If you’ve been watching the various segments Melissa and I have been doing about AI at The Spectacle Podcast in recent weeks — and if you haven’t, what on earth is the matter with you? — you’ll know that I’m the sunny optimist of the two. Melissa, by comparison, is almost convinced SkyNet is going to kill us all before the Yankees next win the World Series. (RELATED: The Spectacle Ep. 350: Here’s What to Look Out for With AI) It’s not that I can’t see that happening. I do believe in chaos theory, though. I’m a little like Jeff Goldblum’s character in the Jurassic Park movies — I’m the guy who says, “Yeah, you think that’s how it’s going to work, but… it probably isn’t going down that way.” (RELATED: The Robot Revolution Is Nigh) I wrote a scene in Blockbusters, my last novel, where the protagonist decides to take the plunge and ride in a Waymo while he’s in L.A. And when the driverless taxi gets off the highway to deposit him downtown, he finds himself stuck in the middle of an ICE riot. The cartel thugs starting the trouble insist that he depart from his ride — because they’re going to set the Waymo ablaze. Because the cartels control the taxi companies, you see, and Waymos are not good for the traditional taxi business. It turns out that burning Waymos isn’t exactly the preferred method of Luddite rebellion. Instead, people simply open the car doors, and the Waymos now can’t go anywhere. Waymo is now paying DoorDash drivers to come by and shut the doors of the disabled robotaxis so they can get back to work. Anyway — pranking Waymos won’t stop SkyNet. AI is still coming. In fact, America is entering a moment that might prove more consequential than the early days of the internet itself. AI is quickly becoming the infrastructure behind how information flows, how speech is moderated, how money moves online, and even how truth is interpreted in digital spaces. (RELATED: When Effort Becomes Optional) The public conversation often focuses on which company will “win” the AI race. A lot better question is one Melissa keeps asking in those fabulous Spectacle segments: what values are being programmed into these systems that will soon help govern modern life? (RELATED: The Peril and Promise of AI) That question becomes especially urgent when it comes to the kids. Over the past decade, parents have slowly come to realize that the internet children inhabit is very different from the one many adults first encountered. Digital platforms, once described as harmless entertainment, are now powerful cultural ecosystems shaping our identity, behavior, and belief. And not in a way we’ve voted for. Online environments designed for kids have repeatedly been linked to disturbing content and predatory behavior. Some of those platforms have struggled — and others have barely bothered — to protect young users. Online environments designed for kids have repeatedly been linked to disturbing content and predatory behavior. Reporting and investigations have documented cases involving explicit sexual material, grooming, violent simulations, and other deeply troubling experiences accessible to minors. This problem is not hypothetical. We’ve all seen the headlines. Law enforcement has testified about the dangers. Advocacy groups working with victims say the scale of exploitation facilitated through digital platforms is appalling and getting worse. One example of how bad things are is the scandal around the massive gaming platform Roblox Corporation. Marketed primarily to younger audiences, the platform allows users to build and share games with millions of others. But its open design has also created opportunities for inappropriate content and interactions that can be difficult for parents to monitor. Roblox represents only one piece of a much larger system, though. The digital ecosystem children encounter every day is heavily shaped by the technology giants that control search engines, advertising pipelines, recommendation algorithms, and social media feeds. Companies such as Google and TikTok influence what children discover online long before they ever log into a game or social platform. Now those same companies are rapidly integrating artificial intelligence into nearly every layer of the internet, meaning there isn’t even a manager you can ask to see. AI is already being used to filter content, recommend videos, moderate speech, and determine which advertisements are approved or rejected. In the near future, these systems will play an even larger role in determining who can communicate online and how digital economies function. (RELATED: Suing Social Media Won’t Save the Children — But It Could Silence Everyone) Brent Dusing, founder of TruPlay, a faith-based gaming app for kids, believes the implications of this shift are enormous… As AI becomes more powerful and ubiquitous, it will be making decisions on who can post on social media, who receives payments, how resources are allocated, and even interpreting what is true. For the survival of our nation, these models must be based on the moral foundations of our civilization, including western ethical traditions, the common law, and the Bible. AI systems learn by absorbing enormous amounts of information and pattern recognition