<Over the past few months, Brett Favre has gotten his fair share of hate from fans and the media as a result of his alleged involvement in a Mississippi welfare scandal that sought to reallocate money intended for the state’s poorest individuals. But few people have been more outspoken against the former quarterback than Jeff Pearlman, who wrote a biography on Favre.

This week, Jeff Pearlman once again blasted Brett Favre following the former quarterback’s appearance on Donald Trump Jr’s “Triggered” podcast where Favre urged people not to watch the news, claiming it’s controlled by “the left” who “controls the narrative.”

“If you’re watching the news, depending on who you’re watching, 99.9% of the news is the left. So there’s a huge agenda,” Favre said on the podcast. “They control the narrative.”

Pearlman wasted no time in clapping back the subject of his biography “Gunslinger,” claiming that Favre is “an idiot.”

“I wrote Brett Favre’s biography, “Gunslinger.” I can say with 100 percent certainty the man is an idiot. This is unambiguous,” Pearlman wrote.,,,>

<Fox News host Sean Hannity suggested on Tuesday's edition of his radio show that the possibility of former President Donald Trump getting charged with obstruction of justice is unfair because President Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton never had their homes "raided" by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

"So you know, and here's the other problem, you know, with top secret classified documents. So what they're doing here is they're not going to go after what they thought was the crime. Because they didn't raid Hillary Clinton's residences. They didn't raid Joe Biden's four places where he had top secret classified information. No," Hannity complained.

Both Clinton and Biden cooperated with federal investigators. Refusing to do so, or impeding their work, is considered obstruction, which is a felony.

"So they'll look to something obscure," Hannity continued. "'Well, as a result of the investigation, it is alleged that Donald Trump obstructed justice' — blah blah blah blah blah. Which, by the way, I would argue, legally, he doesn't have any obligation to cooperate with, and nor can anyone give a real definition of whether or not, you know, exactly how one president is supposed to declassify the materials anyway."

Trump has claimed that he declassified documents psychically and that they automatically had that status once he took them from the White House. Those statements are not just false — Trump was recorded acknowledging the limits to his power to declassify certain items, such as war plans for an attack on Iran.

Hannity then said that "it's not going to have anything to do with the documents themselves, except it'll be a process crime. That is my prediction."

There are many indicators that Trump could facing an espionage charge (among a litant of others), as recently highlighted by experts.

"They're gonna go down the process crime route and they won't apply the same standards to Joe, just like they didn't apply the same standards to the Hillary, and whatever bone they throw you on Hunter is the low-hanging fruit that does not get to the heart of the family business with a multitude of countries that they were paid a fortune from," Hannity added. "And we still haven't gotten the final numbers, and clearly, Hunter Biden with no experience was leading up the effort and implicates his own father. They're gonna stay as far away from the real crux of what legality would impact Joe Biden and just go after Donald Trump, to just continue their policies of politicizing or criminalizing political differences.">

<Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (or AOC), congress’s Master of Social Media, used Instagram to comment on the Supreme Court’s pending student loan decision.

The Supreme Court is expected to decide on Biden’s student loan forgiveness program before the end of June. AOC is not optimistic that the Court will rule in Biden’s favor.

When an Instagram user asked AOC whether she believed there was “actually any hope” for the Court to preserve Biden’s loan forgiveness plan, AOC responded with a Story.

“In every convo we’ve had with the White House,” AOC said, “they feel very strongly about the chances of their case before the court. While I personally do not share their same sense of optimism – not because I doubt the legal case, but because I do not believe the SCOTUS’ corruption can be trusted – the Biden admin has been insistent that they feel they have a case.”

AOC added that “I – and others – in turn have been very adamant on having a Plan B. What we should not accept is a situation where there’s no Plan B and the admin just shrugs in the event of a bad ruling. Absolutely not.”

Unpacking AOC’s comments

I agree with AOC’s pessimism; the likelihood that SCOTUS’s 6-3 conservative majority upholds Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan is low.

However, AOC’s reasoning – that SCOTUS’s “corruption” cannot be trusted – goes too far.

I assume AOC is referring to the recent ethics scandal in which Justice Clarence Thomas was discovered to have been receiving decades worth of financial perks from GOP megadonor Harlan Crowe. While Thomas’s behavior raises significant ethical questions about the Court, I can’t go as far as to say the entirety of the Court is corrupt.

Granted, AOC didn’t say explicitly here that the Court is corrupt because of the Thomas-Crowe thing, but I’m not sure what else she might be referring to.

I don’t care for the contemporary conservative composition of the Supreme Court – but my disdain for their worldview doesn’t make the Court automatically corrupt.

Now, if AOC wanted to argue that the Supreme Court is a political appendage, with justices who make partisan-motivated, rather than legal-motivated, rulings, she’d have my attention.

Back to the issue at hand: student loan debt forgiveness. The White House appears confident in its legal argument – which relies upon the HEROES Act. Under the HEROES Act, the Education Secretary can “waive or modify” student loan balances when a national emergency warrants. The argument makes sense textually. The Act reads that the Education Secretary is authorized to “waive or modify any statutory or regulatory provision applicable to” student-aid programs “as the Secretary deems necessary in connection with a war or other military operation or a national emergency” to ensure that borrowers are not left in a worse-off position.

“Both Republican and Democratic administrations have found the national emergency resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic warrants the secretary’s exercise of that broad authority,” The Hill reported. But again, don’t expect the conservative majority to be impressed with the argument.

AOC also encouraged the Biden administration to construct an alternative, rather than just wash their hands of the issue once SCOTUS hands down a ruling. I agree with AOC there – the issue should not be dropped; alternatives should be devised.

Legislation is the most permanent solution, but that seems unlikely in the short term, but the point is the issue needs to be kept in the public’s conscience until a solution can be crafted.>

<New reporting this week revealed that special counsel Jack Smith secured testimony from former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, a massively important figure who was close to former President Donald Trump for years. That could make insurrection-related charges more likely.

A key takeaway, said New York University law professor Ryan Goodman on CNN's "OutFront," is that the January 6 investigation — long considered less likely than the classified documents investigation to produce charges against Trump — should not be ruled out so quickly.

"If you had [Meadows] and he really did give you those keys to the kingdom — we don't fully know that yet, but if so, how much — how does that change your view on the potential slate of charges related to January 6th?" asked Burnett.

"I think it really rachets [sic] up the likelihood that there will be charges against Donald Trump for January 6th, and especially the false slate of electors, which we know is one of the most robust parts of the investigation and there would have to have been court approval of the Justice Department's criminal theory of the case, because they have approved search warrants in that case," said Goodman.

The key question to ask here, argued Goodman, is "Why would they give Meadows immunity?"

"They would give him immunity because he could go — he could give them access to the star suspect," Goodman added. "That's the reason that you would give somebody immunity who otherwise has a lot of criminal jeopardy on his own. That's the deal. And so that's why it's enormously significant if he's cooperating.">

<Former President Donald Trump was infamous for campaigning on fear of crime — and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, now challenging Trump for the nomination in 2024, is determined to outdo him, telling voters to fear criminal justice reform and progressive cities as morasses of violence and danger. But DeSantis' own state reportedly doesn't prove his point.

