally, thereby undermining prior case-by-case efforts to get particular state courts to recognize particular violations of particular state laws.
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A Minnesota city is hiring for a position that pays up to $125 an hour and requires that applicants subscribe to various left-wing racial theories.
“The Brooklyn Park Economic Development Authority (EDA) and North Hennepin Community College (NHCC) are seeking a Project Manager to coordinate collaborative work and fundraising for the Center for Innovation and the Arts,” reads the job posting. The applicant selected for this role will be charged with “support[ing] the development of more arts programming in the community” and increasing donations to the city’s planned arts center. Apparently these tasks require a firm faith in progressive ideas about race.
One of the “desired qualifications” is a belief in systemic racism. The preferred candidate “acknowledges the history in our country of the oppression of black and indigenous peoples, and the power, privilege, and access disparities along the lines of social identities.”
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Americans never bought House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s “insurrection” narrative about the January 6 violence at the Capitol, and the majority believe the incident was not as serious as portrayed, according to a new pair of polls.
More Americans identify the mayhem as a “riot” or as “protests” rather than an “insurrection,” armed or otherwise, according to polls published in June and October.
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South Washington County Schools now requires teachers to nurture “anti-racist learning environments” as part of the district’s “racial equity journey,” according to an official policy the school board approved earlier this year.
The South Washington County Schools Board unanimously passed a “Racial Equity and Inclusion Policy” at its Aug. 26 meeting. This policy is “riddled with divisive, blatant and vile racism from top to bottom,” said parent Eric Tessmer, who is now running for school board.
“This is racism from top to bottom. I don’t care how you spin it,” he said at the August meeting. “If policies such as this take hold in our communities and in our institutions, this nation is never going to heal, ever. Ideas such as this are toxic to a civil society.”
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