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This Is How Bad Public Schools Are

School districts in affluent areas are hotbeds of left-wing activism, but in general, student performance is at least acceptable. Parents ensure that their own children do well enough, and often invest heavily in supplementing public education with specialized tutoring that at least guarantees that their kids do well on standardized tests. 

Kids get a much worse education than they should, and often more than parents assume, but there is a reason many parents are unaware of the parlous state of the public education system as a whole. If you can get your kid into a good school in a prosperous area, it really isn’t that bad, except for the ideological indoctrination. 

I don’t want to oversell even the better public schools. Kids are now entering college without ever having read a book, and often with math skills that require remedial education, even at elite colleges. But parents love the fact that their kids are getting good grades and doing well on standardized tests, and will earn a credential that will likely serve them well. 

Most affluent parents seem indifferent to the left-wing ideological training their kids are being subjected to, although I detect that a backlash is building and will become strong enough to force the lefties to become more subtle in affluent areas. Or not. 

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Global Warming Claim: CO2 CAN’T Hold Heat — and Real Scientists Have Known This for Ages

President Donald Trump recently reversed the Obama-era “endangerment finding,” which had identified CO2 as a public-health threat. Global-warming alarmists consider this a step backwards. But, says a man with actual hands-on experience working with so-called greenhouse gases, it’s a step toward sanity.

In fact, writes James T. Moodey on Sunday, “Real scientists have known the truth about global warming for decades.”

What’s more, “There’s an easy test to disprove global warming,” he states at American Thinker. “I did it myself.”

Moodey then elaborates, providing some background on climate-change alarmism’s origins:

The groupthink started in 1994 as a political movement to ban fossil fuels at our country’s first climate change bureaucracy, Southern California Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD). A local professor wrote a rule for them that became known as “cap and trade.” It required our factories to reduce combustion of natural gas by an average 75 percent over five years. I owned a Weights and Measures gas-physics test-and-repair facility. The air quality district chose my company to test the factories’ gas-physics instruments for accuracy once per year. We witnessed the closing of over 1,200 factories because of that rule.

We were skeptical of the rule’s assumptions, so we tested carbon dioxide. It cools twenty degrees in less than four minutes. It cannot possibly retain heat from day to day (global warming). It does not cause any warming.

Of course, this may or may not be definitive. After all, a given researcher could always be missing something. But the scientific establishment wasn’t interested in finding out.

That is, Moodey brought his findings to a 2014 Heartland Institute conference. He was rebuffed — even by those on “his side.” As he relates:

I offered to build the test bench for a respected professor, who said to me, “We believe that carbon dioxide causes warming; we just don’t know exactly how or how much.” I walked away thinking, “That is the most unscientific statement I have ever heard.”

Moodey says he then realized that tackling all of academia was fruitless. He was astounded at the “groupthink.”

What he encountered, too, was something late author Michael Crichton warned of: “consensus” (pseudo)science. As Crichton put it in a 2003 Caltech speech:

Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he … has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world.

In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus.

Crichton later added that talk of consensus is a red flag. It “is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough,” he explained. “Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way.”

Not anyone, that is, except global-warming alarmists.

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Texas Sues Drone Maker Anzu Over Alleged Ties to CCP

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing drone-maker Anzu Robotics, alleging that the U.S.-based company misled consumers and concealed its ties with the Chinese communist regime.

Paxton announced the lawsuit on Feb. 19, accusing the Texas-based startup of rebranding products sourced from Chinese drone giant Da Jiang Innovations, commonly known as DJI.

Founded in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen in 2006, DJI has been flagged by U.S. regulators as a security risk because of its ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The U.S. Commerce Department added DJI to its export control list in 2020 for aiding the CCP’s human rights abuses. The Treasury banned U.S.-based individuals from trading DJI shares the following year because of similar concerns. The Pentagon blacklisted DJI as a Chinese military company in 2022, noting that the Chinese regime requires all Chinese companies to allow it to use them as part of its military-civil fusion strategy.

In the lawsuit, Paxton accused Anzu of making false and misleading representations to Texans about its business relationship with DJI, data-sharing practices, and software development.

Anzu markets itself as an American-owned, made-in-Malaysia alternative, but much of its drone technology is licensed from DJI, which receives payments for every drone that Anzu orders, the complaint alleges.