In reality, wrote Radley Balko for The Daily Beast, DeSantis' panic on crime gets everything wrong — including the fact that it's worse in his own state than in many of the liberal jurisdictions he condemns.

"We can start with the First Step Act, Trump’s uncharacteristically hopeful and optimistic criminal justice reform bill (which, naturally, he later regretted). DeSantis recently called the law a 'jailbreak bill' that 'allowed dangerous people out of prison who have now re-offended, and really, really hurt a number of people,'" wrote Balko. "There's no evidence for any of this. If a significant number of prisoners released under the FSA have gone on to commit new violent or sex crimes, we'd know their names. Their photos would be on the cover of the New York Post, their names emblazoned in Fox News chyrons."

The only example DeSantis provided of this is Glynn Neal, who stabbed a staffer for Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) shortly after being released from prison — but in fact, the First Step Act "reduced his sentence by a matter of days" and he was getting out anyway. On the contrary, people released under the FSA are reoffending at a third the rate of the general prison population — meaning the law is, if anything, actually reducing crime.

"As governor, DeSantis has already demonstrated his commitment to corrupting law enforcement. Earlier this year he forcibly removed a state’s attorney — Andrew Warren — from office. Warren was among the new breed of progressive prosecutors who 'take it upon themselves to determine which laws they like and will enforce and which laws they don’t like and won’t enforce,' DeSantis said, 'and the results of this in cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco have been catastrophic,'" wrote Balko. But actually, "The murder rate in San Francisco is significantly lower than that of the entire state of Florida — an incredible statistic, given that crime is usually more concentrated in cities. The murder rate in Los Angeles is significantly lower than major Florida cities like Miami and Tallahassee. And Jacksonville has consistently had the highest murder rate in the state, despite a series of Republican mayors and lead prosecutors."

This isn't the first time Republicans have failed to check statistics in their own states before lying about crime in Democratic-controlled cities — House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) made crime in New York City a huge focus of his attacks on Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg, despite his own district containing the so-called "Danger City" of Mansfield, where crime is far worse.

Moreover, noted Balko, things are unlikely to improve under DeSantis' leadership, as he has set up a policy of importing police officers from areas with "anti-cop" policies — and many of the police who have taken up the offer have criminal charges themselves.

"The more voters get to know [DeSantis], the less they seem to like him," concluded Balko. "If he manages to find some charisma, he could be a considerable force — and an enormously destructive one. But there's little reason to think he'll make the country any safer.">

<Saying "gender identity is real," a federal judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked portions of a new Florida law that bans transgender minors from receiving puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, ruling the state has no rational basis for denying patients treatment.

Judge Robert Hinkle issued a preliminary injunction, saying three transgender children can continue receiving treatment. The lawsuit challenges the law Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed shortly before announcing a run for president.

"The elephant in the room should be noted at the outset. Gender identity is real. The record makes this clear," Hinkle wrote in his ruling, adding that even a witness for the state agreed. Transgender medical treatment for minors is increasingly under attack, but has been available for over a decade and is endorsed by major medical associations, Hinkle noted.

The law bans treatment with "GnRH agonists, known as puberty blockers, and cross-sex hormones" for minors. Hinkle wrote that the "treatments at issue are GnRH agonists, colloquially known as 'puberty blockers,' and cross-sex hormones."

"The overwhelming weight of medical authority supports treatment of transgender patients with GnRH agonists and cross-sex hormones in appropriate circumstances," Hinkle wrote. He said the plaintiffs will likely prevail, as "qualified professionals have properly evaluated the children's medical conditions and needs in accordance with the well-established standards of care."

An increasing number of celebrities are publicly embracing and supporting their gender non-binary and transgender children.

People who are gender non-binary, or gender-nonconforming, don't fit into a strictly "male" or "female" category. When a person identifies as transgender, that means their gender and personal identity doesn't correspond to their birth sex. Some people who identify outside of gender binaries use inclusive pronouns like "they" and "them."

Hinkle issued a preliminary injunction against the defendants, writing "the preliminarily enjoined parties must not take any steps to prevent the administration of GnRH agonists or cross-sex hormones" for the three children.

Hinkle said those who believe gender identity is a choice "tend to disapprove all things transgender and so oppose medical care that supports a person's transgender existence."

Banning treatment ignores risks to patients, Hinkle said. "There are risks attendant to not using these treatments, including the risk — in some instances, the near certainty — of anxiety, depression and even suicidal ideation," he wrote.

Hinkle noted hormone treatments and puberty blockers are often used to treat non-transgender children, so the law allows their use for some but not others.

Hinkle said the three children in the lawsuit "will suffer irreparable harm" without treatment. Conversely, he wrote, "the treatment will affect the patients themselves, nobody else, and will cause the defendants no harm."

A spokesman for the governor's office did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

The injunction is a victory for civil rights groups who argue the law discriminates against transgender people. But the ruling was narrowly focused on the three children, leaving the law in place for now. A trial is set for mid-2023.>

<Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, one of the Donald Trump’s biggest loyalists in Congress, is demanding a memo from the Department of Justice about the federal documents case.

Donald Trump Has Some Powerful Allies

Congress does not have the power to block a criminal investigation by the Justice Department. But when it comes to the ongoing probe into former President Trump’s handling of classified documents, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) is doing all he can to complicate matters.

Jordan is one of Trump’s biggest supporters and defenders in Congress, and has been so going back to the earliest investigations during the Trump Administration.

According to NBC News Jordan, who is now the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has demanded that the Justice Department provide to his committee “internal documents laying out the scope of special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the former president’s handling of classified documents.”

The demand came in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland.

In it, Jordan asked for “an unredacted copy of the memorandum outlining the scope of Mr. Smith’s probes regarding President Trump and any supporting documentation related to his appointment as special counsel.”

It’s not clear if such a memorandum actually exists, and if it does, whether there is any reason why the Justice Department would need to hand it over to Congress.

This week, it was reported that a second grand jury, this one in South Florida, has been empaneled in connection with the documents case. The other grand jury, which is scheduled to convene later this week but is believed to be wrapping up its work, is located in Washington.

“In recent days, Smith’s prosecutors have also sought testimony related to the documents probe before a grand jury in southern Florida, in what some people familiar with the process said appeared to be an effort to tie up several loose ends,” the Wall Street Journal reported this week. The Florida grand jury is scheduled to hear from a new witness this week. South Florida is the location of Mar-a-Lago, where many of the alleged violations took place.

After Trump’s attorneys met on Monday with Justice Department personnel, the former president seemed under the impression that he will in fact be charged with a crime in the case.

“HOW CAN DOJ POSSIBLY CHARGE ME, WHO DID NOTHING WRONG, WHEN NO OTHER PRESIDENT’S WERE CHARGED, WHEN JOE BIDEN WON’T BE CHARGED FOR ANYTHING, INCLUDING THE FACT THAT HE HAS 1,850 BOXES, MUCH OF IT CLASSIFIED, AND SOME DATING BACK TO HIS SENATE DAY WHEN EVEN DEMOCRAT SENATORS ARE SHOCKED,” the former president posted to Truth Social, in all caps.

