Rapper Macklemore, who owns two Billboard Hot 100 chart toppers along with collaborator Ryan Lewis, just released a song in solidarity with the Palestinians and their well-wishers on American college campuses. He calls it “Hind’s Hall,” the name activists at Columbia University rechristened Hamilton Hall to honor a six-year-old Palestinian girl killed by Israeli forces earlier this year. He raps: “The blood is on your hands, Biden, we can see it all / And, f*** no, I’m not voting for you in the fall.” HIND’S HALL. Once it’s up on streaming all proceeds to UNRWA. pic.twitter.com/QqZEKmzwZI — Macklemore (@macklemore) May 6, 2024 Eight years ago, Macklemore proudly posed for a picture with Joe Biden at the White House. Midway through Biden’s 2021 inauguration, the rapper released a dis track aimed at his Election Day opponent called “Trump’s Over Freestyle.” (READ MORE: Zero Championships for Hamas) Like many on the left, he now feels buyer’s remorse. In a song, he articulates — with more of a grunt than with eloquence — the opposition to Israel felt by many self-styled progressives. A few merely do not like their tax dollars funding war overseas. Others go further and regard the Israelis as colonizers and mark Israel for extinction (strangely while depicting the war as a genocide against the Palestinians). It remains a visceral opposition, which means it comes from the place of appetites and not intellect. Whatever motivates the Left on Israel seems less important than the fact that it appears motivated. In “Hind’s Hall,” one hears the conviction in this rapper’s voice and grasps the number of young people influenced by him. It sonically instills a sense of why Biden faces a nightmare in piecing together a winning coalition. Jews account for, by some estimates, roughly half of the dollars donated to the Democratic Party and its candidates and causes. Democratic dollars and Democratic energy clash on Biden administration policy toward the Israel-Hamas war, leaving party “leaders” who take their cues from their ostensible followers confused as to their most politically expedient course. According to a survey taken months before the current violence, 49 percent of Democrats sympathized more with the Palestinians, while just 38 percent sympathized more with the Israelis (Republican and independent sympathies veer heavily toward the Israelis). Earlier this year, months after the violence started, 9 percent of Democrats regarded the U.S. as “not supportive enough” of the Israelis as compared to 44 percent who said the same about U.S. policy toward the Palestinians, according to an Associated Press poll. Observationally, the bias toward the Palestinians over the Israelis looks more intense, far more intense, among activists. These people include communists and other troubled types not in the Democratic Party orbit to begin with. Their ranks also include those who knock on doors, stuff mailers, and hold signs bearing the names of Democratic candidates at intersections. Even if their energies were not diverted here, most would not work for Biden this fall because of what occurs in the Middle East on his watch. Given the 50-50 nature of recent elections, a fraction of the activist wing voting for Jill Stein or Cornell West, or merely voting their disgust by not voting, bodes poorly for Biden come November. Their disruptions to traffic, campuses, and, presumably, the Democratic National Committee means further bad optics for Biden in the press. Over the weekend at George Washington University, the protesters superimposed Joe Biden’s image atop a large American flag hung the university. Below his visage appeared the words “Genocide Joe.” Does anyone think people associating the president with genocide will vote for him in November? Twenty-twenty’s deliverer from chaos plays the role of Captain Chaos in 2024. And this all remains outside of the president’s control and within the control of a leader 6,000 miles from the White House repeatedly denigrated by the president and his minions. Worse still for Biden, the war beyond his control the purist Left imagines as within his control. Politically, Biden cannot condemn anti-Semitism without angering the pro-Palestinian contingent, and he cannot pressure Benjamin Netanyahu to ease off without angering partisans of Israel within his party. It’s a no-win situation for him, but by playing both sides at various times it can work as an all-lose situation. The president has handled this poorly. But even Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, and other presidents with considerably more skills could not have made lemonade from lemons here. And as an impotent and indecisive Biden cannot win over there in May, he increasingly looks as though he cannot win over here in November. The post Macklemore Shows Biden Between a Rock and a Hamas Place appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

The Boy Scouts of America announced Tuesday that it will be rolling out a new name: Scouting America. The change was made in the name of making girls feel included. “This will be a simple but very important evolution as we seek to ensure that everyone feels welcome in Scouting,” said the organization’s CEO in announcing the change. “We are an organization for all. It’s time our name reflects that,” he said. Back in 2019, the Boy Scouts announced that it would accept girls into its programs and would change the name of its flagship program to Scouts BSA to reflect that change. Ever since, the organization has been in total freefall. In 2018, the last year that only boys were allowed in Boy Scouts, the organization counted over 2 million boys among its members. Immediately upon the rollout of the co-ed policy, membership plunged, falling to 1,123,651 in 2020. The organization claimed that the pandemic was primarily responsible and that membership would quickly recover. That was not to be. The organization counted 1,042,000 members at the end of 2022 and now says membership hovers just over 1 million. Boy Scouts of America says that it currently counts 176,234 girls among its members, meaning that the organization sacrificed half its membership in the