“Make no mistake: This is an intentional act of terrorism"

'The history is being written right now'

A Dutch robot with neither hardware nor software can nevertheless reach incredible speeds with its soft legs powered only by air and simple physics. Able to walk, hop, and swim without the aid of electronics or AI, its top speed will see it cross a distance equal to 30x the length of its body in […] The post This Soft Robot Needs Only Physics and Air to Spontaneously Sync and Scoot at Top Speeds appeared first on Good News Network.

First Amendment advocates appeared in court this week to overturn two laws aimed at trapping minors in the LGBTQ lifestyle by barring counselors from having consensual discussions with children who do not want to identify as transgender. Attorneys from the Alliance Defending Freedom sued Kansas City, Missouri, and Jackson County—the county-level government overseeing Kansas City—after they passed ordinances outlawing so-called “conversion therapy.” The 2019 Kansas City statute bars medical experts from helping anyone under the age of 18 who wants “to change behaviors or gender expressions or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward individuals of the same gender.” The statutes impose fines ranging from $500 to $1,000 for each so-called “offense.” “It’s censorship, pure and simple,” Hal Frampton, senior counsel and director of the Center for Conscience Initiatives at Alliance Defending Freedom, told “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” on Wednesday. He further noted that Democrat-controlled local governments are aiming to regulate the contents of “a private conversation between a counselor and a willing client who is looking to find a way through his gender confusion.” Reparative therapy sometimes allows those who do not wish to suffer from gender dysphoria, or be attracted to members of the same sex, to lessen these thoughts over time. But Frampton said its practitioners face a mountain of lies and misrepresentation over what they do. “One of the falsehoods that we have to deal with in these cases is the lie that if you just have a conversation about this, it will somehow harm the child,” potentially even triggering the child’s suicide. “The research simply doesn’t bear that out. There’s no evidence that having conversations is remotely harmful. In fact, the emerging evidence is that it helps children better understand who they are and who God made them to be,” he pointed out. However, studies have found that undergoing transgender procedures does not help, and sometimes affirmatively hurts, patients’ mental health. While the statutes punish those who try to reduce unwanted same-sex or transgender ideation, they praise those who take the opposite position. The Jackson County ordinance specifically cites the fact that local hospitals and centers provided transgender counseling or services to 300 children a year. At least one of them, Children’s Mercy Hospital of Kansas City, injected minors with cross-sex hormones. After Missouri passed a SAFE law, Attorney General Andrew Bailey, a Republican, had to send letters to Children’s Mercy and Planned Parenthood Great Plains in Kansas City threatening them with legal repercussions unless they would comply with the law and cease and desist carrying out transgender procedures on minors. The hospital insisted it would comply with the law. But the KC Care Medical Center’s website still refers minors to “Gender Pathways Services at Children’s Mercy Hospital.” While Children’s Mercy does not appear to carry out such procedures, its website still tells parents, “Gender identity is usually firmly established and can be stated by your child” by the age of seven. Missouri, home of whistleblower Jamie Reed of The Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, has noted that “nearly all children who came to the Center here presented with very serious mental health problems,” including autism, ADHD, serious depression, and psychosomatic blindness.  “There are essentially two paths here. There’s path one, where a counselor helps a child through their confusion, has open and honest conversations with him, and the child develops comfort with his natal sex,” said Frampton. “As we know, the overwhelming majority of children with these concerns will [outgrow them] if they’re given the chance.” “The second path, and the one that Kansas City is essentially forcing counselors to send kids down, is the path towards medicalized transition and dangerous drugs and surgeries that we know, in the end, do not actually make people happier and carry inordinate risks.” More than 20 states ban free-speech on sexual preference and/or gender identity, including Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan. Walz and Whitmer are Democrats. The Supreme Court will soon decide whether state stifling of consensual free speech will stand. Justices agreed in March to hear a case against Colorado’s free-speech ban—just a year and a half after justices declined to hear a challenge to the same law in Washington state. “We’re very encouraged that the Supreme Court … agreed to take that case,” Frampton told Perkins, hoping the justices will “hand down a decision affirming that, yes, indeed, counselors have a First Amendment right to have these conversations with struggling kids.” Originally published by The Washington Stand. The post Attorneys Fight ‘Censorship, Plain and Simple’ Over Reparative Therapy Bans appeared first on The Daily Signal.

