Abigail Shrier: California’s New Law Lets Schools Keep Secrets from Parents Gavin Newsom signs a bill that keeps parents in the dark if their kids change gender identity at school.

https://www.thefp.com/p/abigail-shrier-california-gender-law-newsom

Child predators follow a common playbook: target the victim, gain their trust, fill a need, and, crucially, isolate the child from her parents. For several years, this has also been standard California state protocol with regard to schoolchildren questioning their gender identities. On Monday, this scheme became law.

The “SAFETY Act,” AB 1955, signed by California Democratic governor Gavin Newsom, legally forbids schools from adopting any policy that would force them to disclose “any information related to a pupil’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression to any other person without the pupil’s consent.” Schools may not, as a matter of policy, inform parents of a child’s new gender identity unless the child volunteers her approval. The law also prohibits schools from punishing any school employee found to have “supported a pupil” hurtling down a path toward risky and irreversible hormones and surgeries.

The law effectively shuts down the local parents’ rights movement in California by eliminating its most important tool: the ability to organize at the community level to stop schools from deceiving them. No longer can families hope to convince their school boards to require schools to notify parents that their daughter, Sophie, has been going by “Sebastian” in class; that her teacher, school counselor, and principal have all been celebrating Sebastian’s transgender identity; that they’ve been letting her use the boys’ bathroom and reifying the sense that she is “really a boy.” 

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the law supports the priming of minor children for a secret life with a new gender identity. This includes having school-aged children participate in sexualized discussions and make identity declarations with school faculty, which are often actively hidden from the child’s parents. Elon Musk called the law “the final straw” for families and announced his intention to move both SpaceX and X, two of California’s most prominent tech companies, out of the state as a result. “The goal [of] this diabolical law,” he tweeted, “is to break the parent-child relationship and put the state in charge of your children.”

The Canonization of Joe Biden The line forms on the left.by Leesa K. Donner

https://www.libertynation.com/the-canonization-of-joe-biden/

Even before the white puff of smoke could be seen rising above the Democratic National Headquarters in Washington, DC, members of the president’s party lined up to laud the man who had suffered their wrath only a day earlier. The Joe-Must-Go campaign finally came to its obvious denouement after a few weeks of pressuring the president to drop out of the 2024 presidential race. Joe Biden didn’t go willingly and didn’t go quickly, but, by God, he went – and that’s all that matters to the Democratic Party.

Without hesitation, Washington, DC’s prominent legacy newspaper and The New York Times invoked the H-word on their front pages. As they see it, Biden’s decision to remove himself from the Democratic ticket was “heroic” – and he may now don the mantle of American Hero. As the Roman triumphus got underway, The Times chose historian Jon Meacham to spread the word of their victorious, conquering hero. And he laid it on thick:

“Mr. Biden has spent a lifetime trying to do right by the nation, and he did so in the most epic of ways when he chose to end his re-election campaign. His decision is one of the most remarkable acts of leadership in our history, an act of self-sacrifice that places him in the company of George Washington, who also stepped away from the presidency. To put something ahead of one’s immediate desires — to give rather than to try to take — is perhaps the most challenging thing for any human being to do. And Mr. Biden has done just that.”

One wonders if Meacham will initiate a movement to put Biden’s face on the one-dollar bill. However, he might have to queue up behind columnist David Ignatius, who intoned, “Bravo to Biden for opening the curtain as he closes his own.” Dana Milbank breathed a sigh of relief, saying, “[I feel] heroic more than anything. Biden did what he has always done and put the country first.” Editor and commentator Ruth Marcus chimed in with, “It is hard to age — indeed, hard to accept our own frailties and limitations at any age — and Biden’s story, laced with tragedy throughout his career, ends on a note that is both tragic and, I hope, heroic.”

Biden Administration Gives Another $100 Million for Terror: Prefers Aiding Palestinian Terrorists Such as Hamas to Supporting Israel by Con Coughlin

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20814/biden-administration-gives-100-million-for-terror

Nothing better illustrates the perversity of the Biden administration’s attitude to the Gaza conflict that, at the same time that Washington is limiting arms exports to Israel, the US is increasing its aid to the Palestinian Authority.

One of the key lessons that the US should have learned from Hamas’s deadly terrorist attack against Israel on October 7… is that aid donations made by foreign donors invariably end up being used to fund Palestinian terrorists.