name of embracing wokeness and welcoming a group that now constitutes less than 10 percent of its 2018 membership totals. The primary appeal of Boy Scouts had been that it was a dedicated place for boys to do activities specifically geared toward their interests — with only other boys. It was one of the few places boys had to themselves. Boys were given a structured, adventurous environment to camp, hike, learn survival skills, and engage in other outdoor activities with men to lead them. This male-only setting fostered self-reliance and responsibility in a manner specific to boys. In 2010, when Boy Scouts celebrated its 100th anniversary, 17-year-old Eagle Scout Trevor Wentling described the organization in this way: “Boy Scouts is supposed to teach character and teach a boy how to become a man. Not all boys get the most out of [B]oy [S]couts and understand every single aspect that it teaches, but myself, I’ve learned so much about leadership and I’ve changed so much due to Boy Scouts.” With Boy Scouts of America’s rejection of the distinct paths to manhood and womanhood, it has lost this mission. It has now embraced a desexed, generalized aim to “prepare young people for lives of impact and purpose.” Attention to the specific developmental trajectory of boys that was fundamental to the organization’s purpose has been lost. While Boy Scouts of America’s disavowal of its central mission and removal of its central attraction (a boys-only environment) have been the main reasons for its utter collapse, its embrace of wokeness has also contributed to its decline. The organization centers its embrace of “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.” For example, the first requirement a scout must complete in order to earn the Boy Scouts’ “Citizenship in Society” badge is that he or she must research the terms “identity,” “diversity,” “equity,” “equality,” and “inclusion.” The organization has a chief diversity officer who is also a vice president, Lisa Schuchart, as well as a DEI manager, Xaviera Henderson. In 2017, ahead of its decision to admit girls, the Boy Scouts allowed girls who identify as boys to join the organization. The organization has also faced scandal and bankruptcy owing to allegations of sexual abuse. The Boy Scouts’ embrace of wokeness has alienated the religious groups that once provided a large portion of the organization’s membership. The organization was hit particularly hard when the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced that it would break off their relationship; Mormons had previously constituted nearly half a million of the Boy Scouts’ members. As the Boy Scouts have declined, Christian-specific scouting groups have grown in number. For example, Trail Life USA, which only includes boys and describes itself as “Christ-Centered,” has experienced an explosion in membership. The Boy Scouts have come a long way from a group for boys to go camping with their dads and learn how to build fires and tie knots. Last year, when the Washington Post dispatched Anne Branigin to cover the organization’s National Jamboree, she reported: “The third day of the Jamboree featured a Muslim religious service; an LGBTQ+ affinity tent offered Scouts a safe and supportive space; and disabled scoutmasters led activities promoting mental health, diversity and inclusivity. A bronze statue was dedicated to the first class of female Eagle Scouts, and a little more than 1 in 5 Scouts at the Jamboree were girls.” Left abandoned: America’s boys. The post Boy Scouts Destroyed Itself By Accepting Girls appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

WASHINGTON — The Columbia University Apartheid Divest coalition issued five demands: that Columbia divest assets that benefit from “Israeli apartheid, genocide and occupation in Palestine”; sever relations with Israeli universities; end “land grabs” whether in Harlem or Palestine; defund campus police; and release a statement calling for “an immediate, permanent ceasefire in Gaza.” Which makes you wonder: Who put this crew in charge? It does not seem to occur to the protest community that such decisions are supposed to be the result of stakeholders pushing for change and officialdom wanting to accommodate them. Not extortion. READ MORE: Macklemore Shows Biden Between a Rock and a Hamas Place College protests have spread beyond Columbia and Harvard to campuses across the country. And if a poll of 719 Columbia students, faculty, and workers conducted by New York Magazine and the Columbia Daily Spectator is to be believed, 58 percent of those at Morningside Heights hope pro-Palestinian demands are met. Hamas should be happy with American academia. Me? I stand with Israel. I also agree that all students and faculty have a free-speech right to express opposing views. But they do not have a right to trespass on campus quads, and they do not have a right to keep students who want to learn from college classrooms. As Steven McGuire of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, or ACTA, told me, “Most if not all of these encampments can and should be shut down on the basis of content-neutral policies.” He’s right. So where do we go from here? Fight hate speech with smart speech. Social media platforms have enabled critics to see just how twisted many of the woke pro-Hamas protesters are. At George Washington University, a small group of students had a bullhorn dialogue about how great it would be to execute — actually behead — administrators. “To the guillotine,” they chanted, apparently undisturbed that they were aligning themselves with the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror. Columbia student Khymani James shared his negative views on Zionism on social media: “I don’t fight to injure or for there to be a winner or a loser, I fight to kill,” James wrote. James, who has apologized, has been barred from Columbia’s campus. Good luck finding a good job if any of you actually graduate. Last year, hedge fund CEO Bill Ackman called on fellow big shots not to hire students who blamed Israel, not Hamas, for the Oct. 7 terrorist attack that left more than 1,200 dead. It’s time the protest class