Back in January, Jordan had sought to intervene after Trump’s indictment in New York. He held a field hearing in New York, to showcase the levels of crime in that city under District Attorney Alvin Bragg, while asking for members of Bragg’s offices to testify before Congress. In April, Bragg sued Jordan, in federal court, accusing Jordan of a “brazen and unconstitutional attack” on his prosecution of Trump, and claiming the Congressman had engaged in a “transparent campaign to intimidate and attack” Bragg.

“Rather than allowing the criminal process to proceed in the ordinary course, Chairman Jordan and the committee are participating in a campaign of intimidation, retaliation and obstruction,” Bragg’s suit said, per the New York Times.

Also this week, per the Washington Post, Jordan’s committee has demanded emails and meetings from leading disinformation researchers. This week, Jordan and staffers met with University of Washington professor Kate Starbird, a leading researcher in that space.

“The political part is intimidating — to have people with a lot of power in this world making false claims, false accusations about our work,” Starbird told the newspaper. “We are putting that out of our minds and doubling down on the work, but we’re stepping a little bit away from the spotlight, because those tactics work.”>

<Donald Trump slammed Chris Christie in a strange social media post Tuesday after the former New Jersey governor announced his candidacy in the 2024 race.

The former president in a post on his Truth Social website suggested that Christie has a “psychological problem” with “SIZE” and described his announcement speech as rambling.

“How many times did Chris Christie use the word SMALL?” Trump wrote.

“Does he have a psychological problem with SIZE? Actually, his speech was SMALL, and not very good. It rambled all over the place, and nobody had a clue of what he was talking about," he added.

“Hard to watch, boring, but that’s what you get from a failed Governor (New Jersey) who left office with a 7% approval rating and then got run out of New Hampshire. This time, it won’t be any different!”

For his part, Christie took aim at Trump during his announcement at Saint Anselm College.

Christie said he was running Because "the truth matters”

“Donald Trump made us smaller by dividing us even further and pitting us one against the other," the candidate said.

The Associated Press reports that Christie, who "during his time as New Jersey’s governor established a reputation as a fighter with a knack for creating viral moments of confrontation, faces an uphill battle to the nomination in a party that remains closely aligned with the former president, despite Trump’s reelection loss in 2020 and Republicans’ poorer-than-expected showing in the 2022 midterm elections."

The former New Jersey governor is positioning himself as an alternative to Trump who's willing to engage with the former president.

“I’m not dumb. The way to win is to beat the guy who’s ahead. And so what would a campaign look like? A campaign would look like a direct frontal challenge to Donald Trump trying to return to the presidency,” Christie recently said in a podcast interview.>

<With the ugliness of the debt ceiling behind them, most House Republicans were eager this week to get back to unifying issues within the conference, such as investigating the Biden administration and passing culture war-adjacent, go-nowhere messaging bills ahead of campaign season. On the House floor this week, the GOP majority was set to pass multiple bills preventing the administration from restricting the use of America’s most treasured appliance, the gas stove.

On Tuesday, however, a typically easy-breezy vote on the rule to tee up the Gas Stove Protection and Freedom Act and the Save Our Gas Stoves Act, among other items, failed, 206 to 220. It was the first rule vote to fail on the floor in 21 years.

So why did 12 hardline Republicans—the likes of Reps. Andy Biggs, Lauren Boebert, Ralph Norman, Chip Roy, and so on—join all Democrats in voting against advancing these base-pleasing gas stove bills? Why have they, effectively, denied the leadership of their own party control of the House floor well into Wednesday afternoon?

Because taking hostages—innocent hostages, those simply wishing to celebrate gas stoves!—as part of a temper tantrum about not getting everything they want is what the Freedom Caucus does.

The Freedom Caucus felt Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his negotiators gave away too much in the debt ceiling deal, but don’t quite know what to do about it. About two-thirds of House Republicans voted for the deal, so they can’t argue McCarthy didn’t have the backing of most of the conference. They can’t say he violated a specific conference rule. And most of the conference thinks McCarthy did an excellent job negotiating a debt ceiling deal. In other words, the Freedom Caucus wouldn’t have much of a leg to stand on if it immediately tried to force a vote to oust McCarthy from the speakership.

But they could throw a tantrum.

The pretext for the tantrum was an accusation made by Georgia Rep. Andrew Clyde. Clyde alleged that leaders “threatened” him last week in order to get him to vote for the rule advancing the debt ceiling deal: That if he voted against it, a bill of his wouldn’t get a floor vote.

“Let me be unequivocally clear,” Clyde said. “I was threatened that if I voted against the closed rule to the debt ceiling agreement, it would be very difficult to bring my pistol stabilizing brace bill to the House floor for a vote.”

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, though, contested that account, arguing that the problem with bringing Clyde’s bill to the floor has “been with the vote count. There are some members that aren’t there yet, and we’re working on getting those members there.” (A possible fusion of these two accounts is that Clyde voting “no” on the debt ceiling rule might have made other members less likely to consider voting for his bill later on, since they would despise him.)

The silver lining of all of this inaction for McCarthy, at least, has been an opportunity to take a swipe at Scalise, whom he has long distrusted. When reporters asked McCarthy on Wednesday whether he was “blindsided” by the floor revolt, he said that leaders all have “different roles out there, and the majority leader runs the floor.” In other words, blame Scalise.

The Clyde Affair, though, has blossomed into something much bigger: A days-long protest of McCarthy’s handling of the debt ceiling negotiations, preventing the House majority from getting anything done on the floor.

There are tweets.

The hardliners were heading in and out of leaders’ offices Tuesday and Wednesday, airing grievances, but playing coy about what exactly they would need to open up the floor again. There’s some murmuring that Freedom Caucus members are pushing leadership to set next year’s spending levels, when the actual appropriations bills are written, below the levels agreed to in the debt deal with Biden.

Or, they just want to have a fit for a couple of days—maybe raise a few bucks online while they’re at it?—and then resume with the people’s work of making it easier than ever to huff gas stoves.

We’ll find out whether McCarthy has to make real concessions to his right flank in order to regain control of the floor. But this was not the week he planned. He had hoped to turn the page quickly after cutting a bipartisan deal with President Biden that, by its bipartisan nature, would be unpopular with the right. He wasn’t quick enough.>

<Tuesday’s edition was about manhood, specifically the variety of manhood that’s the focus of a recently published book by US Senator Josh Hawley.

I wrote that Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs makes all kinds of arguments in favor of manhood as if manhood requires arguments in favor of it. I wrote that manhood, like anything else that constitutes a human being’s individual identity, does not require arguments in favor of it. It is what it is.

So, I asked, why is Hawley making arguments in favor of something that does not require arguments in favor of it? My answer was that Hawley’s book isn’t about manhood. It’s about power. Manhood doesn’t require an argument. Political dominance in the name of “manhood” does, however. People don’t offer up their necks freely. They must be persuaded to offer up their necks.