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Spanish Court Orders NordVPN and Proton VPN to Block Piracy Streams

Spain’s soccer league has found a new target in its fight against pirate streams: the VPNs people use to protect their privacy online.

A court in Córdoba has ordered NordVPN and Proton VPN to block specific IP addresses broadcasting illegal LaLiga matches, requiring both companies to alter their “internal systems” to make those addresses “inaccessible from Spain.”

The ruling was issued without notifying either provider. Neither could challenge it before it took effect. The court says it cannot be appealed at all.

LaLiga and Telefónica Audiovisual Digital brought the case to Commercial Court No. 1 of Córdoba, framing the measures as “precautionary” and taken in “defense of [LaLiga] clubs’ audiovisual rights.”

The court’s theory of liability is that VPNs are “contributing” to piracy simply by doing what VPNs do, letting users change their IP address and location. The order also notes that VPNs “acknowledge and advertise” their effectiveness at evading internet restrictions. Offering a privacy tool that works, in other words, is now evidence of wrongdoing.

Both companies found out about the ruling the same way everyone else did. NordVPN and Proton have said that they have received no notice of this.

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Trump Directs USDA to Make More Glyphosate, Signals Liability Protection for Pesticide Makers

President Donald Trump late Wednesday signed an executive order intended to boost domestic production of glyphosate.

Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller. Bayer, which acquired Monsanto in June 2018, is facing tens of thousands of lawsuits from people alleging Roundup caused them to develop cancer.

Trump’s order also grants legal immunity to domestic manufacturers of products containing glyphosate when manufacturers are ordered, under the Defense Production Act of 1950, to produce the products.

The Defense Production Act is used in national emergencies to compel the production of materials or supplies necessary for national security.

Bayer is the only company producing glyphosate in the U.S. However, U.S. farmers also import the chemical from China, Reuters reported.

The executive order also applies to elemental phosphorus, used in weapons production, electronics and batteries. Elemental phosphorus is also used to make glyphosate.

Trump said elemental phosphorus and glyphosate-based herbicides are scarce materials critical to national defense, and that inadequate domestic production poses an imminent threat to military readiness and food security.

“Glyphosate-based herbicides are a cornerstone of this Nation’s agricultural productivity and rural economy,” he said.

The order directs U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins to create rules for increasing the supply of phosphorus and glyphosate.

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Berlin Court Orders X to Hand Over Hungarian Election Data to Researchers

A Berlin court has ordered X to hand over data on Hungarian election activity to researchers, ruling in favor of Democracy Reporting International after the platform refused the group’s access requests in November.

The ruling turns on the EU’s censorship law, the Digital Services Act, which requires large platforms to give external researchers access to data for scrutiny of election interference risks. X ignored that obligation. The European Commission fined it €40 ($47) million for that refusal, as part of a broader €120 ($141) million levy, in December.

X’s position throughout has been straightforward: don’t share the data. No response to press inquiries, no compliance, no engagement.

Hungary votes in April in what amounts to a test of Viktor Orbán’s power as he faces his rival Péter Magyar.

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Texas Senate Race Thrown Into Turmoil After Stunning ‘Doxxing’ Allegation

Sen. John Cornyn’s (R-TX) campaign is under fire after a top staffer posted Rep. Wesley Hunt’s 2016 provisional ballot on social media, exposing personal details. Hunt announced that he has filed a police report accusing the campaign of “doxxing” his family just days before early voting begins.

The controversy is the latest in a fiery primary race between the three candidates.

Cornyn communications director Matt Mackowiak allegedly posted images of Hunt’s 2016 Harris County provisional ballot on his X account on Friday. He alleged that Hunt lied about his military discharge date and 2016 voting record.

The unredacted document included Hunt’s home address, driver’s license number and the last four digits of his Social Security number. Cornyn’s campaign deleted the post and then reposted the images with redactions of Hunt’s personal information.

Hunt slammed the Cornyn campaign, characterizing the post as dangerous and unlawful. He said sharing his and his family’s information crossed the line between opposition research and doxxing. He filed a criminal complaint with the Harris County Constable’s Office. Law enforcement intends to subpoena X to retrieve the deleted post, according to Fox 26 Houston.