from the data used to train them. That training process inevitably reflects the worldview of the organizations building the technology. If the values embedded in those systems diverge sharply from the cultural and moral traditions that shaped American society, critics warn that the consequences could extend far beyond social media feeds. “We cannot allow AI models based on the values of Communist China or leftist atheist big tech companies to destroy American civilization,” Dusing says. These concerns become even more serious when viewed alongside the ongoing crisis of online child exploitation. The internet is the primary tool used by predators to identify and manipulate vulnerable children. Messaging apps, social platforms, and gaming communities can all provide avenues for grooming and exploitation when safeguards fail. Lawmakers from both political parties have begun to acknowledge the severity of the problem. A bipartisan measure known as the Renewed Hope Act seeks to strengthen the process for identifying and rescuing children who are victims of online sexual exploitation. The legislation would improve coordination between tech companies and law enforcement working to locate victims and dismantle trafficking networks. Faster identification can mean the difference between life and death for children trapped in abusive situations. This is the issue that Heisman Trophy winner and former NFL quarterback and philanthropist Tim Tebow has spoken forcefully about lately. During testimony before a Senate committee, Tebow described reviewing investigative evidence documenting the exploitation of children and urged lawmakers to take stronger action. That same scrutiny may also need to extend to how major technology platforms treat companies attempting to build safer alternatives for children. Dusing’s TruPlay, the faith-based children’s gaming and entertainment platform, says it has repeatedly had advertising blocked by Google and TikTok despite promoting content designed specifically to protect kids from many of the dangers discussed above. Why on earth would Google be blocking TruPlay? Dusing believes his company is being singled out because it’s a Christian outfit, even as other controversial content continues to circulate freely across those same platforms. If companies that claim to prioritize child safety are sidelined while problematic material flourishes, lawmakers should ask why. In fact, many legal experts are now calling on Congress to examine whether dominant technology platforms are applying their advertising and moderation policies fairly. Freezing the Christians out of the digital marketplace so that soulless Silicon Valley tech bros can dominate the childhood of your kids certainly isn’t what most of you would vote for. Despite those calls for action, Big Tech’s response so far is a fat yawn. All they care about is growth, ad revenue, and user engagement. Child protection? Bo-ring. Dusing believes ideological bias within certain technology platforms is part of the problem. “Clearly Google and TikTok hate Christianity because they block our ads, while allowing satanic, Buddhist, and children transgender content to advertise,” he says. “Do we really want Google’s AI model deciding what is posted on social media, who receives electronic payments, and what is true?” The concern is that the same algorithms shaping online visibility today could soon expand their authority into even more powerful areas of digital life. “We have the receipts that Google’s far-left atheistic AI hates American values,” Dusing says. “And Google is winning the AI race today. Do we want Google’s AI algorithm banning Christians from social media, blocking churches from receiving funds, and classifying the Bible as hate speech?” And AI — the digital afterbirth of the tech bros, if you will — is rapidly becoming the architecture of the internet itself. The systems being built today, by a number of companies you probably hadn’t even heard of a year ago, will influence speech, commerce, and culture for decades to come. So freezing the TruPlays out of the digital space is an awfully bad sign. If AI systems are trained without clear moral guardrails, which is what seems awfully clear to be the case, they’re going to end up amplifying the very problems parents and lawmakers are struggling to solve. Technology powerful enough to identify predators could also be used to silence voices or reshape cultural norms. The challenge facing the country here isn’t really technological. It’s moral and civic. We’re going to have to decide whether the digital systems guiding the next generation will reflect the moral and ethical foundations that built us, or are we stuck with the priorities of a handful of powerful corporations run by people who really, really don’t identify with us? The answer will shape the world our children inherit. God help us. READ MORE from Scott McKay: Five Quick Things: Hormuz Death of a Charlatan Darkness Before the Light in Cuba

