News of the Week for April 7th, 2024
- Election 2024
- Abortion
- Gun Rights
- Hide the Decline
- Obamacare
- War & Terror
- National News
- Economy & Taxes
- International News
- Opinion
Election 2024
Four More Years of Trump?
What a second term could bring
Stolen-Election Litmus Tests Could Blacklist Competent Conservatives from Serving Trump
The really big-picture question about a second Trump administration, should one happen, is who would staff it. Every presidency runs largely on personnel. The president depends for information on the people in the White House and the executive agencies and departments, and nearly everything the president does is to make decisions and communicate; the actual process of turning that into rules and federal policies is carried out by the people the president appoints. Personnel is even more important in the judiciary, given that life-tenured judges can neither be ordered around nor fired once confirmed.
Donald Trump Stung in Primary As Huge Number of Republicans Vote Against Him
Donald Trump suffered a blow in a number of primary votes on Tuesday, after thousands of Republicans refused to vote for him.
Roseanne Goes Full QAnon in Deranged Rant About ‘Baby Blood-Drinking’ Democrats At Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Party For Kari Lake
Roseanne Barr is no stranger to the unhinged rant — sharing offensive tweets and conspiracy-mongering comments about the Holocaust, Ukraine, and former President Donald Trump — and her remarks at a Mar-a-Lago fundraiser for Kari Lake’s Arizona Senate campaign were par for the course.
Abortion
Dobbs Decision
Abortion rights advocates are on a ballot initiative winning streak. 2024 could change that
Abortion rights advocates are hoping to build on their winning streak this November, when ballot initiatives could restore, protect or block access in more than a dozen states.
Gun Rights
Second Amendment Roundup: A Double Shot of Oral Arguments
“Large-capacity” magazines and semiautomatic rifles are “bearable arms” in common use, no different from the handguns in Heller, but will two en banc courts agree?
Hide the Decline
Environment &“Green Energy”
UCLA Med Students Forced to Pray to ‘Mother Earth’
Aaron Sibarium is one of the best reporters out there, and as far as I can tell, he is barely out of diapers (as seen through the lens of an aging Gen Xer).
Obamacare
Government in Healthcare
Normalizing Assisted Suicide Will Lead to a Duty to Die
Euthanasia isn’t really about compassion but fear of decline and a loathing of dependency — and of those experiencing them.
‘I’m 28. And I’m Scheduled to Die in May.’
Some right-to-die activists want everyone to have access to euthanasia—even young people with mental illness. Are they also making suicide contagious?
Biden’s Health Department Allocates $422K To Treat Diabetes With Native American ‘Healing Circles’
The federal government awarded a Chicago health clinic nearly half a million dollars for a “healing circle diabetes program” that will treat the disease “through practice of communal songs, prayer, music, and dance,” grant records show.
What Comes after Transgender? Doctor Amputates Man’s Healthy Fingers
I have long predicted that normalizing transgender surgeries would be followed eventually by doctors intentionally disabling patients with Body Identity Integrity Disorder (BIID). These patients obsess that their “true selves” are quadriplegic, or amputees, or blind, and they yearn to be made that way. It is a real and anguishing condition. Some are now even calling the affliction “transable” (get it?).
War & Terror
China’s Farmland Grab
China’s decade-long effort to dominate the world’s food supply has expanded beyond controlling agricultural resources in South America and Africa. Chinese purchases of American agricultural land increased 5,300 percent between 2010 and 2020, and its rate of expansion is accelerating. China now controls an estimated 350,000 acres of American farmland (alarmingly, because the Department of Agriculture doesn’t maintain a reliable tracking system, the precise extent of Chinese ownership of U.S farmland is unknown).
That 1938 Feeling
A scent of trouble in the air
Will Iran attack Israel? Damascus strike means nothing is off limits
The Middle East is on the brink of regional war as Iran decides on its next move. Its ambassador in Syria promised a response of ‘the same magnitude and harshness’
Investigation into Russia’s role in ‘Havana Syndrome,’ the sonic attacks on U.S. diplomats in Cuba
An in-depth report on how the Russian intelligence’s assassination Unit 29155 was likely behind “Havana Syndrome.” And there should be no doubt they had the support and approval of the Castro dictatorship,
CIA ‘warns Iran will attack Israel within 48 hours’ as revenge for consulate strike
US Intelligence officials have branded Israel’s strike on the Iranian consulate in Syria as “reckless” and fear a wider war in the Middle East.
Israel’s war cabinet meets over threat of ‘imminent’ attack by Iran amid fears Middle East crisis could spiral into WW3
Israel is beefing up its air defences and calling up reservist as it braces itself for possible retaliation from Iran
Chinese weapons found in Gaza, report claims
The war between Israel and Hamas has revealed extensive Chinese support for Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups that the U.S. and Israel consider terrorist organizations, according to strategic analyst Guermantes Lailari.
Denmark shuts shipping strait over missile failure
The Danish military says a missile failure on a navy ship has triggered the closure of airspace and shipping lanes near a major shipping strait off the Danish coast.
