RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2025-2-8-kindergarten-konstitutional-law-comes-to-the-southern-district-of-new-york

In yesterday’s post, reviewing a Washington Post op-ed by Ruth Marcus that called efforts by the duly-elected President to direct the bureaucracy to implement his policies a “power grab” and an “onslaught against the government itself,” I described the piece as reflecting “kindergarten-level constitutional analysis.” After all, my 6 year old first-grader grandson is fully capable of reading the first sentence of Article II of the Constitution (“The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America”) and figuring out that this guy is given the sole and full power to direct the executive branch of the federal government. Nothing about the elected President exercising such powers is or can be a “power grab.” If you are somehow unable to grasp that simple proposition, you therefore must be at sub-first grade level of comprehension, and thus kindergarten level, at the highest.

Well, today Kindergarten Konstitutional Law came to the Southern District of New York. In response to a motion made by some 19 states (all Democrat-led), a Southern District Judge named Paul Engelmayer issued a Temporary Restraining Order preventing President Trump and Treasury Secretary Bessent from “granting access” to Treasury Department payment systems to anyone other than “civil servants with a need for access to perform their job duties.” Here is a copy of Judge Engelmayer’s Order. Looking at the language of the Order that I just quoted, it seems to mean quite clearly that even President Trump and Secretary Bessent themselves are enjoined from looking at the line-by-line details of who is getting paid by the Treasury. Why? Because the information is “sensitive.” I’m not making this up.

So who is this Engelmayer guy? You will not be surprised to learn that he is someone with the highest of the high credentials of the super-elite who claim the prerogative to run the federal government outside of any democratic control. Here is a Wikipedia biography of Engelmayer. (The bio contains a prominent caveat that “a major contributor” to the bio “appears to have a close connection” to the subject. I take that to mean that Engelmayer probably wrote the thing himself, so you can take it for what it’s worth.). The bio says that Engelmayer is a summa cum laude graduate of Harvard College, and a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School. He clerked on the D.C. Circuit, and then for Thurgood Marshall at the Supreme Court. He served as a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, and did a term with the Solicitor General’s office in Washington during the Clinton administration. And at some point he slid seamlessly into the job of Managing Partner of the New York office of Wilmer Hale. He was named to the Southern District bench by President Obama in 2011.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2025/02/a-victory-for-women-athletes/

As long as we’ve had organized sports, no one thought it would be a good idea for men to compete against women, until the last several years. As part of the trans craze, male athletes infiltrated women’s competitions, teams, and locker rooms. The consequences were woeful, and sometimes, men claimed a spot on each rank of the podium in women’s divisions. Now, President Trump has intervened with his aptly named executive order, “Keeping Men out of Women’s Sports.”

Trump has already been fighting the pervasive gender ideology through his executive actions. On Inauguration Day, he signed an order on “gender ideology extremism” that directed all federal agencies and employees to operate on sex-based definitions of words like “male,” “female,” “men,” “women,” “boys,” and “girls.” On January 28, Trump signed the order on “chemical and surgical mutilation” that protects children from the medical abuse that is often wrongly branded as “gender-affirming care.” The recent executive order, announced on Wednesday, takes drastic action to ensure that Title IX promotes equal opportunity and equal protection in sports on the basis of sex rather than gender — and universities or athletic associations that don’t comply will likely suffer a painful punishment.

In his order, Trump directed the secretary of education to pursue action against educational institutions or sports associations that either require women to compete against males or undress in their presence. Moreover, all executive departments and agencies are empowered to rescind funding to programs that similarly violate these sex-based protections. The Department of Justice is instructed to coordinate and provide the necessary resources to enforce these policies. But perhaps only minimal enforcement efforts will be needed, since it seems that even the most high-profile organizations have already proposed plans to make changes. For example, the NCAA announced that women’s competitions would be limited to athletes who were born female.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm-plus/democrat-leader-wants-leftists-to-fight-trumps-policies-in-the-streets/

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has called upon people to fight the “extreme MAGA Republican agenda” not just “legislatively” and “in the courts,” but “in the streets.” The Trump White House has demanded that Jeffries apologize, but so far he has not done so, and it is unlikely that he will. It makes sense that he wouldn’t. After all, how can he apologize for echoing a call that numerous leftists have made in recent years?

According to a Friday report in the New York Post, Jeffries and Congressional Black Caucus Chair Yvette Clarke (D-Race Hatred) were criticizing Trump for his handling of the helicopter/plane collision in Washington when a reporter asked Jeffries about New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who has been showing dangerous signs lately of not showing the unremitting hostility to Trump that the left requires.

That was not a question Jeffries wanted to address. He said: “I’ll have more to say about the future of the mayorship of the city of New York at the appropriate time.” Jeffries then changed the subject, and began expatiating on how leftists should be responding to this moment of deep crisis for their socialist internationalist agenda.

Jeffries continued: “Right now, we’re going to keep focused on the need to look out for everyday New Yorkers and everyday Americans who are under assault by an extreme MAGA Republican agenda that is trying to cut taxes for billionaires, donors, and wealthy corporations and then stick New Yorkers and working class Americans across the country with the bill. That’s not acceptable. We are going to fight it legislatively. We are going to fight it in the courts. We’re going to fight it in the streets.”

This was the minority leader of the House of Representatives, someone who is supposed to want to be invested in the safety and wellbeing of Americans, issuing an open call for violence. White House deputy press secretary Kush Desai declared: “While President Trump remains focused on uniting our country and delivering the mandate set by the American people, the House Minority Leader, Hakeem Jeffries, incites violence calling for people to fight ‘in the streets’ against President Trump’s agenda. This unhinged violent rhetoric is dangerous. Leader Jeffries should immediately apologize.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/02/10/a-sputnik-moment-majority-fear-losing-ai-lead-to-china-back-more-govt-investment-ii-tipp-poll/

Americans mostly want smaller, more effective government that spends less of their money while still doing essential things that only governments can do. But, in the latest I&I/TIPP Poll, there’s one area where people see a definite role for government: The ongoing U.S.-China battle to dominate the global artificial intelligence (AI) market, estimated to be worth trillions of dollars.

America had a kind of “Sputnik moment” recently, as tech author Charles Hugh Smith put it, after claims were made that China’s “DeepSeek” R1 AI software had leapfrogged other global AI versions and that it did so with an unbelievably parsimonious development cost of only $6 million.

That seemingly innocuous announcement sent stock markets plunging around the world, leading to such headlines as Chinese AI threat triggers $1 trillion market crash, DeepSeek sends a shockwave through markets, and Did China’s DeepSeek Just Pop The AI Stock Bubble?, among many, many others.

Does this bother average Americans? Quite a bit, it seems. In February’s national online I&I/TIPP Poll, taken Jan. 29-31 from a sample of 1,478 adults, survey participants were asked three questions about the booming field of artificial intelligence.

The first question: “How concerned are you about China potentially surpassing the U.S. in artificial intelligence development?”