Well, of course. The headline over there at Fox Business was blunt, “Energy prices could fall ‘pretty significantly’ if Iran deal reached, energy secretary says,” with the subtitle, “Energy Secretary Chris Wright says reopening the Strait of Hormuz through a peace agreement could quickly stabilize global fuel costs.” And unspoken? The effect the reality of energy prices falling “pretty significantly” would have on this November’s congressional elections. In fact, the effect would influence the federal elections not only for the Senate and House but races for state governorships and state legislatures as well. In fact, there is nothing new about this.  But one example of many along these lines took place way back there, a full 60 years ago in 1966. For those who came in late, two years earlier, in 1964, the Democrat President Lyndon Johnson swept to a 44-state landslide over the GOP nominee Senator Barry Goldwater. But two years later? In 1966, as noted a mere two years later, Republicans came back and clobbered LBJ and his Democrats in the congressional/gubernatorial elections. The GOP won 47 seats in the House, just shy of taking control of the House for the first time since 1954. They also won three Senate seats, again not enough for control of the Senate, but inching closer. Another big headline was the GOP’s win of 8 governorships. And notably, one of those state elections that captured headlines in the day was the victory of actor, movie and TV star Ronald Reagan. Reagan came seemingly out of the blue to win a landslide election as governor of California. And you know the rest of that story! And oh yes. Amidst all those GOP House wins in 1966 was the election of Houston businessman George H.W. Bush to a seat representing Houston in Congress. You know the rest of that story as well! Which is to say, not one but two future Republican presidents got their start in that 1966 GOP landslide. (With a third president, Bush’s son George W., doubtless taking notes on his Dad’s win. Setting Bush Jr. on the path of his own future career in, first, Texas politics as governor and eventually as a two-term president himself.) Without question, the LBJ insistence on liberal legislation passed in 1964 and 1965 finally caught up with Democrats in 1966.  Surging to the front of the issues of the day was the emerging LBJ-supported War in Vietnam. And close behind was a focus on the economy and crime. Leading the concern in the crime department was a 1965 riot in the Watts section of Los Angeles. The riot lasted six days, with considerable television coverage of vast looting and burning stores. There were also snipers taking shots at responding police. Collectively, vividly televised, the images coming through American televisions were of a war zone as usually seen in the coverage of foreign countries. Over 30 people were killed in the Watts riot, and millions of dollars in property damage collectively made the headlines. The question? What if, instead of riots and an inflation-infected economy driving the election, the reverse had been true? With peace, tranquility, and a thriving economy, the dominant realities of the previous two years after the 1964 election that led into the fall 1966 elections? In 2026, as that Fox Business headline indicates, a peace agreement with Iran over the Strait of Hormuz that in turn produces a corresponding significant drop in energy prices will, with little doubt, have a real effect on the 2026 elections. And correspondingly, as the 1966 elections illustrated, the opposite can produce a GOP loss. But without doubt, no one is more aware of this than President Trump and the elders of the GOP who are responsible for the multiple elections taking place throughout the country in 2026. Each of these elections is decidedly unique in its own fashion. What is an issue in one state is not necessarily an issue in another. Yet still and all, with a dominant national issue like energy prices, how much it costs Americans to fill ‘er up at the local gas station can easily become the leading issue in the election. And for the easiest of reasons to understand. Which is that the price of energy is a central driving factor in the state of the economy. The political formula is as simple as it is ancient. When the economy is in great shape, the party seen as the party responsible for this has the makings of an election win. When the opposite is true, the results reflect that. So buckle in, America. Starting in April (and actually beginning in what’s left of March!), the rest of 2026, leading to the November elections, will see a considerable political struggle over the shape of the economy and whatever credit or blame is assigned to the players involved. And the price of gas will be out front as an issue. 2026 is already following in the long, very long tradition of congressional and gubernatorial elections held when a president is not on the ballot as a candidate for re-election. With the state of the economy — in this case driven by the price of gas — front and center as issue number one. With whatever is happening in foreign policy — like the state of any war in the Middle East — right behind as issue number two. And again? Buckle in, America. Buckle in. READ MORE from Jeffrey Lord: Joe Kent vs. Iran’s Imminent Threat If FDR Had Killed Hitler? A New Tax Bracket: Politicians

“Sound Teaching and Talarico,” editorial cartoon by Yogi Love for The American Spectator on Mar. 23, 2026.