One of my favorite subscribers responded to yesterday’s edition in what is, typically for him, a bit of blazing insight. Mr. Thornton Prayer said that:

“I think there may also be a third element – Hawley’s internal sense of being less than manly. When I see him, Ted Cruz and the big-time right-wing YouTube trolls, none strike me as being particularly masculine. I think they’re all engaged in some performative dance to convince themselves and the outside world that they’re ‘tough’ and ‘strong’ when in reality, they sense that internally they’re just a bunch of wimps – and they sense that everybody knows it.”

Mr. Prayer added that, “given the authoritarian obsession with trans and gay people, their ‘manhood’ performance is all the more necessary.”

I think Mr. Prayer is right. Hawley, Ted Cruz and the rest don’t come off as naturally manly. They come off as naturally nerdy. For men like me and Mr. Prayer – men of certain generations – nerdy is the opposite of manly. The nerds exacted their revenge, of course. They conquered the world with their “knowledge economies.” Yet Hawley and the rest act as if they regret winning.

Mr. Prayer is right in another way. Hawley, Cruz and the rest of the nerds seem to be performing manliness rather than embodying it, like they read about it in history class rather than grew into it. This is where his and my comment join.

Hawley, Cruz and the rest of the nerds don’t care about their arguments. One “performance” is as good, or bad, as another. What matters is achieving outcomes in their favor. What matters is whether the audience for their arguments believes them. If it does, the argument was good. If it doesn’t, the argument was bad. The argument’s consequential moral nature is irrelevant.

Because their arguments depend entirely on the favorable reaction of their target audiences, Hawley, Cruz and the rest give the impression that they are performing a role rather than being themselves; that they are not sure that what they’re saying is true until someone affirms it; that they fear reactions that are unfavorable; that they are asking for permission; and that until that permission is granted, they remain insecure about what they’re saying.

With this in mind, yeah, “a bunch of wimps – and they sense that everybody knows it.” Whatever you think manliness is, it’s nothing if not sure of itself. Whatever you think it means, it’s nothing if not acting like it fears nothing.

Here is where Mr. Prayer’s comment and mine part ways.

Hawley, Cruz and the rest of the nerds do indeed give the impression that they aren’t quite sure that what they’re saying is true until someone affirms that it’s true. They do indeed give the impression that they are asking for permission to say what they want to say. But let’s not confuse the insecurity that’s natural to authoritarian politics with the insecurity that’s natural to heterosexuality.

In other words, they are not “insecure” about their manhood. This is, alas, a common refrain in liberal circles. I don’t know why. It’s probably rooted historically in a reasonable desire for revenge. Ten thousand years of human history have put men at the top of every unit of organized human effort. Changing sexual and gender politics offer a chance to flip the script.

But they are not “insecure” about their manhood. Why? Because they don’t believe enough in arguments in favor of manhood for insecurity to be possible. A straight man who’s truly insecure is being genuine. (He’s being genuine even when denying his insecurity). Not so with Hawley, Cruz and the rest. These are deeply cynical politicians. One “performance” is as good, or bad, as another.

<One could very well claim that veganism would be more popular if vegan people were a little tolerant and patient, and were not quick to burst into a temper regardless of the situation. In a recent debacle that took place in Australia, a vegan family decided enough was enough when their neighbor was cooking meat and they could smell it. The upset family had earlier sent a polite letter to the neighbor, asking them to close their windows while cooking- which is quite impossible unless someone wants the fumes to be all over their house. And when the neighbor didn’t pay heed to the letter, they sent another- which was a little less polite and a lot more intimidating. The letter was sent by a woman named Sarah, who passed it to her neighbor Kylie, where it was addressing some of the concerns that Sarah had regarding Kylie’s cooking.

The woman, who hails from Burns Beach, claimed that the smell was quite revolting for her, and she wanted it gone. The note that she sent was posted on a Facebook page, and at first glance- looked quite polite. The letter read, “Hello, Neighbour. Could you please shut your side window when cooking, please? My family are vegan (we eat only plant-based foods) and the smell of the meat you cook makes us feel sick and upset. We would appreciate your understanding. Thanks. Sarah, Wayne & Kids.” While one could not adhere to it- for it is frankly dangerous to keep the windows closed while cooking, no one could deny it was quite polite.

Vegan Family Upset By Smell Of Cooked Meat

But the people on the Facebook page decided that the vegan family was displaying quite a sense of arrogance regarding their veganism. One user commented, “They should go live in the bush. Everyone cooks and some smells I can't stand but that is outrageous.” But another user called out the hyperbole and stated, “Why all the nasty comments? I’m a meat eater, but she was polite and respectful in her request and it’s not hard to close a window. Why not just be a considerate neighbor and close the window, rather than turning it into a big issue?“

When the first letter went viral, the vegan family sent another note. And this time, they apparently meant business. The writer mentioned that enough was enough and the social media poster had taken Mickey out of a serious situation. And they would have to pay if things went in a similar manner.

Social Media Were Less Understanding The Second Time Around

The letter read, “I raised my concerns of the smell of meat making my family feel sick and upset and you go and have a BBQ on Saturday night inviting lots of people, and you knew this would affect me and my family. My friend Tina told me you took my letter to social media and it backfired on you which is ‘just desserts [sic]’. Please no more BBQs and please keep that window closed when cooking otherwise I’m going to report you and go to social media too.“

Now, when this letter was posted on social media, the comments lambasted the vegan family for being entitled. One comment wrote, “Vegan people think they are entitled, always trying to push their way of life onto everyone.” Another comment wrote, “Wow I would cook a BBQ for my family every night if I received this and I don't eat meat.” A third comment perfectly encapsulated what we are all thinking. “Get over yourself love, who made you the ruler of the world[?] It is not your house, not your right to tell someone what they can and can’t do. You don’t like the smell, so close your own bloody windows and doors.” Looks like the vegan family bit off more than they could chew. Let’s hope it wasn’t BBQ!>

'Report them'? Is this frigging Stalinist Soviet Union or Nazi Germany? Jaysus!!

<As it turns out, Ron “Don’t Say Gay” DeSantis doesn’t only hate LGBTQ+ people. Apparently, he doesn’t care for World War II veterans, either.

At a recent meet-and-greet in Iowa, the flailing Florida governor was alerted there was a WW II veteran in attendance. Instead of approaching the wartime hero, DeSantis gave a simple nod, and went back to take a photo with somebody else.

“DeSantis gave a nod in the veteran’s direction, flashed a thumbs-up, thanked him for his service and turned back to someone else waiting for a photo with him,” reports MSNBC’s Kyle Griffin.

But that wasn’t the end of DeSantis’ pained interaction with one of the men responsible for defeating fascism. Iowa governor Kim Reynolds, a Republican, yelled to DeSantis that the veteran would also like his signature.

So DeSantis scribbled his name on a piece of paper; and once again, moved on to the next voter.

