Rep. James Comer (R-KY) and Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) announced the creation of the Task Force On The Declassification Of Federal Secrets on Tuesday, February 11, 2025. "We'll be conducting investigations into the following: The assassinations of JFK, RFK, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (also known as UAPs), Unidentified Submerged Objects (also known as USOs), The Epstein Client List, the origins of COVID-19, and The 911 Files." -- Representative Anna Paulina Luna Original YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EK7-rG1AYNM

Let’s try to make this truly quick, shall we? Oh, who am I kidding? There’s way too much stuff afoot to make this version of the 5QT actually quick in any real sense of the word. But I’m going to make an effort because let’s face it — we’re all ready for the weekend. So… 1. Glitch McConnell’s Last Stand … Or, Sit Mitch McConnell has a new nickname, and I’m fine with the fact I didn’t pick it. I had some pride of ownership in Morphine Mitch, which was my moniker for him, but given the fact that he can’t seem to stand or walk anymore without falling down and breaking something, and he definitely doesn’t seem capable of holding court in front of a press avail without needing a reboot, Glitch McConnell supersedes everything else. And Glitch is now the sole Republican in the Senate voting against Trump’s nominees. That was true of both RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, and the word is it’ll be true of Kash Patel as well. There was a time when Mitch McConnell was feared. When he would snap his fingers and the Senate Republicans would stand at attention. But that time is gone. McConnell doesn’t hold much, if any, sway in that body anymore. How can he? He’s a pathetic figure now, who gets rolled into the chamber in a wheelchair to make irrelevant votes against his own party. McConnell’s political underlings are out raising money for establishment Republicans who are in increasing disfavor with the party’s base, and even now the word is they’re hard at work trying to stand up a Nikki Haley 2028 presidential bid. But it’s all gone. The Mitch Machine isn’t feared anymore. Politically it’s a net negative. And Mitch McConnell has now become Glitch McConnell. On Thursday, President Trump laid into him in terms even more devastating than anything he said about Joe Biden — who as it happens is actually in a little better shape than McConnell is… Donald Trump responds to Mitch McConnell not voting for RFK & Tulsi “I feel sorry for Mitch… he’s not equipped mentally, he wasn’t equipped ten years ago in my opinion, he let the Republican Party go to hell.” pic.twitter.com/zcAcwMQ3I0 — Media Research Center (@theMRC) February 13, 2025 A classic movie scene keeps coming to mind… It didn’t have to be this way, you know. McConnell could have walked away in 2020 with some degree of dignity. But the addiction to power, money, and corruption that the Washington Swamp foists on too many of its votaries was too deep with him, and now he’s likely not to last until the end of his term — disgraced and pathetic in the same manner as Dianne Feinstein was on her way out. Trump says he feels sorry for McConnell. He doesn’t. And neither should any of us. Politicians who won’t go away gracefully are not figures suitable for pity. They should be spoken of as they are — gluttons who have lost the concept of public service and cannot surrender their grip on power over their fellow man. He’ll be gone soon. He’s no longer useful to anyone. And it’s his own fault that he’s going to be remembered as that bitter, enfeebled old man whom nobody listens to anymore — not that he’s capable of communicating anyway. 2. Is the Ukraine War Finally Ending? Before he became Glitch McConnell, the senior senator from Kentucky once said that funding the slaughter in Ukraine was his caucus’s top priority. How’d that go? With $200 billion poured down a hole, the country we’re supposed to be allied with absolutely wrecked, and a significant portion of its populace scattered across Europe, it’s hard to imagine the war could have been more of a disaster for Ukraine. This week Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said something obviously prudent, which is that the Trump administration is ending all talk of adding Ukraine to NATO. President Trump had calls with Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy, aimed at ending the war. Zelenskyy agreed that to repay the United States for the military and humanitarian aid we’ve given his country, Ukraine will give America the rights to an estimated half-trillion dollars worth of rare earth minerals under their soil. Which, by the way, is a terrific win-win deal. American mining companies will be investing a lot of money in Ukraine to extract those minerals, and that means great jobs for Ukraine and almost certainly a lot of infrastructure to move the products of those mines. It’s a big economic development boon for post-war Ukraine, as well as a major strategic coup for us as we try to break China’s hold on the world markets for those minerals. But what are we talking about here? Is the war ending, and on what terms? Rep. Joe Wilson probably has this right… A land swap between War Criminal Putin and Ukraine to end the war is a FAIR DEAL. Ukrainian-occupied Russian territory for Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory. — Joe Wilson (@RepJoeWilson) February 12, 2025 Perhaps the only good development in the three years of this war was the breakout the Ukrainians managed last year in the Kursk region of Russia, where they were able to capture and hold a chunk of