The lawmaker further claimed that his 2016 provisional ballot was never counted and that Cornyn is using it to claim he committed voter fraud.

A spokesperson for the Hunt campaign told Townhall, “In this current climate of political violence, doxxing the home address of a sitting Member of Congress or his family isn’t ‘hardball politics.’ It’s reckless, dangerous, and illegal. It puts lives at risk.”

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The ‘Warmth of Collectivism’ Sure Looks Like a Giant Cash-Grab for Woke Governing Bodies

Zohran Mamdani ran on a platform of making things more affordable for New Yorkers. That was a lie, and less than two months into his administration, Mamdani is threatening to raise property taxes on everyone while failing to deliver on all the “free” stuff he promised voters. 

But what Mamdani actually plans to do is use New York City taxpayers’ money to fund a plethora of woke government agencies to undoubtedly advance his socialist, DEI agenda. Check out some of the spending in his massive $127 billion budget.

This spending includes $5.6M for the Office of Racial Equity, $4.6M for the Commission on Racial Equity, $835,000 for the Commission on Gender Equity, more than $260,000 for the Department of Education’s Chief Diversity Officer, $300,000 for three FDNY Civilian Chief Diversity Inclusion Officers, and $118,000 for the FDNY Chief Diversity Inclusion Officer.

Just for some perspective, the 2026-27 budget for the entire state of Florida is $117 billion.

Mamdani plans to pay for all this by jacking up property taxes by almost 10 percent if Governor Hochul and Democrats in Albany don’t let him fleece the rich and corporations, and by cutting the budget for the NYPD, including slashing 5,000 new NYPD officer hires.

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Mamdani Told New Yorkers How He Felt About the Police, Now He’s Showing Them

There were plenty of New Yorkers who did not vote for Mayor Zohran Mamdani because they knew what would happen to their city if he were elected. Since he has been in office, the predictions of those New Yorkers are sadly coming true. No snow removal after snowstorms, garbage piling up, and most recently, a mayoral visit with a man in the hospital who wielded a knife at police and was charged with attempted assault. But now that he is safely ensconced in the mayor’s office, Mamdani is carrying out his vision for New York, and that vision does not include a fully staffed New York Police Department (NYPD).

On Tuesday, Mamdani claimed he “inherited a historic budget gap.” But is that just a cover for doing what he has supported in the past, defunding the police? Former Mayor Eric Adams’ plan for the NYPD was to add 300 new officers by July of 2026 and increase that number to 2,700 by 2027. Adams’ plan would eventually bring the total number of new officers to 5,000 by July 2028. Adams’ plan would also enable the NYPD to put roughly 40,000 officers on the streets of New York. But all of that will come to an abrupt halt under Mamdani. The NYPD budget for fiscal year 2027 is $6.4 billion. Mamdani would decrease that by $22 million and would cap the number of officers on the street at 35,000. 

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President Trump to Direct Pentagon to Release Government Files Related to Aliens and UFOs

President Trump on Thursday ordered the Pentagon and other agencies to declassify and release government files related to aliens and UFOs.

“Based on the tremendous interest shown, I will be directing the Secretary of War, and other relevant Departments and Agencies, to begin the process of identifying and releasing Government files related to alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and unidentified flying objects (UFOs), and any and all other information connected to these highly complex, but extremely interesting and important, matters. GOD BLESS AMERICA!” Trump said on Truth Social.

The Gateway Pundit previously reported that President Trump accused Obama of leaking classified information on aliens during an interview with far-left podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen.

Obama said Aliens are “real” adding, “But I haven’t seen them. And they’re not being kept in Area 51. There’s no underground facility—unless there’s this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the President of the United States.”

Fox News reporter Peter Doocy asked President Trump about Obama’s comments on aliens.

“Barack Obama said that aliens are real. Have you seen any evidence of nonhuman visitors to Earth?” Fox News reporter Peter Doocy said to Trump.

“Well, he gave classified information. He’s not supposed to be doing that,” Trump said.

“So aliens are real?” Doocy asked Trump.

“Well, I don’t know if they’re real or not. I can tell you he gave classified information. He’s not supposed to be doing that. He made a big mistake. He took it out of classified information,” Trump said.

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