realized that bad ideas and a general lack of judgment can have consequences. Activists who broke laws — by damaging property or trespassing — should face serious consequences. They prevented students who wanted to learn in a classroom from a chance to do so. They also cost their institutions a lot of money. Their privileged status as students should not exempt them. Anyone who’s involved in organizing or leading campus occupations, McGuire offered, “should receive some pretty significant discipline.” That could be a suspension, and in extreme cases “even expulsion.” (I’d add clean-up duty. Make tent dwellers clean up after themselves.) But McGuire cautioned, “I’d be surprised if we see consistent, strong follow-through,” because for too many years, administrators caved to chaos. Now it’s time to grow up. Contact Review-Journal Washington columnist Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com. Follow @debrajsaunders on X. COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM The post Protest Much? An Academic Reckoning Is Overdue. appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Unions are said to be having a moment. The story goes something like this: Helped by a presidential administration that touts itself as the “most pro-union in history,” labor unions — after decades of decline — are winning big victories against anti-union corporations and extracting impressive concessions for their workers. But is it all true? There has certainly been a lot of union activity. Last year we witnessed a significant increase in strikes and threats of strikes. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the country lost 16.6 million labor days to work stoppages last year. You have to go all the way back to 2000 to find this level of union disturbance. READ MORE from Veronique de Rugy: Will California Hobble the US Railroad Industry? In addition, the United Auto Workers reached an agreement with Ford that included wage hikes of 25 percent. Similar agreements with Stellantis and General Motors followed. Other unions won contract gains at large employers such as UPS and Hollywood TV and film studios. Then there was the much-celebrated UAW victory in a representation election at Volkswagen in Tennessee and progress made at some Starbucks stores. All the same, talk of a union renaissance might be much ado about nothing. Union membership as a share of wage and salary workers has declined steadily from 28.3 percent in 1967 to an all-time low of 10 percent in 2023. Although the absolute number of union workers has recently risen, it hasn’t kept up with the growth of the total number of American workers. National Review’s Dominic Pino has been following unions comprehensively. He never forgets to report both their wins and their losses. For instance, workers at a unionized Nissan facility in Somerset, New Jersey, are in the process of decertifying from the UAW. The same happened at various non-Starbucks coffee shops. These events are in line with the overall trend for UAW, Pino notes, as “membership declined last year to 370,000. It was nearly 400,000 in 2020, and it peaked at 1.5 million in 1970.” To be fair to the labor movement, part of this decline could be because UAW bosses have been pretty corrupt. For instance, National Review reported that “in December 2020, the UAW reached a settlement with the Department of Justice after a yearslong fraud and corruption investigation. More than a dozen top union officials, including two former presidents, were convicted of crimes for embezzlement of workers’ dues.” It could also be that unions aren’t so much about fighting for the cause of blue-collar workers as they used to be. Indeed, 49 percent of union members worked for the government in 2023. Thirty-three percent of public-sector employees are in unions, as opposed to just 6 percent of the private sector. In the case of UAW, about 100,000 members work in higher education, including graduate student workers statistically likely to go on to non-blue-collar jobs. I believe public-sector unions shouldn’t exist. Taxpayers — the ones paying the bills when government unions successfully negotiate pay and benefits hikes — are not adequately represented at the negotiation table. In fact, with their political donations, public-sector unions help decide who sits on the other end of that negotiating table. By contrast, private unions have every right to exist, but this doesn’t mean they’re a good thing on net for workers. A September 2023 National Bureau of Economic Research paper looked at what a unionized workforce does to incentives and investment. While unionized plants pay higher wages and benefits than do nonunionized ones, they also “experience higher rates of closure, reduced investment, and slower employment growth.” In other words, your unionized job might pay more, as long as it doesn’t go away — and good luck finding another like it. The result holds also for partially unionized plants. Introducing more competition to the private-sector union business model could help. For that, my colleague Liya Palagashvili suggests ending the exclusive-representation clause that “provides government-granted monopoly status to a union supported by 51% of an employer’s workers, giving it the sole authority to negotiate. This means that if some workers want a different union — for example a newer one that might raise the bar in terms of what it can offer — they are out of luck.” Today, these workers aren’t allowed to engage in any negotiations with their employers, and they still have to pay the original union’s fees. The bottom line is that unions aren’t really going through a renaissance. All things considered, their failure is most workers’ gain. Veronique de Rugy is the George Gibbs Chair in Political Economy and a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. To find out more about Veronique de Rugy and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM The post Is the Resurgence of Unions Real? Does It Matter for Workers? appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Maybe you thought we were done reporting on COVID and that we could collectively wash the memory