When asked again whether he knew there was a WW II veteran in attendance, DeSantis demurred. “I know, I signed something for him!” he yelled.

Now, nobody expects DeSantis, a champion of odious legislation against gay people, to be familiar with the 10 best LGBTQ+ military films worth watching. But he must be aware of WW II, right? They haven’t banned those books in Florida schools…yet.

Making matters worse, since WW II occurred between 1939-45, it’s fair to assume the aforementioned veteran is well into his 90s. Taking extra time to meet with a veteran is a layup for any politician–but especially a presidential hopeful.

Then again, this is Ron “Don’t Say Gay” DeSantis we’re talking about. He struggles to interact with humans at all levels.

Just last week, he threw a hissy fit when a reporter asked him why he didn’t take questions following a town hall event in New Hampshire. “People are coming up to me, talking to me,” he wailed. “What are you talking about? Are you blind? Are you blind? People are coming up to me, talking to me whatever they want to talk to me about.”

DeSantis’ horrific social skills are threatening to derail his campaign before it even really gets started. He snaps all the time in public, such as when he yelled at college students for wearing masks.

It’s even off-putting when DeSantis is trying to be funny, or laugh!

There are a slew of stories about DeSantis’ crimes against basic social etiquette. He’s been accused of eating pudding with his hands, failing to learn the name of his staffers and even refusing to sign a sympathy letter.

Now, we can add snubbing a WW II veteran to the long list.

With these social faux paus, it’s not surprising that DeSantis’ support is crumbling. A new poll shows he has a net approval rating of -19, with 55% of respondents expressing their disapproval, compared with 36% who hold a favorable view of the toxic governor.

Back in early December, DeSantis’ overall approval and disapproval rating was tied at 47%. He’s fallen on hard times.

To curry favor with Republican voters, DeSantis signed a rash of anti-LGBTQ+ laws during Florida’s last legislative session. He expanded the state’s “Don’t Say Gay” law to bar discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity from all grade levels, and outlawed gender-affirming care for minors. He’s also made it a criminal offense if adults don’t use the bathroom that corresponds with the sex they were assigned at birth.

In addition, the state’s new anti-drag law has had a chilling effect on Pride celebrations throughout Florida. Tampa Bay canceled a Pride event, and even Wilton Manors, one of the gayest cities in the country, put the kibosh on drag queens performing during its annual parade.

LGBTQ+ people can celebrate one recent victory against DeSantis, however. This week, a federal judge partially blocked enforcement of Florida’s ban on gender-affirming care. In his ruling, the judge wrote bluntly: “gender identity is real.”

Gender identity is definitely more real than DeSantis’ presidential chances. He keeps getting blasted with one bad headline after another, and rightfully so. Not engaging with a WW2 vet is his latest low.>

<The great crypto reckoning spearheaded by the SEC this week caused a lot of collateral damage.

As the regulatory authority announced back-to-back lawsuits, first against Binance and then against Coinbase, asset prices pegged to the industry tumbled. Few felt the brunt of the crackdown quite like Coinbase stock itself.

After closing 9% lower Monday after the Binance news, Coinbase shares slipped an additional 21% at intraday lows on Tuesday when its own suit was announced. All told, the stock had plummeted 28% from the prior week's close at its low on Tuesday.

According to a new report from Matt Turner and David Marino at Bloomberg, that played right into the hands of an investor who executed what would turn out to be a highly profitable trade mere minutes before the SEC announced original Binance suit.

The trade breaks down like this, according to data compiled by Bloomberg:

At 10:36 a.m. on Monday, someone bought a block of 4,806 put contracts with a $50 strike price when the stock was trading at $61.77

Buying a put is essentially a bet that the share price will fall below that strike price

The options, which were bought at 18 cents apiece, traded up to nearly $1. If the investor closed their position at the peak, that would've yielded a 460% return, according to Bloomberg

The price of the options surged to $5.65 each on Tuesday, when Coinbase was slapped with its own suit, and its stock traveled even lower

Taking into account the initial $86,500 spent to buy the puts, Bloomberg calculates that the trade could've made $2.6 million in less than a day if the investor held on past the first-day dip and closed out at the right time

The potential windfall marks the second suspiciously timed trade in the past couple of weeks. A separate recent Bloomberg analysis found that a shrewd investor made a large options bet that the stock of Equitrans Midstream Corporation would spike just days before a surprise beneficial provision was included in the debt-ceiling deal. Sure enough, the stock did spike, and it looks like the trader made roughly $7.5 million for their efforts.>

<Donald Trump may be indicted on charges of violating the Espionage Act and obstruction of justice as soon as Thursday, June 8, RadarOnline.com has learned.

It's been reported that prosecutors have already informed the embattled ex-POTUS that he will likely be charged with crimes related to investigations into his alleged mishandling of classified documents.

Sources close to the case also confirmed to JustTheNews that the DOJ chose not to delay the potential indictment — if it occurs — despite Trump's legal team's claims that one of the senior prosecutors attempted to sway the testimony of a key witness.

According to reports made by The Independent, prosecutors are preparing to ask a grand jury to vote to indict the embattled former POTUS for allegedly violating Section 793 of the U.S. criminal code that prohibits “gathering, transmitting or losing” any information “respecting the national defence" nearly one year after federal government officials found boxes full of classified documents at his lavish Mar-a-Lago resort.

Trump's attorneys are believed to be planning to argue that the 76-year-old was given very "broad powers" as President of the United States that would have entitled him to "keep" or "declassify" documents as he saw fit.

However, Section 793 states that the rule applies even to those who "lawfully" have the "possession of, access to, control over, or being entrusted with any document" related to the national defence who then "willfully communicates, delivers, transmits or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it on demand to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it."

Section 793 further clarifies that those found in violation of the law may face up to 10 years in prison.

On Wednesday afternoon, June 7, Trump took to his Truth Social platform to declare his innocence.

"No one has told me I’m being indicted, and I shouldn’t be because I’ve done NOTHING wrong," he ranted. "A TRAVESTY OF JUSTICE & ELECTION INTERFERENCE AT A LEVEL NEVER SEEN BEFORE. REPUBLICANS IN CONGRESS MUST MAKE THIS THEIR # 1 ISSUE!!!">

'Lock him up!':

<The former lead prosecutor for Robert Mueller, Andrew Weissmann, predicted that Donald Trump's indictment was coming "in days not weeks," and he was proved correct on Thursday.

His voice joined with many legal analysts who spoke out about the news. In one thread, Ryan Goodman quickly mentioned that a group of legal experts at JustSecurity outlined the specifics of the Espionage Act and how it would work with Trump.

One of the pieces of the story that Weissmann pointed out is that there are many lower-level, very young people who ultimately end up being prosecuted for mishandling classified information. It's for that reason that he felt Trump had to be indicted.

The Nation's legal analyst Elie Mystal agreed, responding to a rage tweet from Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) claiming people in power shouldn't be able to prosecute their opponents, even if they broke the law.

"Actually, as I pointed out, if people in power can avoid jail by returning to power, we don’t have a republic. That’s literally how the most famous one died," said Mystal.