territory behind what were enemy lines. That creates the possibility of a land swap that can restore some semblance of Ukrainian territorial integrity after the war. But there are people out there insisting that Ukraine must be restored to its 1991 borders, including reacquiring the Crimean Peninsula that they haven’t possessed for the past 11 years. And that, as Hegseth noted, is certainly not realistic. Getting Ukraine back to its 2021 borders would be a lot likelier. If even that is possible. (RELATED: The Biden Trap) And more than that, it isn’t in America’s interest to continue this hemorrhage of our dollars and Ukrainian lives over whatever little chunks of the Donbas might be at stake. (RELATED: President Trump and Peace in Ukraine) On the other hand, it seems like Germany’s socialist chancellor doesn’t like the idea of peace… German Chancellor Scholz called on the parliament to impose a state of emergency due to “the events of the last 24 hours and the statements made by the U.S. government” regarding Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/d4Ux4nZ90w — Clash Report (@clashreport) February 13, 2025 Now you can see why it was wise to drop the idea of Ukraine in NATO. Here’s the largest country in NATO, which by the way is under no plausible definition a free or democratic country given that its government immiserates its citizens with insane economic and energy policies and that is openly defying the democratic process by refusing to allow its largest political party to take power, and thinks it’s an “emergency” that Trump is going to negotiate a peace deal for Ukraine. (RELATED: Lights Out in Germany) Meanwhile, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, another socialist tyrant immiserating his own people with lunatic economics when he’s not jailing them for exercising their God-given right to speak and dissent, is joining the rest of the EU crowd in insisting that his government and the other Europeans have a seat at the peace table. (RELATED: Never Had It So Bad: The Decline of the Great British Empire) Our buddy across the pond Daniel Jupp took this notion to the woodshed… They won’t spend enough to defend themselves. They haven’t got an industrial base anymore to build anything needed for war. They have tiny armies and even smaller brains. And they have been the most belligerent war mongering lunatics using NATO as an excuse to attack Russia all securely in the knowledge that they wouldn’t be doing the fighting. Their courage consists of being willing to risk nuclear war for a corrupt cause, but in terms of conventional warfare they are toothless fools. The EU leaders and Starmer have made themselves an irrelevant joke, just like the leadership of NATO. The only route to peace and sanity is by ignoring them. Fortunately Trump knows this. Just so. The debate shouldn’t be whether Ukraine should be part of NATO. We’re already obligated to Ukraine’s security; we made that agreement as part of the deal in which the Ukrainians consented to have their nuclear weapons left over from the Soviet Union’s collapse taken away. And so we’ve fulfilled that agreement with loads and loads of American money and munitions, and now we’ll fulfill it by brokering a peace deal that should have been negotiated back in 2022. (RELATED: Kursk Is Not Worth a Nuclear War) What have the Europeans contributed? Other than taking in Ukrainian refugees, something they can’t allege is a major consideration seeing as though they’ve actively recruited Muslims from the Third World to supply cheap labor and votes for their socialist parties. Trump doesn’t sound very interested in their opinions. He shouldn’t be. He warned the Germans, for example, that their stupid energy policies would put them at the mercy of the Russians, and they laughed at him. No, what’s the real question isn’t whether Ukraine ought to be part of NATO but whether we should be. Our NATO allies are, with a couple of exceptions, a gaggle of socialist semi-tyrannies whose treatment of their citizens belies their nominal statuses as free countries, who are squandering their national cultures in service to a broken globalist agenda, and who pull very, very little weight in upholding the strength of the alliance. Send American kids to die for Emmanuel Macron? Or Keir Starmer? Seriously? We’ll see what Europe looks like in a few years when its people have had a chance to weigh in on the current crop of “leaders.” If things don’t get better, they’re not worth our time. Meanwhile, Trump is going to secure peace for Ukraine. We’ll see how grateful the Germans, and the rest, are for that. 3. JD Vance, AI, and a Paris Tour De Force Speaking of the Euros, they’re doing everything they can to stifle the growth of AI and the tech economy. Here in the States, we’re seeing what the power of tech can do, as the Trump administration is revolutionizing government by use of Large Language Models and AI algorithms to identify and eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse, and the possibilities for an entirely new and far better reality are opening wide. In Europe, they’re too busy trying to censor their own people and there is almost no progress being made on AI at all. It’s become a joke on the Continent now. So this week, Vice President JD Vance went to Paris for a summit on AI, and if you didn’t see the speech he gave … wow. It was a highly impressive delivery, for one thing — particularly for somebody making his debut on the international political stage. Before that speech there was perhaps some question whether Vance had the gravitas to succeed Trump after the current term; it’s hard to imagine any of that persists