Posts on Friday, May 30, 2025

Three days before the start of the 2024-25 school year, the San Francisco Unified School District sent an email telling freshman parents that their kids had been automatically enrolled in a two-semester ethnic studies class. The course — which covers such topics as structural racism, colonialism, and the relative merits of capitalism versus socialism — had been an elective for a decade, but families were now being told it had been made a requirement of graduation. Students have raised concerns that they might not be able to fit into their schedules electives such as art, or even core classes like biology, world history, or Spanish, as a result.

Former President Biden blasted the authors of a new book detailing his mental decline during the 2024 race for president and his final few months in office. Biden was asked about chatter regarding his health stemming from a new book, “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again” by CNN anchor Jake Tapper and Axios reporter Alex Thompson after speaking at an event in Delaware on Friday. “You can see that I’m mentally incompetent, I can’t walk — and I can beat the hell out of both of them,” Biden said with a smirk

In an article griping about President Trump’s plan to keep Medicaid from paying for transgender hormone injections, MSNBC repeated the debunked falsehood that lack of access to so-called “gender-affirming care” will cause people to die. The “one big, beautiful bill,” which passed the House and is making its way through the Senate, would prevent taxpayer dollars from funding opposite-sex hormones for adults and minors. But MSNBC’s Katelyn Burns, a freelance columnist who proclaims the title “the first openly transgender Capitol Hill reporter in U.S. history,” took to dramatic fearmongering on Wednesday that this would kill trans-identifying individuals.

PolitiFact threw another "False" flag on their mountain of 1,095 Donald Trump "fact checks" on Wednesday. The dispute was whether Harvard gave the Department of Homeland Security the information they requested on their foreign students. They cited a recent press gaggle with the president: "Part of the problem with Harvard is that there are about 31% of foreigners coming to Harvard ... but they refuse to tell us who the people are," Trump told reporters May 25. "We want a list of those foreign students and we'll find out whether or not they're OK. Many will be OK, I assume. And I assume with Harvard many will be bad."

Sometimes, the smartest PR strategy is to tell the truth. It happens a lot that, of all the options available, telling the truth is your best choice. Clients hate that! “Why the hell am I paying you money if I’m just gonna tell the truth?! I could’ve done that on my own!” They’re disappointed if there’s no smoke, mirrors, or magic act. Alas, most of the time, a client’s PR options are finite. The “facts on the ground” almost always limit your choices. I can’t “sell” a story that isn’t credible, so reality keeps you grounded — especially in an outcome-based endeavor like PR. Trust me on this, folks:

The Supreme Court has temporarily stayed a lower court decision that halted the Trump administration’s attempt to remove a protection known as parole for immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. The court’s decision, which came on May 30, blocks the lower court order as the issue plays out in the court system. Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor dissented from the court’s decision. The Trump administration had argued that the decision to remove parole was discretionary for the secretary of homeland security and not reviewable by courts.

On Friday, Joe Biden gave a speech at the annual Memorial Day event at Veterans Memorial Park in New Castle, Del. — his first public remarks since the revelation of his cancer diagnosis. And it went as well as you would expect. And if you expected him to make the speech about himself and his family, you were right. What should have been a solemn tribute to the men and women who laid down their lives for this country turned into yet another chapter in the Biden family memoir. Rather than focusing on the fallen heroes we’re meant to honor,

Prices barely climbed in April, pulling the annual rate of inflation down toward the Federal Reserve’s two percent target, even while personal income climbed at a rapid rate. The personal consumption price index climbed 0.1 percent in April, the second month in a row in which consumers got relief from inflation that had plagued the economy throughout the Biden administration. In March, the index showed prices were flat. Compared with a year ago, prices are up just 2.1 percent. That just one-tenth above the two percent rate of inflation the Fed says it targets.

House Republicans likely dodged a political bullet when they opted against including tax hikes on the wealthy in this year’s reconciliation bill. Trump promised his voters across-the-board tax cuts while campaigning, but once confronted with the difficult math of paying for his expensive agenda, the president — and some members of the GOP caucus — began to wobble. So long as Senate Republicans stick with their colleagues in the lower chamber and avoid adding tax hikes to the “big, beautiful” bill, they’ll avoid paying a steep political price at the ballot box.

