Keeping it in the family. The post How does Joe Walsh feel about working with his brother-in-law, Ringo Starr? first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom is riding a wave of media adoration and has frontrunner status. Yet it could all come crashing down if the scandal surrounding his chief of staff from 2023–2024 blows up in his face. Dana Williamson, who stood at the very top of Newsom’s organizational chart, faced an investigation under the Biden administration that led to her being indicted in November 2025 for a slew of charges, including conspiracy to defraud the United States, wire fraud, falsifying her tax returns, and obstruction of justice. Williamson was alleged to have helped funnel money from an inactive political campaign account to Sean McCluskie, the chief of staff of the U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra. Notably, the state of California received numerous advantages from HHS during this period, including control over the dispersal of Medicaid waivers, which the Newsom administration used to direct Medicaid funds toward non-medical payments, including funding for housing and food support. Here we have the appearance of impropriety cast over the federal government’s relationship with the government of California. But this scandal could entrap Newsom even more than just by creating the impression that his administration is corrupt. Dana Williamson’s lawyer has alleged that Newsom himself was also a target of the Department of Justice’s investigation under the Biden administration. In fact, Williamson’s lawyer, McGregor Scott, has alleged that Williamson was approached by federal authorities who, in his words, asked if she could “help in some sort of investigation they were conducting of the governor,” according to the San Francisco Chronicle. This makes it sound as though federal investigators’ first interaction with Williamson was asking if she would be willing to rat out the governor to save herself prison time. The Los Angeles Times was able to confirm, by means of another source “with knowledge of the case,” that federal investigators had “tried to pressure Williamson into implicating Newsom.” This is a strong statement, one that comes across as implying that federal investigators under Biden believed that Newsom could be involved. Of course, this all raises the question: Would the Biden administration’s DOJ really have carried out investigative work into Newsom himself, and even inquired of Williamson about his role in her lawbreaking, if it thought there was nothing there? It seems like there must have been something there that led them to make Newsom a subject of their investigation — unless they were corrupt, or deeply mistaken. Newsom’s administration, for its part, has denied that he was a subject of the investigation. The Department of Justice, meanwhile, has merely commented that the investigation remains ongoing. This all seems an unbelievable situation that raises an infinite number of questions. Gavin Newsom was one of President Joe Biden’s most absolutely loyal surrogates, the governor of the nation’s largest and richest state, and one of the most powerful Democrats in the country. It would be shocking to find out that Biden’s own DOJ had deemed it necessary, as Dana Williamson’s lawyer has alleged, to make Newsom himself part of its investigation. And yet we have California’s paper of record, the Los Angeles Times, claiming that it has confirmed that federal investigators sought to get Williamson to implicate Newsom. It is very much possible that, as this case proceeds, we will learn more about why Newsom may have been a target of the investigation. That is one enormous scandal to have hanging over your head right as you are preparing to formally launch your presidential campaign. Unfortunately for Newsom, court proceedings in his former chief-of-staff’s corruption case will be happening at the worst possible time for the launch of his presidential campaign. Earlier this month was supposed to be a hearing for setting the timeline for Williamson’s case and a possible trial date. But the hearing was delayed until April because Williamson, around age 53, had just undergone a successful liver transplant. Given the complicated nature of her case, this thing is going to stretch for a long time, likely well into next year, if not longer. Right now, Williamson seems intent upon going to trial and proclaiming her innocence, even as two of her alleged co-conspirators have already pleaded guilty. A very public trial of Newsom’s former chief of staff during the first year of his presidential campaign, which will likely begin next year, would be a spectacle of abject embarrassment for Newsom. Media coverage would be constant. And it’s not as though this is Newsom’s chief of staff from 15 or 20 years ago. This is his chief of staff from November 2024, who only stepped down because of the federal investigation that was ensnaring her. It really gets worse for Newsom because there are even more aspects of the indictment that seem to implicate him and his administration. Specifically, the indictment alleges that Williamson lied to investigators by