now. But more than that, Vance faced down those leaders, who represented most if not all of Europe, and politely read them the riot act based on their suppression of the tech industry. And he did it while asserting that America will dominate the new AI landscape and not “authoritarian regimes,” by which he meant China. Vance has a Silicon Valley background, so this was in his wheelhouse. Still, wow. It’s going to be fun watching him spread his wings over the course of this term. 4. A Quick Book Update If you’ve been watching or listening to The Spectacle Podcast, you’ve probably heard me mention that I’m working on a political book. I thought I’d toss in a little news on that score for those of you who might be interested. All along, the idea was to call the book The Revivalist Agenda, since it’ll be a sequel to The Revivalist Manifesto. That’s the book I wrote back in 2022 which, by the way, has held up amazingly well and actually predicted a lot of what’s been happening over the past several months (yes, this is an invitation to pick up a copy at Amazon; they’ve still got plenty). I ran into all kinds of trouble trying to write The Revivalist Agenda. Why? Because it’s a policy book. And writing a book about policy while the Trump administration is making a blizzard of new policies practically daily is utterly impossible. I’d scroll through X and find something every few minutes that would materially alter what I’d already written. But, and you’ve noticed this if you read my work here at The American Spectator, particularly lately, what isn’t changing but rather is piling up, is the evidence that something has fundamentally changed in American politics. So the reworked book that I’m now making fast progress on is called The Revivalist Revolution. Because we’re living through just that right now. In one of next week’s columns, I’ll delve further into the thesis behind the book. But suffice it to say that a whole new era of American political history has begun and it won’t look much like the one we just left behind at all. This is going to be a really fun book to write and an even more enjoyable one to read. 5. Video Cartoons: A Tutorial This is a little different animal than you’ve seen in this space, but I’ve had some feedback on something we’ve begun doing over at RVIVR and I’ve been dropping occasionally at my X account, and it’s been generally pretty positive. I think you’re going to see more and more of these given how easy they are to produce. What are we talking about here? Well… Hey @elonmusk, this isn’t you, is it? :] pic.twitter.com/ryfCB4W1nE — Scott McKay (@TheHayride) February 11, 2025 And… Hey, y’all want to check in on @JBPritzker? pic.twitter.com/f42UHDnZ4f — Scott McKay (@TheHayride) February 7, 2025 I’ve had people ask me how to produce these things because they’re eye-catching and often funny. Like I said, they’re pretty easy. I’ll show you how they’re done. What you need is a little bit of software. You’re going to need Adobe Photoshop or something similar, you need an AI image app like Grok or Stable Diffusion, and you need an image-to-video app like Kling AI or Pixverse. You might also want an app like Adobe Express which can turn a video into a GIF file, but that’s optional. The game here is to make a composite image in Photoshop and then run it through an image-to-video app with a prompt that creates motion that tells a story. So let’s make one. How about a crazy Liz Warren who’s going off the reservation, so to speak? First, we’ll get a picture of Warren. We’ll just grab the one she’s got as her profile image on X… And we’ll bring it into Photoshop, remove the background, and cut away everything but her face. Then we’ll go into Stable Diffusion and make a background image. We’ll use this prompt: “An old female Indian chief in a giant headdress stands outside of a teepee and holds a tomahawk; a small native American village is in the background.” It’s usually a good idea to have the AI generate multiple images because it isn’t all that proficient yet at giving you what you’re looking for. For example, this was the best of the four generations Stable Diffusion kicked out from that prompt… No tomahawk, but we’ll take it. We’ll drag this image into Photoshop and match it up with what we’re already working on, and… Now it’s time to do some playing around with brightness, contrast, hue, saturation, vibrance, shadows, and highlights and see if we can integrate that face with the background, and… Meh. Not perfect, but it’ll do. Except that facial expression isn’t really going to work for us. So there’s a great app out there called Reshot AI, and it does some magical things with faces. You can change eye and eyebrow positions, alter the tilt of a head or the direction a head is facing, open and close a mouth, and so on. So to get Liz where we want her, we’ll play around in Reshot and come up with… Yep. That’s what she looks like more often than not lately. So now we’ll take this picture over to Kling AI, and we’ll upload it into the image-to-video generator and give it this prompt: “She’s very angry and she’s gesticulating as she furiously berates the camera, and a few Indians come out of the teepees in the background to find out what is the matter.” You usually will need to go through a few generations to get something good, but this one showed up after a couple of false starts… We didn’t even ask her to say “Trump.” Just lucky, I guess. Maybe the AI knows more than we imagine. Anyhow, that’s the magic of AI video cartoons. I’m having a lot of fun with these. They’re intended for satirical purposes only, which is why I’m doing a lot of them as caricatures. At RVIVR on Thursday we had a piece about crooked Democrat governors screwing electric ratepayers with green energy mandates, so we came up with this… Not perfect, but funny enough. As this gets down to more of a science, these things could do for political satire what DOGE is doing for governmental accountability. Anyway, I’ll have more of these going forward. And now that you know how it’s done, I’m sure some of you will be able to far outstrip my work. READ MORE from Scott McKay: The Left’s Crisis Might Be Getting Started. Ours Is Actually Ending. ‘Now Let Him Enforce It’ Let The Man Cook The post Five Quick Things: The Glitch McConnell Solo Act appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