Media figures seem to have settled on two big excuses for how they "missed" the Biden senility "story." The first reason is that a small group of highly placed White House sources kept telling them that Biden was just fine, and the second is that "groupthink" blinded them to what was right before their eyes. Everybody said the same thing, and hence everybody started seeing the same thing. Groupthink is a real phenomenon. Once you have a few people say something is so, the tendency for others to follow even when it doesn't accord with their senses or experience gets greater and greater.

The FBI is investigating an effort by an unknown individual to impersonate White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, according to a report. The imposter has reportedly fired off text messages and placed phone calls to Republican lawmakers, governors and business executives in recent weeks pretending to be Wiles, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. It’s unclear who is behind the campaign, and what their goal is, but the faker appears to be using artificial intelligence to mimic Wiles’s voice — and in one case asked for cash transfer, according to the outlet. One text from the person claiming to be Wiles

The Supreme Court ruled Friday that President Donald Trump can terminate the protected status of around 500,000 immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela while an appeal of the president's order is still pending. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, in a scathing dissent joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, said the majority of the Supreme Court "has plainly botched" its assessment in granting a stay of a lower court ruling that had blocked the terminations ordered by Trump on his first day back in the White House. Until that order, the group of immigrants who had left their home countries because of conflicts there, or unsafe living or working conditions,

American far-right MAGA activist Laura Loomer has called for the deportation of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s daughter following US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s announcement that the United States will begin “aggressively" revoking visas of Chinese students. (snip)Spotlight turned to Xi Mingze, the daughter of Jinping after Loomer claimed that she is living in Massachusetts under heavy security. “LET’S GO! DEPORT XI JINPING’S DAUGHTER! She lives in Massachusetts and went to Harvard! Sources tell me PLA guards from the CCP provide her with private security on US soil in Massachusetts!" she said on X.

The mother of a transgender high school track athlete who continues to exert their dominance over biological females is labeled a 'coward' while being confronted by rival parents in footage circulating online. AB Hernandez of Jurupa Valley, who is a biological male, came out on top in both the women's long jump and triple jump at the California Interscholastic Federation Southern Section Masters Meet over the weekend. In doing so, Hernandez has qualified for both events in next weekend's state championships, having missed out on a place in the high jump by one spot after finishing fourth.

An Arkansas kindergarten graduation descended into madness when a large brawl broke out between parents, forcing school officials to scold the “unacceptable” behavior displayed in front of the little tykes. Several adults threw punches at each other in the hallway of West Memphis’ Faulk Elementary on Wednesday as the frightened screams of nearby children filled the crowded corridor. Multiple men and women were in the center of the melee, plowing through the school as other parents rushed to get their children away from the danger, according to video obtained by WREG. Kids could also be heard crying “stop” in the video.

Top White House aide Stephen Miller said on May 29 that the Trump administration is aiming to significantly increase the number of daily arrests of illegal immigrants in an effort to reverse years of mass illegal immigration into the country. Over the first 100 days of the Trump administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested more than 66,000 illegal immigrants, or about 650 arrests per day, (snip)“We are looking to set a goal of a minimum of 3,000 arrests for ICE every day, and President [Donald] Trump is going to keep pushing to get that number up higher each and every single day so we can get all of the Biden

This week, we saw a spate of news stories blaming Democrats’ troubles on their vocabulary. They’re just using too many darn multisyllabic, academic-sounding words and turning off numbskull voters, is the basic message. Seriously? The Democrats’ problem isn’t linguistic, it’s ideological. But no one in the party wants to admit that. A Washington Post story this week – “Democratic troubles revive debate over left-wing buzzwords” – begins by saying: Maybe it’s using the word ‘oligarchs’ instead of rich people. Or referring to ‘people experiencing food insecurity’ rather than Americans going hungry. Or ‘equity’ in place of ‘equality,’ or ‘justice-involved populations’ instead of prisoners.