denying that she had shared internal California government information about a California lawsuit against a major video game company. Numerous media outlets have reported that the details in the indictment match those of the state’s discrimination and sexual harassment case against Activision Blizzard. Williamson was previously a paid adviser for Activision. In November 2023, the state of California reached a settlement in its lawsuit against Activision for $54 million — well short of what experts had been predicting. The California Civil Rights Department had estimated that Activision’s liability was close to $1 billion. The settlement was seen as a major victory for the company, who had narrowly evaded a terribly high judgment. And, shockingly, a whistleblower in the California government had alleged in 2022 that the governor’s office “began to interfere” in the lawsuit against Activision and was “mimicking the interests of Activision’s counsel.” After that whistleblower filed a public records request seeking information on Williamson’s impact on the case’s outcome, Williamson allegedly told one of her co-conspirators, “I was like I am f**ked if I have to produce all of that. I talk to those assholes all the time.” (READ MORE: Arrest of Newsom’s Ex-Chief of Staff Prompts Allegations of Misconduct Within the Governor’s Office) This leaves the public with the impression that there was indeed impropriety within the governor’s office connected to the Activision case. After all, the former chief of staff has now been accused of lying about the lawsuit. This should be particularly sensitive for Democratic primary voters, given that this lawsuit was about discrimination and sexual harassment at the company, issues they are especially focused on. There is, of course, also the fact that the indictment leaves the impression that Newsom’s former chief of staff is a woman who had no limits on her law-breaking. She wrote off a $156,302 trip to Mexico, $12,437 Chanel earrings, a Fendi purse, and more, allegedly stealing more than $160,000 in taxpayer dollars in total. This is what everyone is going to be talking about when Newsom begins his presidential run, and it could, quite easily, cause things to go south for him. READ MORE from Ellie Gardey Holmes: The Disturbing Doctor Touring the Country to Promote Her Career of Third-Trimester Abortions Gavin Newsom Will Regret His Book Launch The Women Who Will Haunt Gavin Newsom’s Presidential Campaign

The huge buildup of U.S. naval and air power in the Persian Gulf and its surrounding waters continues to fuel speculation that some form of American military strike on Iran may be imminent. Aircraft carriers, strategic bombers, advanced fighter squadrons, missile defense systems, and logistical support vessels have been deployed or reinforced across the region. Yet despite weeks of escalating military buildup and repeated rhetoric from Donald Trump, no strike has materialized. The president has repeatedly warned that unless Tehran agrees to U.S. demands on its nuclear program, ballistic missile development, and regional proxy networks, “bad things” will follow. Iran, however, has shown no sign of retreating from what it considers its red lines. This may reflect Tehran’s calculation that, with Chinese and Russian naval forces still present following their joint exercises, any U.S. strike would risk further internationalizing and complicating the conflict. (RELATED: It’s Now or Never in Iran) Several further explanations have been put forward. One is that key U.S. partners — Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Türkiye — fear the consequences of a direct U.S. versus Iran confrontation. These states are geographically exposed by proximity to Iran. They host U.S. military bases, critical energy infrastructure, global financial hubs, tourism industries, and vital maritime routes. A direct strike on Iran could invite retaliation not only against American military installations but also against regional economic targets, potentially triggering widespread instability. Tehran understands it cannot prevail in conventional warfare against the United States. Instead, it emphasizes asymmetric capabilities: ballistic missiles, drones, cyber operations, and networks of proxy forces — and potentially sleeper cells — not only across the Middle East but beyond. How much of Iran’s rhetoric is deterrent posturing, and how much reflects genuine operational readiness? Iranian officials have openly declared U.S. bases legitimate targets in the event of war. Beyond military installations, escalation could involve missile strikes, disruption of maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, attacks on energy infrastructure, and possibly even civilian targets with no military gains. The resulting economic shockwaves — particularly a dramatic spike in oil prices — could reverberate far beyond the region. The central question remains: how much of Iran’s rhetoric is deterrent posturing, and how much reflects genuine operational readiness? The brief but intense 12-day confrontation launched by Israel against Iranian targets in June 2025 challenged Tehran’s image of