of the most horrendous global social experiment ever devised down the drain. You’d be wrong. Now that we’re four years away from the beginning of the whole ordeal, the headlines that really matter are being written — and because the censors are currently distracted with silencing dissident opinions on war, Bidenomics, and immigration (among other things), we can actually read those headlines. (RELATED: Safe and Effective? The New York Times Revisits the COVID Jab.) Today, the BBC reported that AstraZeneca is withdrawing its COVID jab, developed by scientists at the University of Oxford in just 10 months, from the market. There are, as always, at least two ways to read this story. The way that AstraZeneca, Big Pharma, and Western governments would like us to read it is as follows: The more than 26 variants of COVID suggest that the virus is nimble enough to adapt to the vaccine. At this point, the AstraZeneca vax is simply outdated. It was an amazing scientific breakthrough, but it is no longer as effective as it once was. AstraZeneca is “incredibly proud” of its product, but it’s time to move on to brighter, better things. If you’ve been following the AstraZeneca saga, you may notice that the story is missing a few relatively important details. The timing of AstraZeneca’s announcement is curiously suspicious. Over the last few months, the company has spent a lot of time in the U.K.’s High Court defending against the allegations of some 50 individuals who suffered side effects after receiving the vaccine or whose family members died as a result of side effects of the vaccine. (RELATED: It’s Apparently ‘Racist’ to Protect Children From Parental Drug Use) In February, AstraZeneca admitted that the vaccine could, “in very rare cases,” cause Thrombosis with Thrombocytopenia Syndrome (TTS) — a condition that causes blood clots and low blood platelet counts in patients and has been tied to at least 81 deaths in the U.K. in addition to “hundreds of serious injuries.” Does the decision to pull the AstraZeneca vaccine from the market have anything to do with that case? Well, the company insists that it’s simply unfortunate timing. The vaccine, they tell us, was a wonderful thing. Three billion doses were administered, and, according to some independent estimates, some 6.5 million lives were saved in the vaccine’s first year. Don’t worry. It’s all a coincidence, they say. Nothing to see here. All the more reason to watch for these headlines. This article is an excerpt from The American Spectator’s Spectator P.M. newsletter. Subscribe today to read future letters from our staff! READ MORE: Boy Scouts Destroyed Itself By Accepting Girls The post Real COVID Headlines Are Just Getting Started appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

In the Telegraph Wednesday, a headline declared: “Migration has failed to drive economic growth, warns report.” That much was already quite evident to those with ears to hear, eyes to see, and the capacity for critical thinking. But now, the British paper reports, the data appears to have caught up with the powers of basic observation: Record-high levels of immigration have failed to boost the economy while making the housing crisis worse, a leading think tank has warned. In a report co-authored by former immigration minister Robert Jenrick, the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) urged the Government to introduce caps on legal immigration to stop a drain on British infrastructure and public services that is not offset by economic growth. In particular, high levels of immigration are “significantly exacerbating the housing crisis”, it said. The report undermines almost every popular argument for mass immigration, which has strained Britain to the breaking point — across housing, public services, infrastructure, civil society, and even the living standards of native Brits. (“British consumers are suffering the longest drop in living standards in the G7,” the Telegraph noted.) “[I]f large-scale migration of the sort we’ve seen is really so great for the economy, we have to ask ourselves why we are not seeing this in the GDP per capita data,” CPS concludes. READ MORE from Nate Hochman: Elon Musk, Enemy of the Managers The British Conservative Party’s betrayal of its own voters on this issue is even more pronounced than the GOP’s decades-long track record of broken promises and about-faces on our southern border. The Tories rode the coattails of Brexit — a referendum that was, fundamentally, an expression of British anger about mass migration — to historic majorities, then promptly presided over the greatest increase in immigration in their small island nation’s history. The polls and a slate of recent local elections suggest the party is heading for a drubbing in the upcoming election — the mood within party leadership has been likened to that of a “death march” by Politico. It’s difficult to think of another time in recent history when electoral annihilation was more richly deserved. The obvious and indisputable fact is that mass Third World migration is bad for Western countries — existentially bad, in fact. This has been true for as long as mass Third World migration has been happening at scale, and, in spite of the preponderance of studies attesting to that danger, the fundamental threat transcends any one statistic or numerical data point. Proponents of sane, patriotic immigration policy get bogged down, at times, by debates over the finer points of GDP growth numbers or macroeconomic trends. Empiricism has its place, but it can distract from our ability to see what is right in front of us. The rationalist “has no sense of the cumulation of experience,” as Michael Oakeshott put it — “only of the readiness of experience when it has been converted into a formula.” To be sure, there are many practical arguments against the flood of immigration up from the Global South and into the West: Downward pressure on wages, upward pressure on housing prices, strain on public services, importation of crime, drugs and violence, fraying civic bonds, social and political instability, and so on. All of these, to varying degrees, are true. The