The Fox News headline quoting Massachusetts Democrat Rep. Ayanna Pressley was hilarious. Quite unintentionally. The headline: “House Dems reintroduce reparations legislation: ‘We refuse to be silent.’ Progressive Rep. Ayanna Pressley says ‘reparations are a necessary step in achieving justice.’” Over at Pressley’s own website was this headline: “Amid Onslaught on DEI, Pressley, Booker, Colleagues Reintroduce Historic Reparations Bill During Black History Month. H.R. 40 Would Form Commission for Develop Reparations Proposals for African Americans.” In fact? In fact, Pressley, New Jersey’s Democrat Senator Cory Booker, and Democrat colleagues supporting this reparations movement are curiously decidedly silent about the only major political party in American history that fervently supported not only slavery but segregation and, yes indeed, the Ku Klux Klan. That would be, of course, Pressley and Booker’s own Democratic Party. In the past, I have detailed the close ties of Pressley’s party on this score. Let’s review. Pressley, Booker, and colleagues are not demanding reparations from the Democrat Party for the number of Democratic Party platforms supporting slavery. There were six from 1840 through 1860. Pressley, Booker, and colleagues are silent on Democrats paying reparations for the number of Democratic Party platforms that either supported segregation outright or were silent on the subject. There were 20, from 1868 through 1948. Pressley, Booker, and colleagues are not demanding their party pay reparations for its staunch support of “Jim Crow” — as in the laws. These were the post-Civil War laws passed enthusiastically by Democrat legislators of the day. These laws segregated public schools, public transportation, restaurants, restrooms, and public places in general (everything from water coolers to beaches). The reason Rosa Parks became famous is that she sat in the “whites only” front section of a bus in Montgomery, Ala., the “whites only” designation the direct result of Democratic local officials. Pressley, Booker, and colleagues are silent on Democrat reparations for the support of the Ku Klux Klan, which, according to Columbia University historian Eric Foner, became “a military force serving the interests of the Democratic Party.” They are also silent on reparations from the Democrat Party for, in the words of University of North Carolina historian Allen Trelease, using the Klan as the “terrorist arm” of the Democratic Party. Terrorism as in terrorizing black Americans. Pressley, Booker, and colleagues are silent on reparations from their party for the fact Democrats opposed the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the Constitution. The 13th banned slavery. The 14th effectively overturned the infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision (made by Democratic pro-slavery Supreme Court justices) by guaranteeing due process and equal protection to former slaves. The 15th gave black Americans the right to vote. Pressley, Booker, and colleagues are silent on reparations from their party for opposing the Civil Rights Act of 1866. It was passed by the Republican Congress over the veto of Democrat President Andrew Johnson, who had been placed on Republican Abraham Lincoln’s winning 1864 ticket as a unifying gesture when the Civil War was winding down. The law was designed to provide blacks with the right to own private property, sign contracts, sue, and serve as witnesses in a legal proceeding. There is more silence from Pressley, Booker, and colleagues on Democrat reparations for the party’s opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1875. It was passed by a Republican Congress and signed into law by Republican President Ulysses Grant. The law prohibited racial discrimination in public places and public accommodations. Pressley, Booker, and colleagues are silent on Democrat reparations for passing its 1904 platform, which devoted a section to “Sectional and Racial Agitation,” claiming the GOP’s protests against segregation and the denial of voting rights to blacks sought to “revive the dead and hateful race and sectional animosities in any part of our common country,” which in turn “means confusion, distraction of business, and the reopening of wounds now happily healed.” Pressley, Booker, and colleagues are silent on the Democratic Party paying reparations for four Democratic platforms, 1908-1920, that are silent on blacks, segregation, lynching, and voting rights as racial problems in the country mounted. By contrast, the GOP platforms of those years specifically address “Rights of the Negro” (1908), oppose lynching (in 1912, 1920, 1924, 1928) and, as Democrat FDR’s New Deal kicks in, speak out about the dangers of making blacks “wards of the state.” Pressley, Booker, and colleagues are silent on reparations from their party for the Democratic Convention of 1924, known to history as the “Klanbake.” The 103-ballot convention was held in