Donald Trump got some good news from a Florida judge Wednesday: his lawsuit against the Pulitzer Board may continue, meaning he can carry on his quest to hold them accountable for first issuing prizes to the New York Times and the Washington Post for their fake Russia-Russia-Russia coverage and then doubling down by claiming that there was no false information in any of those outlets’ stories. No proof of Russian collusion with the 2016 Trump campaign was ever produced, and the Robert Mueller investigation ended with a thud and no charges, yet the Board stood by their decision. They even commissioned a review of the Post and Times’ stories

Keith Olbermann unwisely took a jab at former NCAA star swimmer Riley Gaines over her athleticism. It didn't work out very well for him. Olbermann, who has a history of going after prominent conservative-leaning women on social media from the safety of his basement studio, opted to take a shot at Gaines after Education Secretary Linda McMahon suggested she would have won her race had it not been for a biological male participating in the event. "She finished 85th in the Olympic Trials," he responded. "She finished tied for 5th in the only race including a transgendered athlete. If there had been none, she MIGHT have finished tied for 4th,

Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell did not respond to multiple press inquiries from The Tennessee Star after Metro Nashville was accused of publicly leaking the names of U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Homeland Security Investigations officials who participated in the recent immigration enforcement operation that resulted in nearly 200 arrests of illegal immigrants. O’Connell was accused of leaking the names on Wednesday by U.S. Representative Andy Ogles (R-TN-05), who noted that Metro Nashville published names of DHS and HSI officials to a Nashville data portal affiliated with the Metro Office of New Americans.

The Justice Department on Thursday formally notified the American Bar Association that it will no longer comply with its ratings process for judicial nominees, the result of what it argues is a biased system and one that "invariably and demonstrably" favors nominees put forth by Democratic administrations. The Department of Justice said it will no longer grant the ABA the "special treatment" and first access it has received, revoking decades of precedent where the ABA interviewed and vetted potential members of the incoming DOJ team. "Accordingly, while the ABA is free to comment on judicial nominations, there is no justification for treating the ABA differently from such other activist organizations

Big news yesterday and today on the tariff front. Yesterday, the U.S. Court of International Trade ruled that President Trump’s “Worldwide and Retaliatory Tariffs” and “Trafficking Tariffs” on goods from Mexico and Canada exceed the authority delegated to him by Congress. The administration immediately appealed that ruling, and today it was stayed by the Federal Circuit pending further litigation. So the tariffs remain in place, for the moment. The Constitution gives Congress, not the president, the power to “lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises,” and to “regulate Commerce with foreign Nations.” By statute, Congress has delegated some of that authority to the president.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) shut down its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) office last week, The Post can exclusively reveal. MIT President Sally Kornbluth officially closed the Community and Equity Office after earlier prohibiting the use of diversity statements in faculty hiring or student admissions, a university official confirmed. A senior administrative position at the office will also be eliminated as part of a return to a merit-based focus kicked off by Kornbluth in January 2024. That process involved an assessment of the DEI office’s relative success as determined by senior faculty and staff members. “MIT is in the talent business. Our success depends on attracting

Today, the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS) published, a comprehensive list of sanctuary jurisdictions including cities, counties, and states that are deliberately obstructing the enforcement of federal immigration laws and endangering American citizens. The DHS notice indicates that the official list was published in accordance with an Executive Order issued by Pres. Trump late last month. Still to come, Each jurisdiction listed will receive formal notification of its non-compliance and all potential violations of federal criminal statutes. If you a curious, you can check for yourself to see which localities in your state(s) are included. Some states, I noticed, do not have a listing.

Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta released its integrity reports on Thursday for the first quarter of 2025, claiming it reduced enforcement mistakes by 50 percent since the beginning of the Trump presidency. Enforcement mistakes include removing content from Facebook and Instagram that doesn’t actually violate platform rules. In January, Meta announced policy changes intended to reduce the number of enforcement mistakes, as part of Zuckerberg’s commitment to enable free speech on Meta’s platforms. The company’s newly released Q1 report shows that the company is taking steps to put its weight behind Zuckerberg’s words. The report notes that in December 2024 it removed millions of pieces of content every day