European experience here is arguably even starker than that of the United States — so much so, in fact, that elites in some European nations have sought to suppress or hide official government statistics on the matter. Practically every European country that opened its doors to large-scale refugee resettlement in the wake of the 2015 refugee crisis has experienced related spikes in criminal violence, for example — especially the most horrific and savage kinds of crimes, such as gang rapes. Flash points in this saga include the 2015 New Year’s Eve attacks in Cologne, when hundreds of German women were jumped, sexually assaulted, and raped by roving gangs of immigrant men, most of whom “were from the North African-Arabic region,” the German DW reported. (“Packs of men were hunting down women, cornering many of them.”) But the trend is much more systemic. In Germany — which received the largest share of refugees in Europe — Afghan immigrants are a breathtaking 70 times more likely than Germans to be suspected of gang rapes, according to the latest data from the German government; African immigrants are a still-shocking 40 times more likely. Foreign nationals make up just 12 percent of the German population but account for 67 percent of all gang rape cases. The same is consistently true across Europe and across various kinds and categories of crime. Per a 2022 RealClearInvestigations study: RCI collected homicide data for the European Union from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime for 11 years, from 2010 to 2020, and compared it to rising percentages of each country’s foreign-born population. Even after accounting for variations among countries, the data show that each one percentage point increase in immigrant population is associated with a 3.6 percent increase in the homicide rate. Binders full of data attesting to all this can come in handy, at certain junctures. But one need not prove that a large influx of Middle East and North African immigrants will invariably lead to a sharp uptick in gang rapes; or that Pakistani grooming gangs in England are a direct result of — you guessed it — Pakistani immigration; or even that immigration writ large has failed to stimulate economic growth. While each of these data points has a grave story to tell, the civilizational implications of mass migration are larger than the sum of their parts. The simple truth is that the people coming into our country are not like us. They are different. There is nothing wrong with human difference, in the abstract; it gives color and variety to our world. I have traveled to countries like India, South Africa, and Tanzania because they are different from mine — exotic, distinctive, and fascinating in their own right. But I do not want America — my country — to come to resemble theirs; I like America the way that it is. I like it better than theirs, in no small part because it is mine. It belongs to me and my fellow Americans. It is not an “idea,” or a “universal nation,” or an economic zone, or a low-tax parking space for global capital — it is our home. I, for one, would like it to remain that way — and I don’t need studies or data to tell me so. The post Western Civilization Is Not Just a Data Point appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

On Tuesday, the House passed a bill that shouldn’t even have been necessary. And, naturally, that bill has no chance for passage in Chuck Schumer’s Senate. READ MORE from Scott McKay: Zero Championships for Hamas The bill is the Hands Off Our Home Appliances Act, and it’s an attempt by the House Republicans to put a stop to the next round of meddling — molestation, really, like Joe Biden around the kids until the staffers pry him away — by the runaway bureaucrats at the Department of Energy and other agencies in all of your modern conveniences. There’s something deeply pathological about a political party that simply can’t abide your dishwater — or water heater or washing machine or toilet or shower heads or stove — working like you’d like it to. Maybe “pathological” isn’t even the word. “Psychotic” is more like it. They’ve largely ruined all of those appliances with idiotic regulations designed to save energy or water that were not in a shortage, offering grandiose justifications like: “We’re saving the planet.” Nobody believes these things, and the Democrats and their functionaries in those useless federal agencies certainly don’t. This is about power — power over you and your family, power over the economy, power over manufacturing and international trade. Stupid regulations are mere contrivances to get that power, because a government that tightly regulates a thing may then squeeze the manufacturers of that thing for whatever corrupt purposes the people in charge of that government might desire. And the squeezing must continuously increase, or else the folks might get more comfortable. Rep. Debbie Lesko, a Republican representing the Phoenix suburbs, authored this bill last year to attempt to fight off a new round of squeezing. On Tuesday, Lesko got all of the Republicans and even seven of the Democrats to come aboard to pass it: The bill … “modifies the process by which the Department of Energy (DOE) amends, revokes, or implements energy conservation standards for certain consumer products (other than automobiles), such as household appliances,” according to an official summary of the legislation. The legislation was introduced after the Biden Administration’s Energy Department proposed a rule that would have led to a ban on the sale of about half of the gas stoves currently on the market. “My constituents in the north and northwest valley of Maricopa County, Arizona, do not want this government interference in their homes and lives,” Lesko told reporters on Tuesday, per Fox News. “I know that millions of Americans around the country feel the same way.” Lesko said she was “saddened” that the bill was necessary in a statement, and slammed the Biden administration for imposing new regulations on common appliances. The bill, if passed by the Senate, would force the DOE to consider the cost-effectiveness of new policies, such as