During the left’s infamous “march through the institutions,” it brilliantly captured organizations that held gatekeeping authority over access to careers and professions. Among these were education, journalism, and much of the fine arts, but the most important was the left’s capture of the American Bar Association. ABA accreditation of a law school has been required in all 50 states for a law school’s graduates to be able to take the bar exam. Texas and Florida just ended the ABA’s monopoly, and not a moment too soon. As documented by George Parry at The American Spectator last May, in 1992, “the ABA abandoned all pretense of being an apolitical professional organization and publicly emerged as a special-interest adjunct of the Democrat Party.” (READ MORE: The American Bar Association’s Day of Reckoning) That year, the ABA took a partisan stand in favor of abortion legislation, and it presented an award to Anita Hill for her testimony against Clarence Thomas in his 1991 Supreme Court confirmation hearings. The situation only got worse from there. By 2021, to maintain accreditation, law schools had to “demonstrate by concrete action a commitment to diversity and inclusion.” This included having faculty and student bodies that were “diverse with respect to gender, race, and ethnicity.” With the ABA’s monolithic power now weakened, it didn’t take long for the other big red state to follow Texas’s lead. While there was some pushback against the ABA’s political agenda, its monopoly power remained unchecked. In 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that certain race-based admissions programs (at Harvard and the University of North Carolina) violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, but the ABA continued to seek workarounds to perpetuate the requirement for diversity quotas. In April 2025, President Trump issued an Executive Order barring the use of DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) as a metric in law school accreditation. But it was the state of Texas that finally dropped the bomb that terminated the ABA’s monopoly on accreditation. This past January, Texas formally terminated the requirement that a degree from an ABA-accredited law school be required to take the state bar exam and gain admittance to the State Bar of Texas. As documented in a piece at Insight Into Academia titled  “Texas Ends ABA Accreditation Requirement for Law Schools,”  the state Supreme Court will now take on the role of being the accrediting agency. In a recent order, the Texas Supreme Court announced it will no longer require graduation from an ABA-accredited law school for admission to the Texas bar. Instead, the court will establish and maintain its own list of approved law schools — ending a 42-year arrangement under which the ABA effectively served as the gatekeeper for legal licensure in the state. Texans rightfully trust a court elected by the citizens of Texas to do a better job in setting accreditation standards than the hyper-partisan ABA has done. With the ABA’s monolithic power now weakened, it didn’t take long for the other big red state to follow Texas’s lead.  Shortly thereafter, Florida’s Supreme Court terminated Florida’s sole reliance on the ABA for law school accreditation. As documented in a Reuters piece dated Jan. 16,  The Supreme Court of Florida said in an opinion on Thursday that it was replacing the ABA as the “sole accrediting agency” for law schools whose graduates may take the state’s bar exam, which is a requirement to practice in the state. Graduates of ABA law schools are still eligible to take Florida’s exam, but the court said it plans to extend bar eligibility to law schools approved by other federally recognized accrediting agencies — though it noted that no such agencies currently have rules specific to law schools. The court said it will contact other accrediting agencies to gauge their interest in approving law schools. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis weighed in on X (Twitter), stating that “The (highly partisan) ABA should not be a gatekeeper for legal education or the legal profession.” The liberation of Texas and Florida law schools from mandatory, ABA-enforced woke orthodoxy is a major milestone. Other conservative states should quickly follow suit, helping accelerate the nullification of the ABA’s authority into a broad preference cascade. READ MORE from Buck Throckmorton: Shipping Interruption in Persian Gulf Is Yet Another Reminder of the Risks of Offshoring Media Dishonestly Blames Rising Sea Levels for Houses Lost to Surf in North Carolina’s Outer Banks Blue States Are Moving Legislation Forward to Restrict How Much You Can Drive

The most destructive attacks on Israel from Iranian missile barrages since the start of the war occurred over the weekend, as cluster warheads have become a mainstay in Iran’s aerial strategies. Iran first used cluster warheads at the end of last year’s “12-Day War” with Israel. A single ballistic missile with a cluster warhead can disperse between 20 and 80 bomblets at high altitude and cover an area of up to seven miles. Each bomb carries several pounds of explosives. This presents significant challenges to Israel’s air defense systems. Since radars cannot effectively distinguish between a ballistic missile with a conventional or cluster warhead, Israel’s advanced early-detection systems that determine when and how to fire interceptors can easily mistake one for the other. If identified correctly, a large number of interceptors would need to be launched to adequately defend against cluster bombs compared to the conventional missile, which typically