One of the central weaknesses of the Biden administration’s national security policies was its reliance on the concept of “integrated deterrence” to prevent aggressive actions by the People’s Republic of China. The strategy entailed building robust alliances in the Indo-Pacific, forward-deploying greater numbers of U.S. military assets to the region, and a tighter integration of military capabilities across the full spectrum of warfare. But this approach only works if the United States can also credibly wage and win a war against China and prevent its regional and global military ambitions. In this respect, the Biden administration was far less successful. There are four major areas the Trump administration should focus on to make deterrence as well as U.S. war-fighting strategies more successful. The military challenge of China is an order of magnitude greater than any military threat the United States has ever faced. Over the last decade, it has consistently increased its military budget by 7% every year—far more than the United States—and has dramatically grown its military forces in every respect. It now fields the largest navy in the world and the largest missile force on the planet. Similarly, the People’s Republic of China is the world’s fastest growing nuclear power, and today fields more tactical weapons in Asia than does the United States. All of this is part of China’s strategy to deter and, if necessary, deny any potential U.S. military actions within the region. Due to these developments, the United States must grow the size of its military overall—to include conventional forces relevant to deterring Chinese aggression, such as ships, combat aircraft, and logistic support systems—and aggressively address retention and recruiting problems across the force. The second area requiring attention is the “missile gap” between the munitions available in U.S. inventories and those required to successfully prosecute U.S. war plans against China. While many of these munitions have been used in the war in Ukraine and in operations in the Middle East, the paucity of industrial capacity to build required munitions on a scale necessary for a future possible conflict is alarming. While some production lines have been opened in response to war-fighting requirements in Ukraine and some procurement orders have been given multiyear contracts, more must be done. Similarly, the ability to build additional conventional capabilities while also refitting and refurbishing existing platforms is also disturbingly low. Reindustrializing U.S. military infrastructure should be a priority for the Trump administration. The third area requiring greater attention is preparing for the mass mobilization of reservists if war with China were to break out. A significant portion of existing active-duty weapons platforms require reserve help in order for them to work and deploy. Existing reserve centers lack sufficient personnel to process such a large mobilization and the services vary in their ability to track former reserve members, who may also need to be called up, in the event of large-scale conflict. Further, many reservists also work in industries necessary for war so a focused look at the implications of full-scale mobilization also needs to be undertaken. The final area requiring greater attention is closely examining how a full decoupling of the U.S. and Chinese markets would look like in a wartime environment. Far too many components, parts, and even rare earth elements are controlled or influenced by the People’s Republic of China and its government-controlled companies. In a wartime scenario, the absence of these crucial items could prove disastrous to the war-fighting ability of the United States. A credible policy of deterrence can only exist if the ability to wage and win a war against an opponent is also viable. This can only be done through the growth of U.S. military forces, addressing significant munition shortfalls, making sure reservists can be mobilized at scale and quickly, and that U.S. military capabilities can continue to fight if access to the Chinese market is curtailed. The Trump administration needs to focus on rebuilding the war-fighting abilities of the United States to make America safe again. If not, catastrophe could await our armed forces. Originally published by ArcaMax The post A More Effective Way to Confront China’s Growing Aggression appeared first on The Daily Signal.

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VP Vance, Ukraine's Zelensky Meet in Rome, and Zelensky Waxes Rhapsodic on Negotiations Without Russia

The founder of the Telegram messaging app, Pavel Durov, said on Sunday he had refused a request by a Western government, which he did not name, to "silence" conservative voices in Romania ahead of a presidential election run-off there.Romanians were voting on Sunday in a...