Madison Square Garden. Hundreds of delegates were members of the Ku Klux Klan, the Klan so powerful that a plank condemning Klan violence was defeated outright. To celebrate, the Klan staged a rally with 10,000 hooded Klansmen in a field in New Jersey directly across the Hudson from the site of the convention. Attended by hundreds of cheering convention delegates, the rally featured burning crosses and calls for violence against African Americans and Catholics. There is no demand from Pressley, Booker, and their colleagues for the Democratic Party to pay reparations for Democrats segregating the federal government at the direction of Democrat President Woodrow Wilson upon taking office in 1913. There is no demand from Pressley, Booker, and colleagues for Democratic Party reparations for creating the Federal Reserve Board, passing labor and child welfare laws, and creating Social Security with Wilson’s New Freedom and FDR’s New Deal. There is no mention that these programs were created as the result of an agreement from Democrats to ignore segregation and the lynching of blacks. Neither is there a demand for reparations by their party for the thousands of Democrat local officials, state legislators, state governors, U.S. congressmen, and U.S. senators who were elected as supporters of slavery and then segregation between 1800 and 1965. Nor are they demanding the party pay reparations for the deal with the devil that left segregation and lynching as a way of life in return for election support for three post-Civil War Democratic presidents, Grover Cleveland, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin Roosevelt. There is no demand from Pressley, Booker, and colleagues for Democrat reparations for the three-fourths of the Democrat opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Bill in the U.S. House that came from Democrats, or the 80 percent of “nay” votes in the Senate that came from Democrats. Last but certainly not least, there is no demand from Pressley, Booker, and colleagues that the Democratic Party pay reparations for allowing Birmingham, Ala., Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connor — who in 1963 infamously unleashed dogs and fire hoses on civil rights protestors — to serve as a member of both the Democratic National Committee and the Ku Klux Klan. In short, the recent headlines from Rep. Pressley, Senator Booker, and their Democratic colleagues demanding the issue of reparations for slavery opens up a pandora’s box of vivid history that their Democrat Party should finally face up to. Will Pressley, Booker, and colleagues demand reparations from their own Democratic Party for its horrendous treatment of black Americans as a matter of official Democrat Party policy? Silence. Shocking. Not. Hypocrisy? Plenty. READ MORE from Jeffrey Lord: Time to Cut Off Security Clearances for Ex-Gov Officials Elizabeth Warren and Democrats’ Hypocrisy Three Cheers for Kash Patel The post Pressley, Booker, and Colleagues: Silent on Dems Paying Reparations for Party’s Support of Slavery appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Trump’s recent executive order banning biological males from female sports (“Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” issued on Feb. 5) will have an enormous positive effect on female safety and privacy, especially in high schools and universities. Yet it faces a major battle from the Left that values the fake femininity of “trans women” more than the safety and honor of real women. The Trump administration presents as justification for its actions the rightful contention that allowing “men to compete in women’s sports” is “demeaning, unfair, and dangerous to women and girls,” denying them “the equal opportunity to participate and excel in competitive sports” and the privacy afforded by “all-female locker rooms.” The Two-Pronged Declaration of Trump’s EO Banning Males From Female Sports The EO declares: It is the policy of the United States to rescind all funds from educational programs that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities, which results in the endangerment, humiliation, and silencing of women and girls and deprives them of privacy. It shall also be the policy of the United States to oppose male competitive participation in women’s sports more broadly, as a matter of safety, fairness, dignity, and truth. There are two parts to this declaration. The first part, the most important part, establishes that the Executive Branch of the U.S. government will “rescind all funds” from schools and universities that allow males to participate in female sports. This includes a mandate to “prioritize Title IX enforcement actions against educational institutions (including athletic associations composed of or governed by such institutions) that [require] female students … to compete with or against or to appear unclothed before males.” The EO appeals to Title IX’s requirement that schools receiving federal funds provide female students with an equal opportunity to participate in sports. Does the Executive Order Affect All Schools? The threat of loss of federal funds should send shudders through the vast majority of colleges and universities that have permitted males in female sports, nearly all of whom are heavily dependent on federal funding (i.e., student loans, work-study, and scholarships; research and project grants; and contracts where the government purchases a good or service). Federal funding accounts for about 14 percent of all college revenue. It is a little more complicated for primary and secondary schools. Not all primary and secondary schools receive federal funds. The federal funding