Constellation Frigate Delivery Delayed 3 Years, Says Navy
The lead ship in a new class of guided-missile frigates for the U.S. Navy may be up to three years late, USNI News has learned.
Did This Microsoft Engineer Just Save the Internet From State-Backed Hackers?
The short answer to the question in my headline is probably so. Andre Freund is a software engineer for Microsoft who is located in San Francisco. His normal work is focused on database software called PostgreSQL but recently he stumbled across a backdoor placed in a piece of software which would have eventually spread around the world if he hadn’t spotted it.
DHS Defends Visa-Free Travel for Chinese Nationals to ‘Frontline’ Pacific-Island U.S. Territory
The Department of Homeland Security is defending a policy that allows Chinese nationals to travel visa-free to a militarily strategic U.S. island chain in the Pacific Ocean, National Review has exclusively learned.
National
How an accidental six-legged mouse could one day help fight cancer
Scientists have accidentally created a mouse embryo with six legs and no genitals – revealing how changes to DNA can have major impacts on development.
Tennessee lawmakers vote to ban geoengineering, with allusions to ‘chemtrails’ conspiracy theory
The bill would prohibit technologies that could modify the atmosphere. But lawmakers’ comments about it toed a line between fact and fiction.
Seattle Is Putting an End to Its Gifted Program and Replacing It With Something More Equitable
Seattle used to have a program to identify gifted students and put them in special classes or schools. These gifted students were collectively known as the Highly Capable Cohort (HCC). But the HCC was not racially equitable which meant that in 2018 the school system started taking steps to dismantle it.
How colleges turned pink
There’s a bigger gender gap today than when Title IX was passed, but the other way round: Why?
Rep. Lauren Boebert has emergency surgery, diagnosed with rare disorder during campaign
Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert underwent emergency surgery to remove a blood clot and was diagnosed with May-Thurner syndrome, she announced Tuesday evening.
California Bay Area Health Officials Worrying Over Uptick in Measles Cases
The public health officials are worried about airports….and let’s not forget that Biden had over 300,000 illegal immigrants flown in recently.
Community colleg’s new social justice center focuses on issues like ‘white privilege’ and ‘water’
Fresno City College opened the ‘Social Justice Center’ on March 21 to allow students and staff to pursue programming and speakers devoted to social justice.
More Wokeness in Medicine
Last year, I wrote for the magazine about the “rampant politicization of health care.” Thanks to greater government involvement in medicine, the ties between academia and the practice of medicine, and other pressures (with George Floyd’s death serving as a special catalyst), medical-school curricula, professional medical associations, and other aspects of the field increasingly reflect and transmit left-wing ideology.
Boston Hospital Will Now Ignore Infants Born With Drugs in Their System
When forced to choose between the health or well-being of children or the convenience of an adult, they will always and everywhere choose the latter.
Study: Most Gender-Confused Children become Gender-Conforming Adults
A new study has found that almost all children who experience gender confusion grow out of it as they age into adulthood.
Economy & Taxes
The underlying strength of the economy is up for debate
Whatever your interpretation of the March jobs report, the fact is, the Federal Reserve is not going to cut its interest rate target this year. Not going to do it. Inflation is inching up, not down.
International
Strongest Earthquake in 25 Years Rattles Taiwan
A 7.7 magnitude tremor downs 26 buildings and creates small tsunamis throughout the region.
Mysterious ‘Glory’ Lights Spotted On Planet Outside Solar System For First Time Ever
Astronomers have discovered potential evidence of a phenomenon known as the “glory” effect on a planet beyond our solar system, a first-of-its-kind observation that might shed light on the habitability of distant worlds.
Opinion
The Problem With Saying ‘Sex Assigned at Birth’
As you may have noticed, “sex” is out, and “sex assigned at birth” is in. Instead of asking for a person’s sex, some medical and camp forms these days ask for “sex assigned at birth” or “assigned sex” (often in addition to gender identity). The American Medical Association and the American Psychological Association endorse this terminology; its use has also exploded in academic articles. The Cleveland Clinic’s online glossary of diseases and conditions tells us that the “inability to achieve or maintain an erection” is a symptom of sexual dysfunction, not in “males,” but in “people assigned male at birth.”
Sex . . . at Birth?
Earlier this week, the New York Times published “The Problem With Saying ‘Sex Assigned at Birth'” by Alex Byrne and Carole K. Hooven. Plenty of people sent me the link to this article, likely because I’m writing my linguistics dissertation on the semantics of so-called inclusive language.
In Praise of a Good Stick
During the discussion on the most recent episode of The Editors podcast about how smartphones and social media are hurting kids today, I mentioned my gratitude for my own childhood. Though (relatively) young, I am just old enough to have grown up before the modern trappings of digital life had assumed their current forms and omnipresence. I have many great memories of life without phone or internet, of wandering around the neighborhood and playing in the creek with my buds.