how updates affecting home appliances would hit low-income families. “No government bureaucrat should ever scheme to take away Americans’ appliances in the name of a radical environmental agenda,” Lesko added. Regrettably, this bill won’t go any further than another piece of legislation Lesko authored last year — that one aimed specifically at stopping the Biden appliance molesters from coming after your gas stove. Schumer wouldn’t even bring that bill up for a vote, and he won’t bring this one up either. It’s an election year. You’d think throwing ordinary Americans a bone would be something the Democrats would do, passing a bill like this and offering it up as an example of how they’re for giving Joe Six-Pack a break. But it seems they’re too far gone for that. So much so that some of them are being outright jerks about the subject. Here was Pete Aguilar, chair of the House Democrat Caucus, on the House floor while the bill was being debated: “Liberty for laundries, freedom for refrigerators. I mean, these are unserious issues.” Oh, OK. As though it wasn’t Aguilar’s pals who created the problem by attacking your home appliances in the first place. And as though practically every appliance repairman you talk to won’t advise you to hang on to your old appliances whenever possible because the new ones have been de-engineered thanks to the Democrats’ stupid regulations. Years ago when he was a freshman senator, Rand Paul perfectly voiced the irritation of the American people when he got an opportunity to grill some faceless, clueless bureaucrat about the declining quality of home appliances thanks to the feverish ministrations of the feds: That’s what Lesko’s bill attempts to push back against. And, honestly, it doesn’t even go very far in doing that. The bill doesn’t roll back the regulations Paul was complaining about. All it does is attempt to stop things from getting worse. But the same busybody appliance molesters will inform you that it’s for your own good that you should have no gas stove, nor a dishwasher that actually, y’know, gets the dishes clean: Susan Dudley leads the George Washington University Regulatory Study Center. She says the bill could have a positive impact on consumers because it stops the Department of Energy from automatically setting new standards every six years. “The problem with the process is that you’re always setting new standards, again based on projections,” Dudley says, “without setting standards based on what’s actually happening.” The White House is defending its strategy. A recent statement from the Office of Management and Budget says the energy standards in question save customers money. According to OMB estimates, an average U.S. household is saving $321 per year in utility bills. They expect savings to increase with time. Yeah, right. Saving compared to what? One promise Republicans running for the House and Senate should make this fall is that all of the federal government’s regulations on consumer appliances and other household equipment will come in for a thorough and unfriendly review. Cretins like Aguilar can laugh all they want and call it unserious. But what’s unserious is the army of utterly worthless Karens at the Department of Energy and other federal agencies who can’t leave regular people well enough alone in our own houses. It was 13 years ago that Paul complained about toilets that don’t flush. There’s actually a black market in old-style toilets that do. Nothing has been done about this idiocy, and it’s only getting worse as the people responsible for it laugh at our inconvenience. Let’s hope they aren’t laughing anymore a year from now. What’s needed is a lot more aggressive reform than Lesko’s bill Schumer will flush down the Senate’s commode, but it’ll take a wipeout election to make that possible. The post Is It Even Possible to Keep Democrats’ Hands off Your Appliances? appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

My prior two installments in this series are here and here. I urge you to read them for background and context. Because of political correctness, one of the glaring causes of the current campus student riots may not be spoken. We all see it. We all know it. But we must not say it. READ MORE from Dov Fischer: Sue the Members of the College Boards Well, I am not “we.” I am I. No one tells me what I may say. So I will say it: The central incitement and cause of the current season of campus riots is the disproportionate prevalence of non-American foreign students from Arab and Muslim countries on American campuses. I document below. These are not the home-grown riots of 1968 and of the early 1970s in which native kids, legitimately concerned about getting drafted to fight in the Vietnam War, rioted to stop the war. These are led by Arabs and Muslims from outside our country determined to destroy Israel “from the river to the sea,” and to take America down, too, in time. There were many good and legitimate reasons for kids in the late sixties and early seventies to oppose the war. This is not the place to relitigate that issue, but some rightly were scared to go when 50,000 body bags were coming back. Some were patriotic and were ready to go, but only if the U.S. would fight to win outright, and Lyndon Johnson would not. He has no end game. Some leftists were communists and other “Hate America” types. But I was there at Columbia in the early seventies, and most did not want to fight in a war that seemed, by then, to have no meaning. Because it no longer did. We knew of the “domino theory,” but it wasn’t going anywhere. An 1860’s Civil War could inspire Northerners to fight against slavery and Southerners to fight for states’ rights and independence from a meddling federal government. World War II was a fight against Hitler, Mussolini, and the crazy Japanese emperor who had bombed Pearl Harbor. The Korean War made sense, and we saved South Korea. But Vietnam just did not make sense to so many kids on campus. So those riots were homegrown. No matter your feelings about them, they at least were indigenous. By contrast, the current riots are incited with foreign money and led by foreign students from Arab