goes to school breakfast and lunch programs, education expenses for low-income students, special education funds, and Head Start. On average, federal funding accounts for 7-14 percent of total public school funding in any given year. But for any given school district the percentage can vary between 0 and 75 percent. So, some schools might continue abusing females by permitting biological males in their sports. But it would be difficult for the vast majority to continue their assault on female sports. The Impact of the EO on Athletics The EO doesn’t apply just to athletes from primary school to college. Per the second part of this EO, the Executive Branch will take measures “to oppose male competitive participation in women’s sports” beyond collegiate competition. This includes prohibiting “admission to the United States of males seeking to participate in women’s sports” (note that the 2028 Olympics will be held in Los Angeles). It also entails the intent to “promote, including at the United Nations, international rules and norms governing sports competition to protect a sex-based female sports category.” Finally, it involves “promoting” by “all appropriate and available measures” standards in “international athletic organizations and governing bodies,” including the International Olympic Committee, that ensure “participation in women’s sporting events is determined according to sex and not gender identity or testosterone reduction.” It is unclear from the EO what precisely is meant by “promoting” by “all appropriate and available measures,” beyond attempts by the federal government to “educate.” It remains to be seen how the Executive Branch can eliminate female-identifying males from U.S. professional sports or from international competition when U.S. athletes participate outside the U.S. Popular Move Trump’s action should be a wildly popular move. Although the leadership of the Democratic Party strongly supports female-identifying males in female sports, the vast majority of the American population does not. According to a January 2025 New York Times/Ipsos survey, 79 percent of respondents (including 67 percent of Democrat/Lean Democrat) think that female-identifying males “should not be allowed to compete in women’s sports.” On a related topic, 71 percent of respondents (including 54 percent of Democrat/Lean Democrat) think that “no one under age 18 should have access to puberty-blocking drugs or hormone therapy.” (RELATED: Trump Protects Children From Woke Abuse: New Executive Order Bans Chemical and Surgical Mutilation) Science and Safety Confirm the Correctness of the EO This should have been a no-brainer from the start. Real females can’t compete at the highest levels with real males in virtually every sport. “Males have inherent biological advantages, such as taller body height, … more muscle mass, greater muscle strength, larger hearts and lungs, higher maximal oxygen consumption, and stronger bones than similarly aged, gifted, and trained females.” A 2022 study on “Transwoman Elite Athletes” showed that “male physiology cannot be reformatted by estrogen therapy in transwoman athletes because testosterone has driven permanent effects through early life exposure.” Even in ultra-endurance events (well beyond, say, marathons), where females are most competitive with males, males still dominate. Thus, allowing males in female sports is simply unfair to female athletes. It is a form of cheating: Males who can’t compete at the highest level with other males find themselves applauded by the Left for taking awards away from real females (you can find examples here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here). A report cited in a 2024 United Nations study found that “by 30 March 2024, over 600 female athletes in more than 400 competitions have lost more than 890 medals in 29 different sports.” In June 2022 the Washington Stand found that “there have been over 30 separate girls’ and women’s sports titles that have been won by biological males (or have included biological men as part of a winning women’s team) in the last 19 years, with the trend accelerating exponentially in the past three years. There is now an online site cataloging male victories in female sports, appropriately called He Cheated. Yet having males in female sports is not only unfair but also unsafe. It increases injuries to females because of the differential in male strength over female strength (find examples here, here, here, here, here, and here). It also humiliates and embarrasses females by allowing males in female private spaces (locker rooms and shower facilities), where females are forced to both expose themselves to males and to witness male exposure to them. Swimmer Riley Gaines’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in June 2023 expresses well the humiliation and injustice she had to endure in connection with female-identifying male “Lia” Thomas at the NCAA swimming championships. When Thomas’s female teammates at Cornell complained about his presence in their locker room and team, they were told by administrators to shut up or face athletic ruin. Immediate Positive Benefits of Trump’s EO A day after Trump’s EO was signed, it had the positive effect of the NCAA banning female-identifying males from competing in female sports. The regulating body for high school sports in Virginia also changed its policies to ban female-identifying males from female sports. Then three UPenn swimmers announced a lawsuit against UPenn and the Ivy League generally for allowing “Lia” Thomas to compete against them and win four first-place medals and set multiple records at the 2022 Ivy League