invulnerability. Despite Iran’s missile barrages, Israel demonstrated significant success in detection and interception, while establishing near-complete aerial dominance over Iran’s skies. (RELATED: Israel on Alert) Yet that conflict also raised critical questions. Could Israel have sustained nightly missile exchanges if the conflict continued? Did the limited duration prevent broader escalation? The episode exposed both Iran’s vulnerabilities and the inherent dangers of a prolonged military exchange to Israel. Another crucial factor is Iran’s internal instability. During the earlier 12-day conflict, many Iranians opposed to the regime did not flood the streets in expectation that Israel would “finish the job.” The landscape has shifted, however, following the January protests and the brutal crackdown that followed. On the eve of January 9, when the exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi called on demonstrators to take to the streets and seize government buildings, unprecedented numbers of protesters mobilized across the country. Many believed foreign intervention — coupled with large-scale defections within Iran’s military and security forces as promised by the Crown Prince — was imminent. Instead, they were met with the bloodiest massacre of civilians in Iran’s modern history, and no defection amongst Iran’s military and security ranks materialized. (RELATED: Why Iranians Have Unified Around Reza Pahlavi) Today in Iran, anger is not merely simmering beneath the surface — it is seething, volatile, and charged with a fury that could erupt again. Should external strikes significantly alter the balance of power — for example, by targeting the Tharollah security headquarters, the main headquarters for coordinating the crackdown, or by decapitating the regime’s senior leadership, renewed unrest could erupt with far greater force and violence that may finally have a chance to topple the regime. The decision to strike — and what to strike — is fraught with uncertainty: Would limited strikes deter Tehran or trigger wider escalation? How extensive would Iranian retaliation be? Could regional economies withstand prolonged instability? Would another round of internal unrest, with a significant shift in the balance of power in favour of the protesters, finally succeed in toppling the regime? For Washington, maintaining a visible military buildup without follow-through strikes carries risks of its own. If Iran refuses to concede and no action follows, U.S. credibility in projecting power will be severely dented. Yet acting precipitously could ignite a regional firestorm with unpredictable consequences. The standoff reflects a classic deterrence dilemma: applying sufficient pressure to compel change without crossing the threshold into uncontrollable war. For now, the carriers remain at sea, aircraft stand on high alert, the military buildup continues unabated, and the rhetoric isn’t subsiding. The regime led by Ali Khamenei has survived for decades through fortunate brinkmanship. But brinkmanship carries its own inherent danger: sooner or later, a single miscalculation can send the regime over the edge. READ MORE: The Women Who Would Not Kneel Why Iranians Have Unified Around Reza Pahlavi It’s Now or Never in Iran

I followed the Winter Olympics very closely. As you know, I’m a huge sports fan — especially of a sport called Jutta Leerdam — so I didn’t miss a single one of her competitions, though I can’t quite remember what sport she actually competes in. In fact, I don’t recall seeing any snow or ice on her broadcasts. It’s utterly paradoxical that someone like Jutta participates in an Olympic Games defined by cold. She won a gold medal. I received a bronze medal myself upon learning she has a boyfriend, Jake Paul, who is also a boxer. I suppose my feelings on this can only be described as facing defeat with true Olympic spirit. This year, the Games featured 15 disciplines. Biathlon is skiing while shooting — that was already done by troglodytes. Bobsleigh is a sport where everyone wins: surviving a descent at 60-90 mph inside a synthetic shell without losing a limb is victory enough. Nordic combined is skiing plus acrobatics. Curling was invented by women so their husbands would become familiar with the basics of broomstick handling. Luge is like bobsleigh, but with a higher chance of burning your rear, and skeleton is like luge, but with broken teeth instead of a burnt butt. Figure skating is designed for romantic comedy readers who want to watch “sport” on TV. Freestyle skiing is the “street skating” of people who usually enter the country legally. Alpine skiing was invented so bars could show relaxing images on TV. Cross-country skiing is the same as alpine skiing, only more boring. Ice hockey is a sport where gold inevitably goes to Canada — or some other team. Figure skating is designed for romantic comedy readers who want to watch “sport” on TV. Speed skating, meanwhile, was invented so that girls rejected from figure skating for not being sexy enough could still glide around the rink at the Winter Olympics. (RELATED: Putting Pizazz Into the Winter Olympics) One of the most famous events is ski