requires a one-to-one interceptor ratio. Whether or not Israel can sustain these types of attacks based on its current stockpile of interceptors is up for question. The Israeli Air Force (IAF) often selectively chooses not to intercept all aerial threats to conserve short-range interceptors. Because the cluster bombs are deemed not capable of penetrating protected residential bomb shelters, these often pass through uninterrupted, as seen in recent days. In other words, civilians are deemed safe from cluster bombs as long as they follow the military Home Front Command’s protocol to enter protected spaces at the sound of early warnings or sirens. Any loss of property is considered acceptable collateral to preserve interceptor stockpiles. This primitive strategy, for such a hi-tech and defense-focused nation, raises questions as to the preparedness of the homeland defense for a long-haul missile war. Recent interception failures over the weekend resulted in the most destructive attacks since the start of the war. Five waves of Iranian missile barrages rained down across central Israel on Friday afternoon. One missile landed in the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City, next to the Temple Mount, while dozens of cluster bombs and shrapnel from intercepted missiles caused significant damage in the cities of Rehovot and Rishon LeZion. In the north, missile shrapnel damaged Israel’s largest oil refinery, the Bazan refinery, in Haifa. The attacks were repeated on Sunday morning. By 2 PM on Sunday, cluster bombs from six separate barrages had struck residential buildings and roads in the Tel Aviv area. The densely populated areas in the country’s center around Tel Aviv, and the industry-laden regions in the north around Haifa have long been the prime targets for Iranian, Hezbollah, and Houthis attacks. However, two devastating missile hits in the sparsely populated regions in the south on Saturday shook the country and were chilling reminders that no area is entirely out of harm’s way. On Saturday morning, an Iranian ballistic missile demolished a residential building in the city of Dimona — supposed home to Israel’s elusive nuclear reactor and research facilities — injuring 20 people. Later, around 10:40 PM, a ballistic missile with 1,000 pounds of explosives struck a courtyard shared by four mid-rise apartment buildings in the quiet, desert city of Arad (also my former home). The building’s facades were blown clean off before the structures collapsed minutes later. Blown-out windows and debris littered the downtown area. One family, living six blocks away, told me their ten-story building “shook hard.” Hundreds were reported injured, and rescue teams worked throughout the night pulling people from the rubble. The attack on Arad is the most destructive so far in the course of the war. The direct hits on Dimona and Arad, about twenty miles apart in the upper Negev Desert, were not the result of overwhelming missile barrages or cluster warheads, but failures of the air defense systems to intercept singular, conventional ballistic missiles. “The air defense systems operated but did not intercept the missile,” said IDF spokesperson Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin on the Arad attack. “We will investigate the incident and learn from it. This is not a special or unfamiliar type of munition.” The results of any investigations, if made public, will most likely reaffirm what the Israeli public already knows and accepts: that the country’s air defense systems, although highly advanced, are not hermetic. Speaking at the impact site in Arad on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu encouraged the public not to “rely on miracles” for defense, but to seek shelter. Reports indicated that those injured in the Dimona and Arad strikes had not been in protected spaces. “There was a full ten minutes from the [early] warning until the missile’s impact,” Netanyahu said. “If everyone had gone to protected areas in time, to the shelters that are there under every home, no one would have been injured.” Speaker of the Iranian Parliament, Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, responded that if Israel is unable to intercept missiles over Dimona and its heavily protected nuclear sites, then “the sky of Israel is defenseless” and Iran is prepared to enter a “new phase” in the war with “pre-planned operations.” Netanyahu made a sharp distinction between the tactics of Israel and Iran while visiting Arad over the weekend. “We are responding with great force, but not on civilians,” Netanyahu said. “We’re going after the regime. We’re going after the IRGC, this criminal gang, and we’re going after them personally, their leaders, their installations, their economic assets.” Netanyahu also called on European allies to join the fight against Iran and alleviate the pressure on Israel. The Islamic Republic, he said, has “the capacity to reach deep into Europe … putting everyone in their sights.” The warning to Europe was in reference to Iran’s attempt last week to strike the island of Diego Garcia, located roughly 2,500 miles away in the central Indian Ocean. The island is a strategic joint U.S.-U.K. base and home to US bombers and nuclear submarines. One Iranian missile failed mid-flight, and the other was intercepted by a US warship. The attempted attack, however, suggests that Iran’s missile capabilities can exceed greater distances than previously assumed. READ MORE from Bennett Tucker: The New Israel–Hezbollah War Adjusting to War in Israel, Again The Lion Roars Again Image licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic.