women’s championships. On Feb. 11, Trump’s Department of Education wrote the NCAA and its counterpart for high schools (National Federation of High Schools), ordering them, in accord with Title IX’s protection of real female student-athletes, to strip female-identifying male athletes of their female awards and records and return them to the females who were deprived of these honors. All of this is great news. Backlash Against Trump’s EO Already a battle is shaping up between Democrat-controlled states and cities on the one hand and the Executive Branch on the other. For example, various school sports governing bodies have already indicated that, at least for the time being, they will continue to base participation in high school female sports on “gender identity,” in agreement with state anti-discrimination laws. This is the case with high school sports in Maine, Minnesota, California, and New Mexico; awaiting further guidance are Illinois and Michigan. We have the odd historical situation here where leftists are appealing to states’ rights. On Feb. 6, the U.S. Department of Education announced Title IX investigations at San Jose State University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association. On Feb. 12, it added the high school sports governing bodies in California and Minnesota. Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor warned these entities that they “are free to engage in all the meaningless virtue-signaling that they want, but at the end of the day they must abide by federal law.” All of this is heading for a battle in the courts. Three states (Arizona, Idaho, and West Virginia) have already appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn lower-court decisions that blocked new state laws banning “trans females” from participating in female sports. There is speculation that the Court is delaying these appeals until its ruling in United States v. Skrmetti is issued in May-June. This case involves the Biden administration’s challenge of a Tennessee law that banned the dispensing of puberty blockers and cross-gender hormones to minors. The Trump administration filed a statement with the Court saying it no longer regards the Tennessee law as unconstitutional but still wants the Court to rule on the case (assuming it will rule the Tennessee law to be constitutional). (RELATED: In Transgender Case, Can SCOTUS Cut to the Moral Heart of the Issue?) Added to the mix is a New Hampshire lawsuit filed by the families of two transgender high school athletes in a federal court, at first challenging a New Hampshire law banning eligibility based on “gender identity” rather than biological sex, but now, since Feb. 12, also suing the Trump administration over Trump’s Executive Order banning males in female sports and his Executive Order recognizing only two sexes based on capacity to produce sperm cells or egg cells. (RELATED: 3 Major New Developments in Trump’s Battle Against Transgender Tyranny) The Supreme Court’s “Bostock Problem” If the U.S. Supreme Court is to side with Trump’s “gender identity” executive orders, it will have to shift from its decision in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020) where Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the majority, treated “sex” in Title VII employment non-discrimination law as including “gender identity” and “sexual orientation.” Gorsuch developed a nonsensical, anti-reproductive-reality “swap-sexes rule” (my term) about “sex” that takes no account of the biological differences between male and female: Whatever is allowed to one sex has to be permitted to the other otherwise, it is sex discrimination. Gorsuch adopted that very principle in Bostock: “An employer who fires an individual … for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex” is making “sex play a … role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids.” As an example, he argued that if a woman could have a male sex partner, so too a man must be allowed to have a male sex partner. If a woman was allowed to dress in women’s clothes, so too a man must be allowed to dress in women’s clothes. Yet, by this “reasoning,” all men (not just “trans females”) would have to be permitted in female restrooms, locker rooms, and sports, just as biological women are so permitted. Otherwise, per Gorsuch’s logic, a male is being discriminated against for doing something that is permitted of a female. It is an elementary logical misstep, but Gorsuch committed it because he took no account of objective, biological differences between the sexes. Will the two half-conservatives on the Court, Gorsuch and Chief Justice John Roberts (who joined Gorsuch’s Bostock majority opinion), have the humility and courage to step back from such ridiculous reasoning? One can hope, but other trans-supportive decisions of Gorsuch undermine that hope. If Trump’s ban on males in female sports ultimately prevails, it will do so only after obstacles set up by leftist District Court judges (for one such example go here) are overcome. Victory can only come, if at all, with the kind of determination and grit exhibited thus far by the Trump administration. READ MORE from Robert Gagnon: 3 Major New Developments in Trump’s Battle Against Transgender Tyranny Leftist Bishop Gets Her Bible Wrong: Falsely Attacked Trump at Inauguration Interfaith Service Trump Protects Children From Woke Abuse: New Executive Order Bans Chemical and Surgical Mutilation Trump’s Executive Order Ends ‘Trans’ Tyranny and Protects Females The post Trump’s Ban on Males in Female Sports: What It Does, Why It’s Justified, and the Left’s Outrage. appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