jumping, commonly used to detect pessimists. A pessimist can lurk unnoticed in a crowd under the harshest conditions without revealing their true nature. But when faced with a ski jumping championship, they can’t help themselves: at the crucial moment of a jump, they always mutter, “This guy’s going to die.” Finally, snowboarding, arguably the most famous Winter Olympic discipline, is also the most dangerous. Its two defining traits: one, watching it makes you desperately want to try it yourself; two, it looks deceptively easy. Nordic cemeteries are filled with people who thought they could snowboard. The Winter Olympics are always a superior moral and aesthetic experience compared to the Summer Games. Athletes are more attractive, and you see less sweat. Elegance abounds, partly because physical contact is minimal — and deadly in most disciplines. A crash in bobsleigh or speed skating is always a final, definitive crash. Dave Barry once wrote, “The problem with winter sports is that — follow me closely here — they generally take place in winter.” Perhaps that’s why, considering the bitter cold, it’s socially acceptable — and even comforting — for both athletes and spectators to consume generous amounts of alcohol to keep warm, which makes watching hundreds of people sliding on various contraptions for hours far more bearable. And that concludes today’s lesson, dear readers, on the fascinating world of winter sports. Now that I’ve been writing for a while, I can’t help but wonder: Is Jutta Leerdam still dating someone? Come on, Jutta — make my day! I just hope Sydney Sweeney isn’t jealous. READ MORE from Itxu Díaz: Success Is the New Hate Crime: Conservatives Advised to Stay Small, Stay Quiet, and Maybe Stay Alive Why the World Is a Perfectly Sensible Mess AOC’s Big Comedy Show in Europe Image licensed under Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International.

Florida Congressman Randy Fine got into a fight with New York Palestinian activist and Mamdami advisor Nerdeen Kiswani over dog poop in the NYC snow emergency. This culminated in Fine saying words to the effect that, given the choice between Muslims and dogs, he’d choose dogs, igniting a political firestorm that has some in Congress calling for Fine’s resignation or expulsion. This is one of those seemingly frivolous things that seem to break out in the slow news days of August and February, when weather extremes make tempers short. However, it brings to the surface once again the clash of cultures between the Muslim world and the West, and raises the specific question of how much loyalty devout Muslims can give to the U.S. Constitution when they are seeking citizenship. (RELATED: Randy Is Just Fine, Say Dogs and Most Americans) Before getting into that, let’s address the dog issue because it is the spark that ignited the whole controversy about assimilating immigrants from Muslim-dominated countries. The supposed Muslim restriction against dogs has nothing to do with the Koran (Quran). I’ve spent more than a fair share of time in places such as Lebanon, Syria, Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan, where Islam is the majority faith. My Arabic is not good enough to read the Koran in that language, but I have read the English translation, and there is nothing in it that declares dogs to be forbidden. Like the abhorrent treatment of women in most Muslim societies, this prejudice stems more from ancient tribal practices that were integrated into day-to-day life as those societies adopted or were conquered by Islam. Muhammed’s wife apparently often castigated him regarding insufficient attention to women in his writings In Afghanistan, for instance, dogs are generally treated better than women; at least they are allowed outside without being chaperoned by an adult male. Many of the unassimilated immigrants from Muslim culture have never actually read the Koran. For example, 83 percent of native Afghans are illiterate, as are 59 percent of Somalis still living there. The literacy rate among immigrants from Muslim-dominant countries is probably higher, but I’d bet that the vast majority of rape gang membership in places like London, Paris, and Stockholm have never actually opened a copy of the Koran, much less read it. Most readers know this, but not all Arabs are Muslim. There are vibrant Christian communities among the West Bank Palestinians and in Lebanon. Egypt and other North African countries have a strong Coptic tradition, and Iraq has a small but substantial Catholic minority. Many Somali-Americans have converted to Christianity, particularly in the evangelical movement. The real clash of cultures between devout Muslims and the West — and particularly with the U.S. Constitution — comes from what is or is not in the Koran regarding the separation of church and state and the predominance of Sharia Law. This disagreement about the relationship of religion and state within Islam has been the crux of much violent disagreement among Muslims. Although Muhammad considered Jesus to be a prophet, he did not accept the concept of “rendering unto Caesar,” and his writings in the Koran are not clear on the subject of church-state