Legal analyst Brad Moss also commented with faux mockery: "If DOJ can indict Trump for willful retention of NDI and obstruction, they can indict ANYONE for willful retention of NDI and obstruction. The horror!"

Michigan University Law School Professor Barb McQuade cited New York Times reporting saying that the "charges include conspiracy to obstruct justice. Federal conspiracy law requires two or more people to constitute conspiracy."

She wondered, "Who is/are the co-conspirator(s)?"

Moss speculated it might be "Walt Nauta and maybe Boris are my guesses." But that information has not currently been released.

Florida attorney and attorney general candidate Daniel Uhlfelder tweeted simply: "Lock him up."

In that same vein, "Someone let Trump know the following: You’re going to prison, traitor," civil rights lawyer Andrew C. Laufer tweeted.

One of the things that Alabama University Law School Professor Joyce White Vance mentioned is the importance of cameras in the courtroom for the Trump trial.

"Chief Justice Roberts should immediately amend the rules to permit cameras in federal courts. The American public is entitled to watch the proceedings against Trump in their entirety. Anything less would be an injustice," she tweeted Thursday evening.>

<Former Trump Attorney General Bill Barr, once one of the ex-president’s top defenders, appeared stunned and speechless Thursday afternoon when a Fox News host surprised him by asking why the U.S. Dept. of Justice is pursuing a criminal investigation against Trump over classified documents while he is running again for president.

“Why is this process happening so quickly in the middle of a presidential election?” Fox’s Martha MacCallum asked. She neglected to mention that Donald Trump reportedly announced his presidential campaign to avoid being charged.

Barr, who is on record stating he opposes Trump’s actions surrounding the hundreds of classified and top secret documents he likely unlawfully removed from the White House and refused to return, paused for several seconds before replying.

“Uh,” Barr finally replied, “This, this was a fairly simple case,” he said, appearing to defend DOJ.

“The Mar-a-Lago case. This is a case that can be done relatively quickly, and that’s why I thought, it’s the main – because it’s a very limited question,” Barr explained, shifting gears. “It relates to, ah, one collection of documents and and why they weren’t given to the government once they were subpoenaed. And it’s a pretty simple case.”

Moving on, MacCallum asked, “And you believe that the charge will be obstruction, based on what you’ve said before?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Barr responded, seeming to not want to bet pinned down to an answer, “if I had to bet I think that that there’s going to be an indictment here on that basis, but it’s not going to be because he took the documents, or even had the documents for a while. I think it’s because they believe that he acted deceitfully once the government tried to get the documents back.”

On Tuesday, Barr spoke with CBS News to refute his ex-boss’s “witch hunt” claims, said the ex-president had “jerked” DOJ around over the hundreds of classified and top secret documents he refused to return, and added there was “no excuse” to do so.>

<Rep. Lauren Boebert says she has now seen the document at the center of the controversy — and acrimony — between House Oversight Committee Chair Rep. James Comer and FBI Director Christopher Wray.

[NOTE on the conflict: Comer announced plans to hold FBI Director Wray in “contempt for refusal to hand over an FBI document alleging a bribery scheme linked to then Vice President Joe Biden,” C-Span reported this week, though Director Wray had made the document available for the committee to see on-site.]

Saying she has viewed the document in question, Boebert draws a startling conclusion about how the alleged Biden bribery protocol works. The Congresswoman casually proffers the idea that any payments to what the far right have been calling the “Biden crime family” get automatically doubled.

Boebert asserts that the document she saw reveals that “there was a forced payment made in the sum of at least $5 million and not even for just one Biden but also if you pay one Biden $5 million, you’ve got to pay another Biden $5 million.”

Boebert doesn’t say how she arrives at her domino theory of Biden family payments, but offers this Biden crime innuendo as if it were a conclusion drawn from the evidence in the document she viewed.>

<Donald Trump, who has often lied, unquestionably told the truth when he said Thursday was a “dark day” for America.

The ex-president’s social media post correctly described the magnitude of his indictment over the alleged mishandling of classified documents – though completely ignored any personal culpability in the case.

But the first-ever indictment of a former president by a federal grand jury thrust the country into an unprecedented and perilous moment in its history at a time when it is already internally estranged over politics.

Criminal probes of former presidents and current presidential candidates might be business as usual in tottering developing world states. But there’s no parallel for an ex-commander in chief facing federal charges in the US, much less one who has already incited violence in order to advance his political ends and is currently running to recapture the White House.

America’s legal and political institutions, which were repeatedly torn apart by Trump’s tumultuous term in office, may now face their biggest test from an ex-president who was impeached twice, tried to steal an election and is already facing a separate criminal trial next March.

If that was not serious enough, these federal charges – related to classified documents that Trump took to his Mar-a-Lago resort – are coming down at a moment when Trump is the front-runner for the Republican nomination in 2024.

These seven counts bring a host of political complications, even if the Justice Department will argue that it’s simply following the evidence and is proving that no one, not even former presidents, are above the law.

Simply put, Trump is set to be brought to trial by the Justice Department of his successor. In another profound twist, that successor – President Joe Biden – could end up facing the accused in the 2024 general election, in a scenario that would inject new fervor into Trump’s claims he’s a victim of politicized justice. Trump’s supporters already thought that an invisible “deep state” establishment was out to get their hero. It will be even worse now.

Trump, who has been preparing the ground for a possible federal indictment for months, and who has been hugely successful in convincing his supporters that any scrutiny of his life, political decisions or business affairs adds up to politicization, wasted no time making that case.

“I am an innocent man. I did nothing wrong,” the former president said in a video that showed that he is willing to torch America’s democratic electoral system if that is what it takes to clear his name.

“It’s called election interference. They’re trying to destroy your reputation so they can win an election. That’s just as bad as doing any of the other things that have been done over the last number of years,” said Trump, who is due to appear in court in Miami on Tuesday for an arraignment.

Why the new indictment could be more serious than the first

Amazingly, this was not the first time Trump was indicted. He already became the first ex-president to be charged with a criminal offense when a Manhattan grand jury indicted him. He faces more than 30 counts related to business fraud in a case arising from a hush money payment in 2016 to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. The case is due to go to trial next March – right in the middle of primary season. Trump has pleaded not guilty.

But the indictment by the special counsel in the documents case is a far graver affair and more politically sensitive since it comes from Biden’s Justice Department.

Trump is facing a charge under the Espionage Act, his attorney Jim Trusty said on CNN Thursday, as well as charges of obstruction of justice, destruction or falsification of records, conspiracy and false statements.

While all the exact charges against Trump were not immediately clear, the potential offenses strike at the core of some of the most somber duties of the presidency – including the protection of the country’s most vital secrets. And any allegation of obstruction involves another fundamental role of the public trust that Trump held and to which he aspires in the current campaign – the obligation of a president to uphold the laws.