and Muslim countries. Yes, there are Jews too. I have written often in the past, and surely will many times again, about the sickness and psychological issues that impel a small class of Jews to hate other Jews and want to destroy us. We see it in George Soros, one of the most hated people in Israel, who has been funding programs for years to destabilize Israel’s governments. We see it in Ben & Jerry, who boycott Israel. We see it in Bernie Sanders, who meanders with Ilhan Omar and Rashid Tlaib, endorsing them and campaigning for them. The Soviet Revolution had an entire Yevesektzia (Hebrew Section) aimed at closing down synagogues and arresting rabbis. But make no mistake: The chief incitement comes from non-American Arab and Muslim students here on student visas. Expanding a bit on what I wrote in this column on Jan. 3: These universities have been bought by Arab Muslim sheikhdoms intent on exporting their Islamism to America. They pay the professors’ salaries obliquely by buying and paying for the Middle Eastern Studies departments that breed hatred for the West, taught by Arab Muslim professors who hate the America where they are, and also by a fair share of extreme radical non-Muslims. Beyond that, the Arab Muslim sheikhdoms pay full tuition for tens of thousands of their own Arab Muslim citizens to be students at American universities. Those troublemakers are cash cows whom the universities eagerly embrace because they are not eligible and therefore do not apply for scholarships or need DEI approval; rather, their governments pay full freight for them. Every single one of them can be tallied as proof that the university is meeting DEI/affirmative action quotas for admitting non-White, non-Judeo-Christian students. That way, the schools do not have to admit as many blacks and Hispanics as they otherwise would. Arabs and Muslims are every bit as intersectional/DEI-certifiable. According to Adam Andrzejewski, CEO of Open the Books: Foreign influence on gifts and grants since 1990 is a big number. It’s $43 billion and roughly one out of every four of those foreign gifts and grants have come from … three countries who oftentimes don’t have U.S. interests at heart. They’re adversarial to our foreign policy positions and the American way of life. That’s Qatar, Saudi Arabia and China. The Jewish Virtual Library reports, “According to the Department of Education (DoE), between 1986 and Oct. 17, 2022, colleges and universities received nearly $44 billion from foreign sources, and nearly one-fourth — $10,826,665,022 — came from Arab individuals, institutions, and governments.” Qatar, which refuses to join the Abraham Accords and literally houses and grants asylum to the top leaders of Hamas, gave $2.7 billion in one year to several colleges, including Cornell, Texas A&M, Northwestern, and Georgetown in one year. Why? Because they like the melody of “Yankee Doodle”? What were they getting for that cash? “Today,” Tablet magazine reports, “there are more than 1 million foreign students enrolled at American universities.” At elite universities, like those where the campus riots are rampant, they make up as much as 25 percent of the student population. In the Ivy League alone, 2,019 foreign students make up 19 percent of the student body at Brown. At Columbia, 14,088 foreigners make up 38 percent of the student body! At Cornell, 6,745 make up 26 percent. Harvard: 5,492 make up 22 percent. University of Pennsylvania: 6,687 for 23 percent. Yale: 3,497 for 24 percent. Similar at Dartmouth and Princeton. Even at Texas A&M, on the “other side of the world” from the northeastern Ivies, Saudi Arabia pumped in $293 million in tuition, Turkey $108 million, and Kuwait $43 million. Consider these statistics from the Jewish Virtual Library, listed by number of donations, total amount donated, largest single donation, and recipient of that largest donation: Qatar, 1056, $5,177,893,434, $151,000,000, Cornell University Saudi Arabia, 5735, $2,979,248,893, $74,119,050, University of Idaho UAE, 1159, $1,289,011,024, $75,000,000, MD Anderson Kuwait, 1177, $857,970,510, $11,338,954, USC Oman, 596, $180,667,586, $10,144,906, West Virginia University Egypt, 110, $125,799,882, $31,831,520, Harvard Bahrain, 47, $93,928,121, $25,770,000, Cal State Northridge Iraq, 42, $50,128,527, $39,108,635, Arkansas Jordan, 73, $26,680,944, $3,768,265, NY Institute of Technology Lebanon, 45, $24,288,730, $2,500,000, Harvard “State of Palestine,” 21, $10,161,000, $775,000, Harvard Libya, 11, $7,247,030, $2,210,000, Tufts Syria, 5, $2,605,641, $1,240,939, University of South Florida Tunisia, 3, $1,033,701, $574,650, Harvard In addition, Harvard and Yale received more than $30 million from Saudi Arabia for the formation of Islamic studies programs. The United Arab Emirates also was in the mix. This has been going on everywhere for years, and virtually no one in the U.S. Senate or the House has noticed it or taken action to preserve academic integrity and American sovereignty. They are targeting our kids — just skim the news for the results. You want more proof that Arab and Muslim students are at the center of the uprisings? Look at the list of more than 30 Harvard student groups that signed a letter against Israel and Jews: the vast majority are unequivocally foreign students, Arabs and Muslims, by their own admission. Go ahead and scan the list: African American Resistance Organization Bengali Association of Students at Harvard College Harvard Act on a Dream Harvard Arab Medical and Dental Student Association Harvard Chan Muslim Student Association Harvard Chan Students for Health Equity and Justice in Palestine Harvard College Pakistan Student Association Harvard Divinity School Muslim Association Harvard Middle Eastern and North African Law Student Association Harvard Graduate School of Education Islamic Society Harvard Graduate Students for Palestine Harvard Islamic Society Harvard Law School Justice for Palestine Harvard Divinity School Students for Justice in Palestine Harvard Jews for Liberation Harvard Kennedy School Bangladesh Caucus Harvard Kennedy School Muslim Caucus Harvard Kennedy School Muslim Women’s Caucus