The marriage license department on the 23rd floor of the Franklin County probate office is a rather sleepy place. It’s got a fantastic bird’s eye view of downtown Columbus, a couple of computers, a massive stack of microfilm records dating back to 1803, and a couple of clerks who, despite being modern-day cupids, seem dedicated to wearing perpetual frowns.  Evidently, it’s always Valentine’s Day there. Even in mid-January, the place was decked out with red tinsel and cute wooden cutouts informing guests that “Love is in the air.” Against one wall, there’s a “kissing booth,” although I’m not sure that any couple has ever kissed there.  The whole place is rather drab, and possibly even disappointing to any romantically-minded individual. There’s a distinct (and somewhat ironic) contrast between the government clerks trying not to fall asleep at their desks and the starry-eyed couples tying the knot.  In many ways, it’s the same kind of stark contrast that exists between commercial Valentine’s Day, with its heart-shaped chocolate boxes and red roses, and the earnest (and perhaps few) men and women who find themselves in the throes of love.  The unfortunate thing about the whole holiday, however, isn’t that there is an ironic difference between commercial romance and the real thing, but that there seems to be a growing number of young people who’ve lost sight of the real thing because all they’ve ever seen is its commercialized imposter. In disgust, they’ve decided to turn from Valentine’s Day to “Palentine’s Day” — or “Galentine’s Day” if you’re into celebrating your girly BFF. If you don’t have a habit of scouring around on social media for the latest trends and developments, you could be forgiven for not realizing that the holiday of love is slowly being supplanted. At this point, it’s escalated beyond a couple of cards for lonely singles. There are t-shirts reading “love stinks, let’s drink” and cheesy Hallmark cards for the gals. Influencers are challenging followers to write “personalized messages” to friends, and brands are leaning into the girls-night-out messaging.  Hypothetically, you could celebrate both holidays if you wanted — Palentine’s Day technically falls on Feb. 13 — but as far as I can tell from scrolling through YouTube Shorts, the whole thing is meant as a replacement. Palentine’s Day is a way for companies to keep getting money, and for sad, single young adults to keep celebrating while feeling a little better about themselves.  The new holiday is becoming increasingly more popular as well (especially in the U.K., for some reason). The Sunday Telegraph reported that Palentine’s Day card sales “have risen sharply,” and that universities have started hosting platonic-love-themed events for students.  The whole thing is a symptom of a wider problem. Gen Z wasn’t really interested in dating in high school and, so far, they don’t appear to be interested in settling down to married life anytime soon. They grew up in a world that sold them candied hearts and cheesy notes and called it love. You can’t really blame them for not wanting to commit to something so apparently cheap. What this generation seems to have missed is that we’ve just buried the kind of romance that builds civilizations beneath the tinsel and roses. The story of that kind of love is kept in massive books of microfilms and on computer hard drives in drab county offices. Even the tired clerks seem to know it — because when one of them handed my husband and me our marriage license, she gave us the kind of smile that lights up a room. READ MORE from Aubrey Gulick Harris: The Odd One Out: Trump Delays TikTok Ban Let’s Not Take Zuckerberg’s Free Speech Promises at Face Value Let’s Talk About the Catholic Mascot, Luce The post Gen Z is Replacing Valentine’s With Palentine’s Day appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Secure your health! Get the Brain and Body Bundle - https://wearechange.shop/product/brain-body-bundle/ CONFIRMED!! We Are Living In A New World Renaissance This video covers RFK Jr. being confirmed as the head of Health and Human Services, along with Trump making even larger moves to bring about global peace and a new world renaissance.

from Sputnik News: Hillary and Chelsea Clinton’s dismissal of calls for a probe into the Clinton Foundation as “conspiracies” and “lies” doesn’t hold water, says Wall Street analyst Charles Ortel, who believes there are reasons to dig deeper. No matter what the mother-and-daughter team say, the foundation’s public filings remain dangerously deficient and non-compliant, even as the […]

by Mac Slavo, SHTF Plan: As egg shortages worsen, consumers have started stockpiling eggs in an attempt to counter the increasing prices. The current bird flu crisis has been the excuse the ruling classes have used to cull chicken populations, making it both more difficult and more expensive to purchase eggs. Some major grocery store […]

Feb. 13, 2025: 8:40 p.m.: DOGE to audit the IRS This is the sweet moment that every DOGE appreciating American has been waiting for: DOGE will be auditing the IRS!  The audit began on Thursday, according to The WSJ. https://t.co/QqQhCbyebX — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 13, 2025

Feb. 13, 2025: 9:40 p.m.: Elon Musk speaks about focus of DOGE, potential for America’s national growth at World Governments Summit 2025 Ultimately, Musk says the outcome from DOGE  will be “an increase in the output of useful goods and services, which increases the standard of living and wellbeing of the average American.” pic.twitter.com/JwLrmNf6Pm — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 13, 2025