relations. The point is that many Muslims think it is. This disagreement about the relationship of religion and state within Islam has been the crux of much violent disagreement among Muslims. It is the heart of the failure of the Arab Spring in places like Egypt, Libya, and Algeria. It is also critical to the violence between unassimilated Muslim enclaves and secular authorities in many Europeans nations. Unfortunately, it may be the case here as well among some unassimilated Muslim immigrants. Unlike Muhammad’s writings on the subject, the U.S. Constitution is unambiguous. It is the Supreme law of the land… period. What it and the U.S. Code do not explicitly cover is left to the states and local governments. Presumably, Sharia law falls somewhere in there. But the implications are clear. You can’t cut your son’s hand off because you found it in the cookie jar, and you can’t legally stone your wife for fooling around with your best friend, except maybe in Alabama. Lest anyone think I’m Islamophobic, although I am a strong believer in Israel’s right to exist, I object strongly to allowing Americans to serve in the Israeli Army while retaining their U.S. citizenship. You are, or you aren’t. However, current U.S. law allows it. I do believe that it is entirely appropriate to ask Muslims who are applying for U.S. citizenship if they recognize the supremacy of the Constitution over Sharia law in civil matters. If the answer is no, the application should be denied. Anyway, I will not take a stand on the dogs versus Muslims issue. I do, however, take dog treats in my pocket on my morning run. I have not yet started carrying falafels, but I’ll consider it if I start running into Muslims. READ MORE from Gary Anderson: Military Incompetence Has a Price Tag ICE Should Adopt a Counterinsurgency Strategy If We Want to Help the Iranians, We Should Disrupt the IRGC Gary Anderson was a U.N. observer in the Middle East and an advisor in Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

I have recently seen a study showing how badly English literature has fallen from its old, prominent place in the academy to near irrelevance: only 1 in 60 college students choose it as a major. Some blame a resurgent utilitarianism. “What can you do with your degree in Gender Studies?” asks the would-be conservative, snorting. “You, or rather your parents, spent a couple of hundred thousand dollars for that?  What were you thinking? And you expect me to continue to bankroll your student loans, or even to forgive them, sticking everybody in the nation for the bill for your own stupidity? Pay it yourself.” Meanwhile, young men especially look at what’s on offer at college and decide instead that they can make a good living, and a lot sooner, doing things: wiring houses, laying pipe, installing new roofs, and so forth. If they want to develop their minds, and I urge them most vehemently to do so, they can read books on their own, as people once did. (RELATED: A Bag of Rocks for $400,000?) But the utilitarianism that English professors now decry is only a different form of what they themselves have been peddling, in my experience, for at least 40 years. Every course in “Shakespeare and,” subordinating Shakespeare to some political or sexual preoccupation the professor wishes to promote, turns Shakespeare into a mere utensil, a gear or a lever. The aim is never to employ, in criticism, that breadth of human imagination that Keats, thinking of the poet, called “negative capability,” the large-hearted willingness to set aside, at least provisionally, one’s own beliefs and desires, in order to listen to what someone else has to teach, to illustrate, to reveal, or merely to suggest. Such a critic or professor becomes, provisionally, the Bible-besotted radical William Blake, to do justice to that wise madman’s view of the world — Blake, who was a better man and a better poet too than his moral philosophy warranted. I have become, provisionally, an Epicurean atomist to do justice to Lucretius, whose De Rerum natura was my first of seven major works of translation. “Such wickedness religion can incite!” I wrote, translating his powerfully climactic line, tantum religio potuit suadere malorum — I, the faithful Roman Catholic, who believes that without religion there is no such thing as human culture, and that therefore Epicureanism is an acid that must be diluted considerably, because in pure form it will consume whatever social vessel purports to contain it. (RELATED: At the Tip of Your Fingers) Before the wholesale politicization of the academy, before it turned to a form of utilitarianism that, like Marxist economics, is peculiarly useless, like a rubber hoe or an iron parachute or a roof riddled with holes, general survey courses not only helped keep professors honest; they developed in them the habits of broad reading and forbearance. If you are teaching a course in 19th century British poetry, you will have to come to terms not just with the radical libertarianism of Shelley; you will have to deal with the sober and high-minded Tennyson, and the Catholic Hopkins, with his acute insights into the nature of the created world and the strife