Harvard Kennedy School Palestine Caucus Harvard Muslim Law School Association Harvard Pakistan Forum Harvard Prison Divest Coalition Harvard South Asian Law Students Association Harvard South Asians for Forward-Thinking Advocacy and Research Harvard TPS [Temporary Protected Status] Coalition Harvard Undergraduate Arab Women’s Collective Harvard Undergraduate Ghungroo Harvard Undergraduate Muslim Women’s Medical Alliance Harvard Undergraduate Nepali Students Association Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee Middle East and North African Graduate School of Design Student Society Neighbor Program Cambridge Sikhs and Companions of Harvard Undergraduates Society of Arab Students Look at the above list of Israel and Jew haters at Harvard. “Bengali” refers to Bangladesh, which is 91 percent Muslim. “Chan” is a Chinese form of Buddhism. Pakistan is 96.47 percent Muslim. “North Africa” covers these countries: Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia. “South Asia” covers Muslim countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan. Almost everything else is “Arab” this and “Muslim” that, “Muslim” this and “Arab” that. Throw in a few radical-extreme blacks, some undocumented aliens (“Harvard Act on a Dream”; “Harvard TPS Coalition”), a handful of sick Trotskyite Jews, and there’s your revolution. Do you see what is going on here? We have over 1 million foreign students here in our country. It sounds trite but is true: Most are very fine people. They just want to get a great education in the greatest country there ever was, bring back what they learn to the dirt holes whence they come to help those third world places improve, and maybe someday move back to America themselves to experience the “American dream” that attracted so many of our forebears. They are good people, and they can help build an even greater America, as many have done in high-tech and medicine. However — and sadly — too many of them are angry, hateful troublemakers who have come here and upset our fragile apple cart. They were invited here as our guests, not to smash our windows and corrupt our campuses. In the best of all worlds, we should ban students coming only from the “Hate America” countries. But we have learned from experience, during the early days of President Trump’s first term, that the courts will not allow it. Leftists will run to Obama judges and argue that the bans are racist and Islamophobic because they pinpoint only places like Pakistan, Qatar, and Kuwait. Therefore, with deep regret, I propose that America institute an across-the-board two-year moratorium on allowing any and all foreign students onto our campuses. This will penalize many innocents, but not forever. No non-American has a G-d-given right to be here. Our Constitution does not mandate it. We have a country to protect, and tough times call for tough measures. They can come in two years if they want it that much. We plan still to be here. Perhaps no innocent foreign students will feel the unfairness more than Israeli exchange students. To them, my co-religionists and brothers and sisters in the Land of Zion, I would say: “I feel it. You don’t deserve this. With Jew haters abusing their student visas to seek Israel’s destruction, you hardly deserve to encounter a two-year ban from American colleges and universities as they do. But our legal system is complex, and it’s either all-or-nothing here. The Obama judges will not allow anything else. And, honestly, when your country understandably went into full lockdown in 2020 over COVID, you even banned American and other Jews from flying to Israel. It was nothing personal, but you had your country to protect. The Chief Rabbi of South Africa published an impassioned plea in the Jerusalem Post, begging for the right of his community and other Jews around the world to enter so that elderly Jewish grandparents could see their grandchildren, now on aliyah and living permanently in Israel, and so that others could visit Jerusalem during festivals like Sukkot, Passover, Rosh Hashanah, and Yom Kippur. Yet, with heavy hearts, you would not let us in — and we get it. You had a country to protect: your own. Now, likewise, we Americans have a country to protect: our own. And we are facing a disease as bad as COVID because it is wiping out our young people, threatening their very safety, destroying their souls. We have to do this, a cooling-off period for two years. Then the moratorium will end, and we will welcome you with open arms.” And that is what we all must do: We must close America’s campuses to foreign exchange students and foreign money donations for the next two years, banning all foreign funding for all American universities for those two years as well. To receive Rav Fischer’s Weekly Extensive Torah Commentaries or to attend any or all of Rav Fischer’s weekly 60-minute live Zoom classes on the Weekly Torah Portion, the Biblical Prophets, the Mishnah, Rambam Mishneh Torah, or Advanced Judaic Texts, send an email to: shulstuff@yioc.org His 10-part exciting and fact-based series of one-hour classes on the Jewish Underground liberation movement (Irgun, Lechi, and Haganah) and the Rise of Modern Israel can be found here. In it, he uses historic video clips of Irgun, Lechi, and Haganah actions, decades of past Arab terrorist atrocities, as well as stirring musical selections from the Underground and video’d interviews of participants, to augment data, statistics, maps, and additional historical records to create a fascinating, often gripping, and scholarly enriching educational experience about issues that remain deeply relevant today as Israel engages in an existential war in Gaza against Hamas terrorism. His latest deeply moving weekly series of informational and inspirational programs on the Hamas Gaza war may be found here. His 40-part Bible Study series covering all of I Samuel (First Samuel) intensively with Talmudic and Midrashic commentaries, and now into II Samuel is now up here. The post Colleges Must Stop Admitting Foreign Students for Two Years appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

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