American education is broken; this isn’t a secret. But parents are starting to fight back with lawyers—not because their kids aren’t getting into Harvard, but because schools are failing to deliver any semblance of effectiveness and to make even the most basic promise of education itself. Consider the recent case in Washington State. Makena Simonsen, a student in the Edmonds School District, graduated with a 3.87 GPA. As a parent, you’d be saying, “Great job, nice work.” That is precisely what the administration wants — to keep parents off their backs. Yet, according to attorney Lara Hruska of Seattle’s Cedar Law, this student was reading at an elementary level. This “empathy” diploma, her attorney asserts, did not open doors — it “shut the door” on further support. According to the lawsuit, the district effectively passed her along without ensuring she had mastered basic skills. This “empathy” diploma, her attorney asserts, did not open doors — it “shut the door” on further support. By receiving a standard diploma, she was disqualified from a transition program that could have helped her develop basic life and vocational skills. In turn, this cost the student and her parents money. She had planned to enroll in the district’s free vocational program, which helps transition special-needs students into independent life, but discovered she was ineligible because she received a regular high school diploma. Instead, she enrolled in Bellevue College’s Occupational and Life Skills program at a cost of more than $40,000 annually. (RELATED: How the Classical Education Movement Is Rescuing a Lost Generation) For the Simonsen family, what was presented as an achievement became, in practice, a financial barrier. The lawsuit goes further, alleging what has been described as “benevolent discrimination” — a system that, in an effort to avoid difficult truths, lowers expectations while maintaining the appearance of progress. The result is not compassion. It is educational malpractice. “By letting her kind of pass along, giving her these grades and then giving her this diploma — which shut the door on her transition services access — they actually caused her harm,” Hruska states. “Her diploma was more of a participation trophy.” This should be a tipping point. School systems must be forced to prove measurable, not superficial, progress — rather than the status quo: ‘wink-wink’ submit the assignments, get the grade, accumulate the credits, and we’ll award the diploma. Grades assigned, credits accumulated, diplomas handed out willy-nilly — and when the bill comes due, it will be the taxpayers who pay it. This dishonesty is not limited to one district; unfortunately, this is commonplace. The incentives are clear: graduation rates trump literacy; optics replace outcomes. Careerist administrators are not judged by what students know, but by whether they are pushed through the system with the least possible resistance; symbols and funding — not substance — are the coin of the realm. This hollowing-by-design extends into higher education, where a similar pattern continues. Colleges increasingly serve as holding-pattern institutions, delaying maturity and placating underprepared students. (RELATED: Buyer Beware: The College Edition) The real danger is that this breakdown will not stay confined to schools, but will extend into the decisions families make every day. For generations, one path to prosperity was clear: study hard, go to college, succeed. That path justified real financial sacrifice. Parents saved to support their children’s education, believing it was a smart bet on a better future. But that path is eroding. Parents are not naïve, especially when it comes to their finances. They see the flaws — not because they have lost faith in education itself, but because they are losing confidence in the metrics used to measure it. Families may begin to reconsider the assumption that college is the best investment. Savings that once flowed into 529 plans may be diverted. New pathways — the trades, apprenticeships, direct entry into the workforce, entrepreneurial efforts — may begin to look far more attractive than a $300K comparative literature degree. (RELATED: A Bag of Rocks for $400,000?) If that shift occurs at scale, the economic implications will be significant. Higher education depends on a steady influx of students and the financial commitments — backed, of course, by the government — that accompany them. A loss of confidence, even gradual, could force a reckoning — one that colleges and universities have long feared. In that regard, the failure of K–12 education is even more damaging because parents are not being provided with accurate information to make decisions for their children. The solution is not complex. It is simply ignored. Yet individuals in the free market can make choices — and in doing so, disrupt the system. As Friedrich Hayek wrote in The Use of Knowledge in Society, economic knowledge “never exists in concentrated or integrated form.” Markets succeed because they harness that dispersed knowledge, allowing individuals to coordinate in ways no central planner could replicate. For good or ill, we live in a litigious society. These lawsuits, combined with the market’s quiet discipline, may prove to be the force that finally disrupts the “central planners” of the education industrial complex. A system that cannot gauge knowledge will eventually be measured by the market — and the market is far less forgiving than school administrators. READ MORE from Pete Connolly: The Radicalization of American Politics The Inevitable Result of Government’s Addiction to Spending Other People’s Money John Cheever’s ‘Christmas Is a Sad Season for the Poor’

It’s official! Markwayne Mullin is IN as the new head of DHS, sailing through the Senate with a 54-45 vote: IT'S OFFICIAL: Markwayne Mullin has just been CONFIRMED as President Trump's DHS Secretary in a 54-45 vote The Democrats who crossed over:– John Fetterman (PA)– Martin Heinrich (NM) RAND PAUL (R-KY) voted against The chamber ERUPTED in applause! pic.twitter.com/4yuOAVIksD — Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) March 24, 2026 Watch the moment right here: IT'S OFFICIAL: Markwayne Mullin has just been CONFIRMED as President Trump's DHS Secretary in a 54-45 vote The Democrats who crossed over:– John Fetterman (PA)– Martin Heinrich (NM) RAND PAUL (R-KY) voted against The chamber ERUPTED in applause! pic.twitter.com/4yuOAVIksD — Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) March 24, 2026 Congrats, now get to work!