The current scenario will test whether the US remains a nation of laws. If evidence exists that Trump has indeed committed alleged breaches of the criminal code, a decision not to charge him would shatter the principle that everyone is equal under the law. But some will ask whether the indictment is truly in the national interest given the backlash against democratic and judicial institutions certain to be whipped up by the ex-president....>

<....Thursday evening’s news sparked a firm push back from some Republicans eager to prove their loyalty to Trump.

“Today is indeed a dark day for the United States of America,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said in a tweet. “I, and every American who believes in the rule of law, stand with President Trump against this grave injustice.”

New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, a member of the House GOP leadership, parroted Trump’s political argument, tweeting: “The radical Far Left will stop at nothing to interfere with the 2024 election in order to prop up the catastrophic presidency and desperate campaign of Joe Biden.”

And GOP Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri tweeted: “If people in power can jail their political opponents at will, we don’t have a republic.” His comments ignore the fact that the ex-president is entitled to defend himself in a court of law.

While outsiders cannot know the full breadth of special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation, reports in recent days had suggested an aggressive probe nearing its conclusion.

— CNN reported at the end of May that prosecutors had obtained an audio recording in which Trump acknowledged he held onto a classified Pentagon document about a potential attack on Iran. This undercut his arguments that he declassified everything he took from the White House.

“It obliterates many of the defenses that he has launched over the last few months,” Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe said of the tape on CNN on May 31. “It conclusively establishes not only that he took classified information, because he admits that, but also that he knew he had classified information. He admits that as well, and that he knew it was still classified, and he was limited in how he could handle it or distribute it.”

— In another development, CNN exclusively reported this week that an employee at Mar-a-Lago drained the resort’s swimming pool last October and ended up flooding a room where computer servers containing surveillance video logs were kept. The incident happened roughly two months after the FBI retrieved hundreds of classified documents from the residence and as prosecutors probing possible obstruction obtained surveillance footage to track how White House records were moved around the resort. It is unclear whether the room was flooded intentionally or by mistake, but the incident occurred amid a series of events that federal prosecutors found suspicious.

— It is now known that the special counsel has been using two grand juries, one in Washington, DC, and the other in Miami, which could mean Smith is exploring whether to bring parts or all of a criminal case in Florida federal court instead of in the nation’s capital.

— In another revelation that thickened mystery around the case and may have deepened Trump’s potential exposure, the New York Times first reported this week that Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff, testified to a grand jury that asked him about both Trump’s handling of classified documents and attempts to overturn the 2020 election – efforts that Smith is also investigating.

— On Thursday, CNN’s Zachary Cohen revealed that a key former White House official who worked in both the Trump and Obama administrations was interviewed by special counsel prosecutors earlier this year. The official said that he told prosecutors that Trump knew the proper process for declassifying documents and followed it correctly at times while in office. This information could undercut Trump’s claims that he thought he could simply declassify material on a whim and also gets to the issue of his intent – an important question in a criminal case.

The political reverberations from the documents case

None of these glimpses into Smith’s investigation are unfolding in a vacuum. The Republican primary field is getting more crowded by the day, but Trump’s rivals are struggling to create rationales for their candidacies in a party still in thrall to him. Trump’s legal problems, however, are unspooling amid huge uncertainty about how multiple indictments could limit his capacity to campaign and whether they could cause some Republican voters to take a deeper look into his vulnerabilities in a general election.....>

<....With a trial date set for March in the Manhattan case, Trump is also expected to hear by the end of the summer whether he or subordinates will be charged in a separate case in Georgia related to his attempt to overturn Biden’s 2020 win there.

In a sign of the way that Trump will attempt to have this case tried in the court of public opinion before it ever reaches the courts, his campaign immediately sent around fundraising emails that touted the hauls it brought in after he was indicted in Manhattan.

Early evidence in polling after that first indictment suggested that if anything Trump may have benefited politically from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s move. Those charges effectively forced his primary rivals to defend him in order to avoid alienating GOP voters, thus defanging one of their potential attacks on an ex-president who has constantly tested the rule of law.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis responded similarly Thursday night by adopting Trump’s “weaponization” language. “The weaponization of federal law enforcement represents a mortal threat to a free society,” he tweeted before making his own White House pitch. “The DeSantis administration will bring accountability to the DOJ, excise political bias and end weaponization once and for all.”

And in a CNN town hall on Wednesday night, former Vice President Mike Pence – who just announced his own White House bid – warned that “no one is above the law” while also calling on the Justice Department not to indict his former boss, saying such a move would “send a terrible message to the wider world.” His position was logically contradictory, but politically comprehensible given the dynamics in the Republican Party.

While Trump has managed to leverage his legal exposure so far in the campaign, it is not a given that it will hold at this early stage. The issue of electability could become more of an issue next year given that Trump’s dramas have alienated swing voters in a way that’s hurt the GOP in recent elections.

And as the scheduling of Trump’s trial in Manhattan next spring shows, defendants finds that their calendars soon become filled with court dates, hearings and other commitments. This could become a serious issue for the former president if he’s facing multiple days in court next year.

At the same time, however, the constitutional and judicial system that he has often decried would ensure he would be entitled to the same presumption of innocence as anyone else and will have the right to mount a robust defense.>

<"What I learned about Em is that we as black people are still not free. Reparations can help close the wealth gap but instead the gov’t and other citizens feels like they don’t owe anything. For an example they use EM to say that we are free. But when it comes to low paying jobs mainly of colored people are working them. And most of them are hard laboring jobs."

This is a verbatim written response from a Black high school student who shared lessons learned from completing "Reparations Math," the new curriculum unit being offered by the New York Times 1619 Project and the Pulitzer Center.

Already discredited for falsely revising history, the New York Times 1619 Project makes no secret of the Reparations Math curriculum’s ambition to shape future generations into progressive activists.

The Unit Overview outlines explicit objectives to have students use different mathematical equations to "suggest steps the U.S. government can take to provide financial reparations." Further guidance dictates that final student "presentations should also share what math function the U.S. should use to determine and provide monetary preparations [sic]."

The grammatical mistakes and errors in punctuation in the exemplar student work sample provided above by the Pulitzer Center are bad enough. But the deliberate message intended for students that Black people are "still not free," and thus are victims entitled to government payout, is unconscionable.

The irony is that there is steep opposition to the idea that money should be given to Black people who have never been slaves, paid for by White people who have never been slave owners.

Prominent Black leaders like civil rights pioneer Bob Woodson, Republican Utah Rep. Burgess Owens and economist Glenn Loury, all make compelling moral and practical arguments not only against reparations, but also posit that it is racist and correctly warn of the explosion in racial tension that would most certainly ensue if implemented.

In cities across America, various reparations schemes that would make cash payments to Black Americans are being considered. Yet while there has been fervor, no program of any scale has been approved given the obstacles of fiscal reality and its violation of the Constitution, not to mention the challenge of coming up with defensible criteria for who would receive cash payments.

Even California Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom, who in 2020 established a task force to "develop reparation proposals for African Americans," declined to endorse the Task Force’s delusional findings that every Black Californian should receive payment of up to $1.2 million.

Cumulatively, these "payouts could cost taxpayers upwards of $800 billion — more than 2.5 times California’s annual budget."