and difficulty of the moral life. The sheer variety of it all, as you turn from one poet to another, demands a supple and flexible mind, not the stiff and brittle incompetence of political ideology. Intolerance does not arise from believing in moral truth. But you cannot have that mind in the first place unless you believe that goodness, truth, and beauty are objectively real, and that therefore we are to be grateful wherever we find them. What I have just said may appear paradoxical. If I believe in objective moral truth, for example, I must find appalling Shelley’s attempt to justify, in “Epipsychidion,” open adultery; and so I do. But the person who says he does not believe in moral truth is either a fool or a liar. It is quite simply impossible for us human beings to refrain from making moral judgments. If these are not based upon fundamental and true axioms, they will be based instead on political desiderata, current fads, and personal promptings actuated by the professor’s own habits — usually, in our time, sexual habits. Intolerance does not arise from believing in moral truth.  It arises from not believing in it, because then there is no more persuading or rational arguing to be done; the aggressions of incessant propaganda take over, backed up by, or superseded by, outright force. And, if the professoriate will deign to do what all human beings should often do, though but sporadically and feebly, that is, to take stock of themselves, their treacheries, their sins, and their follies, they will see that people energized by political haranguing are not pleasant to be around. Why should a young man, for example, take yet another course in feminism when he’s had them all his life long, and when the feminists are unpleasant, usually bitter about something or other, and not likely to praise him if he dares to cross them in the least? Having been subject to 12 years of the equivalent of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s resentful story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” he probably believes in almost everything the feminist has to say; he simply does not want to hear it all over again. Why should he enroll in the Queer Theorist’s course in Renaissance drama, when he has already bought the amorality of the sexual revolution, and has seen online a thousand things far more radically disorienting than a boy playing the part of a girl playing the part of a boy? Shakespeare enjoyed the merry comedy of errors that such a thing invited, while he believed most firmly in the goodness of male and female and their being made for one another. The professor does not believe in the love between man and woman; the student probably does not believe in it, either, except as it may come about accidentally. So why bother with trying to twist Shakespeare into pretzels? You can have a whole bag of them for nothing, everywhere you turn. The high cultural calling of the humanities was once, to quote Matthew Arnold, to study “the best that has been thought and said.” If you say there is no such thing, you have already killed your subject’s reason for existence. You are not bringing wisdom, since you have already asserted that there is none. What then is the difference between you and a charlatan on a soapbox selling an elixir to cure everything from gout to heart disease? These two differences, as far as I can tell: You don’t have to mortgage your house to buy a bottle, and it likely has a lot of alcohol and spice in it, so that if it doesn’t cure anything, it at least tastes good. Will professors turn back and forsake their foolish ways? Not likely. A degree in the humanities, if it cannot confer wisdom that the professors themselves do not believe in, is not wholly without effect. It can confer pride, or, in people too painfully aware of some pinching inadequacy that pinches them, envy. You may imagine a lawyer returning his fee for a case he has lost; you may imagine a politician resigning after the law he has pushed results in disaster; you may imagine a ballplayer telling the referee that the call he has made for the player’s team was in error; you may imagine the moon falling from the sky; but nothing more unlikely can be imagined that a set of people insulated from the effects of their stupidity, people who cannot plane a board or set a nail, people who on some level know that they are not Matthew Arnold and hate him all the more for it, will suddenly grow humble and admit that they have fouled their homes and left the beams and joists to rot. So the humanities die, gnawed to sawdust by their own termites, and this in a time when the very definition of humanity is being threatened by cultural withering, the phenomena of the masses, a collapsing population, and “artificial intelligence.” I shed no tear for the professors. I shed a tear for the ignoramuses we are raising in our midst, at exorbitant cost. And I will weep outright for Homer and Dante and Shakespeare, for Blake and Shelley, for Tennyson and Arnold and Hopkins; and for all the professors of old who gave so much, and whose work, being scorned, has fallen into ruin. Of course, here as in so many other arenas of cultural dilapidation, we must rebuild. But that means we must know what we are rebuilding and why. No utilitarianism, economic or social or political, can give the answer; arsenic is not the antidote for aconite. The answer must come from the objective realities we have denied. READ MORE from Anthony Esolen: A Bag of Rocks for $400,000? The Soundness of a Discipline A Dome for Man