Throughout the Reparations Math curriculum, the racial wealth gap is used to justify reparations as the only solution to close that gap. The Federal Reserve 2019 Survey of Consumer Finances, states that when race alone is considered, the wealth gap between Black and White Americans at the median — the middle household in each community — was $164,000 in favor of Whites.

Yet in 2021, I testified to the United States Congressional Joint Economic Committee that, according to that same survey, when just two other factors are taken into account, everything changes. If just family structure and education are counted, the median wealth of the average married, college-educated Black family is about $160,000 more than the median wealth of an average single parent White family — nearly completely reversing the gap in favor of Blacks....>

<....Indeed, for nearly 30 consecutive years, the poverty rate of married Black couples has been in the single digits. The obvious implication is that there are factors beyond just race that are far more determinative of economic success for people of any race.

Students taking Reparations Math learn none of this however, as no opposing viewpoints are presented. The resources provided in the unit are all pro-reparations including titles like:

"Overdue reparations is the key to closing the racial wealth gap" and "We May Be the First People to Receive Reparations for Slavery."

It is pure indoctrination designed to perpetuate an ideology of Black dependency and retribution for historical and presumed present day racial victimization.

The tragedy of course in all of this is that none of the justification or not for reparations has anything to do with addressing the urgent crisis in American math education.

According to the National Assessment for Educational Progress (AKA The Nation’s Report Card), in 2022, only 26% of all eighth-grade students nationwide performed at or above the NAEP Proficient level on the mathematics assessment.

In states like Illinois, in 2022, only 8% of Illinois Black eighth graders were NAEP Proficient or above in math. That, despite the fact that in 2019 the Chicago school system adopted the 1619 Project curriculum for instruction in every high school.

In response to Chicago’s depressing academic outcomes and the possible adoption of Reparations Math, legendary Chicago reporter Charles Thomas observed on Chicago’s "Morning Answer": "Black people are overcomers. We are not victims. We are victors. And our history is proof positive of that. That we have met every challenge and overcome. And I think that’s what we need to teach as opposed to the narrative that we are victims and will remain victims forever."

Hear, hear. Let’s teach that in history class and actually teach math – in math class!>

<According to a former top adviser to Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, the ex-president is bypassing the traditional fundraising apparatus at the state level and is using what they called a "Ponzi' scheme" to raise cash now that his legal bills have exploded due to his legal woes.

As the Daily Beast's Jake Lahut is reporting, Trump, who was slammed with a 7-count Federal indictment late Thursday, is skipping over paid organizers in multiple states and has set up a pyramid scheme that relies on unpaid volunteers who are expected to recruit ten contributors who are then expected to do the same and so forth.

"There’s a reason presidential campaigns tend to rely on paid talent for the most important organizing gigs. In 2016, Trump ponied up for those positions. While he personally shirked from the nitty-gritty of retail politicking in New Hampshire, his paid field organizers built an effective voter outreach operation that carried the campaign to a resounding victory," the report states.

This time around, he's cutting out the middle man and that has some GOP organizers at the local level fuming.

One former senior Trump adviser cast a jaundiced eye at how the former president is using people.

“It sounds like a Ponzi scheme. My guess is they’re using these people for optics while they spend money on legal bills… What a f--king s--tshow,” they complained.

During previous campaigns, local staffers were hired at rates like $15.75 an hour, but this time they have been cast aside for a volunteer army of supporters with limited fundraising skills.

One New Hampshire Republican complained, "Let’s be honest, other than the hardcore Trump people, the majority of people now wanna get paid,” before adding, "While we had followers, they were not the intensity that they are now. We had a lot of diversification. Now the Trump people are very hard Trump people with little tolerance for anybody else, so it’s gonna be a hard sell.”>

<China's disappointing economic performance recently has been a letdown for foreign investors, but they have retreating from Chinese markets for the last two years, according to a report from the Atlantic Council.

Talk of "de-risking" from China has been trendy lately, especially as geopolitical tensions grow and the economy's post-COVID rebound has started to lose momentum.

"But foreign fund managers have already stolen a march on the policy: They've been selling vast amounts of securities over the past two years in response to Chinese leader Xi Jinping's policies and mounting US-China tensions," wrote Jeremy Mark, a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council's Geoeconomics Center.

In fact, international institutional investors have sold a net $148 billion of China's bonds since early 2022, and Chinese stocks have seen sharp declines, especially on exchanges in New York and Hong Kong, he said.

Separate reports have also shown that foreign investors are selling Chinese stocks at a faster pace. And a former IMF official predicted China's economy is likely headed for a so-called lost decade.

Mark said that this shift in market sentiment underscores how de-risking is as much about the bottom line as it is about diplomacy.

"And it does not bode well for China amid growing anxiety about the country's economic prospects," he added.

In addition to China's weak rebound from zero-COVID policies, Mark listed long-term structural challenges the economy faces, including a rapidly aging workforce, weak productivity, worsening inequality, and a massive property crisis.

To be sure, China doesn't need foreign capital as much as it did a generation ago, but investors' reluctance to "will reverberate through the economy over time," he warned.

Fund managers are worried about Beijing's regulatory crackdown on companies, including Western firms, Mark said.

"The bottom line for many foreign fund managers is that the risk of investing in Chinese securities has soared over the past year and the returns have not kept up," he said, adding that many large institutions have stopped buying Chinese assets completely and are shifting capital to places like India.

Meanwhile, the US is applying measures to counter China's ability to develop sensitive technology, and China is limiting its companies from launching offshore IPOs.

Mark acknowledged Chinese efforts to bring back some overseas investment, but foreign capital flows are set to keep declining, especially with new US restrictions on the horizon. Already, private equity investments in China led by Americans fell 76% last year.

"Combined with recent Biden administration restrictions on sales to China of advanced semiconductors and cutting-edge chip-making gear, the message to all classes of investors will be clear: Putting money in China is going to become riskier, and de-risking is only going to become more commonplace," he concluded.>

<Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) raised eyebrows with a claim she made during a TV interview on Thursday evening.

Greene said she read a document inside a SCIF ― a sensitive compartmented information facility ― related to bribery allegations Republicans have made against President Joe Biden but have yet to provide evidence for.

Then, she described that document while speaking to Laura Ingraham on Fox News:

Greene said the document was “unclassified,” but a SCIF is typically used only for very sensitive information. Lawmakers generally must check all electronic devices before entering, and cannot take notes while inside.

And usually, information revealed in the SCIF can’t be repeated outside of it.

But Greene ―a conspiracy theorist and close ally of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) who has called for a “national divorce” and spoke last year at a white nationalist event ― said she copied as much as she could once she left the SCIF.

“This is a document that all of America should be able to see, but the FBI is stonewalling us and they would only let us see it in a SCIF,” she said. “Well what I did after reading the document is I made notes when I walked out and I went up to the table.”

She held up those notes to the camera.

“I wrote down everything that I had just read so that I could come out and tell the American people what I read,” she said.

Her critics were baffled by what seemed like a confession.>