During the State of the Union address, President Donald Trump declared, “We ended DEI in America.” That fight, it would seem, is far from concluded.  Since retaking the White House last January, President Trump has signed a series of executive actions targeting federal diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies and gender-identity politics in K-12 education. Among them are orders terminating DEI programs, defining sex strictly as biological male or female, and prohibiting gender-ideology instruction in public school classrooms. With no federal statute yet banning these practices outright, states have taken the battle to their own turf.  On Feb. 20, a federal judge temporarily blocked parts of Texas’s Senate Bill 12, a parental rights law aimed at banning DEI programs and LGBT content from Texas Pre-K through 12 schools.  U.S. District Judge Charles R. Eskridge III, a 2019 Trump appointee, granted a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of portions of SB 12 in three independent school districts: Houston, Katy, and Plano. The judge removed Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath from the case, ruling he does not directly enforce the law. As a result, the ruling in GSA Network v. Morath applies only to those independent school districts while litigation continues, and SB 12 remains in effect across the rest of Texas.  In the court’s ruling, Judge Eskridge invoked the “party presentation” principle because the districts declined to defend the law in court. He noted that “Our adversarial system of justice relies on party presentation … [Litigants] must assert their rights in timely fashion, or else risk forfeiting them.” He further explained that the independent school districts “specifically decline to either defend or disclaim the constitutionality of their actions, while also failing to oppose the motion for preliminary injunction.” They now have 14 days to decide whether to defend the law themselves or seek assistance from the Texas attorney general.   The judge’s injunction temporarily blocks the enforcement of four key provisions within SB 12. Under the law, public schools are prohibited from authorizing student clubs based on sexual orientation or gender identity. It also bans DEI programs and training in schools, restricts school employees from assisting students with “social transition,” and bars instruction or curriculum related to sexual orientation or gender identity for students from Pre-K through 12th grade.  The ACLU of Texas filed a lawsuit in June 2025 to challenge what it claimed were “unconstitutional aspects” of SB 12. At the time, it called Senate Bill 12 “one of the most extreme education bans in the country.” ACLU of Texas’s senior staff attorney, Brian Klosterboer, alleged, “S.B. 12 aims to punish kids for being who they are and ban teachers from supporting them. It sends the false message that Black, Brown, LGBTQIA+, and other students don’t belong in the classroom or in our state.” After the injunction was announced,  LGBTQ Nation was quick to report this as “a win for LGBTQ+ Texans,” despite the limited scope of the measure. Adrian Moore, one student at Katy Independent School District and a plaintiff in the case, reportedly said, “It’s a win for all trans students, and students from all backgrounds in my district. Schools should be places where all students feel safe and supported.” Rep. Jeff Leach (R) supports the bill, and he said, “We’re not going to allow gay clubs, and we’re not going to allow straight clubs.” An advocate of protecting children from sexualization, he added, “We shouldn’t be sexualizing our kids in public schools, period, and we shouldn’t have clubs based on sex.” Texas is not the first state to take on liberal ideology in education. Florida led the way in 2022 with the passage of the Parental Rights in Education Act, which bans instruction on sexual orientation and gender ideology from kindergarten through third grade. Dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill by critics, the law survived legal challenges and remains in effect. In 2023, Florida signed another bill into law, Senate Bill 266, which prohibits public colleges and universities from spending state funds on DEI programs. READ MORE from Dylan Kresak: The Race to Fix America’s Healthcare System New Mexico Launches $2.5 Million Investigation Into Epstein’s Zorro Ranch Sexuality Symbols Spotted in Lego Kids’ Show Ninjago

by Mish Shedlock, Mish Talk: A Washington Post article says a 17-page Executive Order is in the works. Trump Activists Seek an Emergency Please consider this WaPo free link: Trump, seeking executive power over elections, is urged to declare emergency Pro-Trump activists who say they are in coordination with the White House are circulating a 17-page […]