With awkward timing, the Biden administration announced its latest $100 million aid package for the Palestinians just as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was preparing to leave for his visit to Washington this week.

While aid officials blame Israel and the continuing war in Gaza for preventing the delivery of vital supplies from reaching Palestinian civilians, the real culprit is Hamas, which controls all the delivery networks. This means that much of the aid is diverted to those who support its terrorist operations.

Biden may have announced his intention to not seek re-election, but so long as his administration remains in power, there appears little prospect of any dramatic revision taking place to its deliberately icy — and potentially dangerous — attitude not only towards Israel’s offensive against Hamas in Gaza, but also its turning a blind eye toward Iran’s destabilizing nuclear weapons, possibly coming soon, with the missiles to deliver them to the Middle East, Europe, and — from Latin America and the Caribbean — to the United States.

Nothing better illustrates the perversity of the Biden administration’s attitude to the Gaza conflict that, at the same time that Washington is limiting arms exports to Israel, the US is increasing its aid to the Palestinian Authority.

One of the key lessons that the US should have learned from Hamas’s deadly terrorist attack against Israel on October 7, in which 1,200 Israelis were murdered and more than 250 taken captive and held as hostages in Gaza, is that aid donations made by foreign donors invariably end up being used to fund Palestinian terrorists.

Prior to October 7, key supporters of Hamas, such as Iran and Qatar, sent hundreds of millions of dollars to Gaza, and claimed it was to be used for humanitarian purposes such as funding schools and hospitals.

The Curious Case of the Missing President. Oliver Wiseman

https://www.thefp.com/p/the-curious-case-of-the-missing-president?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=260347&post_

But first, a simple question about the leader of the free world. 

On Monday afternoon, Joe Biden’s doctor, Kevin O’Connor, composed a memo designed to reassure the American people. The president, who tested positive for Covid six days ago, has completed his tenth dose of Paxlovid, he wrote, and “his symptoms have almost completely resolved.” O’Connor reiterated that Biden “continues to perform all his presidential duties.”  

After that letter was released, everyone here at The Free Press still had the same question: Where the hell is the president?

If Joe Biden’s decision to step down was extraordinary, so was the manner of his announcement. At this dramatic denouement of his fifty-year career in Washington, he declared the end of his reelection bid by tweeting out a letter. Since then, nothing. Or almost nothing. Late on Monday afternoon, he phoned his former campaign headquarters, now Kamala Harris HQ. “I know yesterday’s news was surprising and hard for you to hear, but it was the right thing to do,” Biden said on the call. 

But we still haven’t seen the president in days. 

Last Wednesday, Biden flew from Las Vegas, where he had been campaigning, to his beach house in Rehoboth, Delaware. It was there that he isolated and stewed, alongside only his immediate family and closest advisers, and reportedly came to the decision to step down. According to the White House daily schedule, the president will reemerge this afternoon and return to Washington. 

The ICJ rejects international law The label of “occupation” apparently justifies the international community’s desire to aid and abet Hamas. Fiamma Nirenstein

https://www.jns.org/the-icj-rejects-international-law/

What a pleasant thrill to see the most commonplace prejudices confirmed by the august body of the International Court of Justice. The United Nations’ top court—so noted for its love for Israel—just reached the single most unsurprising ruling in history: That Israel is the illegal occupier of the territory of a non-existent Palestinian entity.

The ICJ, which appears indifferent to the encouragement and collaboration it offers to global antisemitism, had already decided a few months before that Israel might be guilty of a genocide that the ICJ invented out of whole cloth. It must have taken enormous pleasure in offering Hamas a new and generous gift. The Palestinian Authority, of course, declared the ICJ’s decision a historic turning point. If it was referring to the total self-abasement of the “international community,” it is quite correct.

“Occupation” is a remarkable word. In the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it means absolutely nothing. It is a buzzword that signals a self-granted if baseless moral superiority. By saying the magic world, one is suddenly a defender of the oppressed and dispossessed. You are in favor of self-determination, of course, though this elides the fact that, in this context, self-determination means Hamas’s “right” to determine itself on massacring civilians, taking hostages and digging tunnels beneath civilian areas—all with total impunity.

Indeed, the U.N.’s own Secretary-General António Guterres stood tall the day after Hamas’s genocidal attack on Oct. 7 to blame everything on “Palestinian suffering”—that is, the creation of the State of Israel.

That Israel’s existence is firmly based on international law means nothing to Guterres or anyone else in the “international community” because, despite their pious moaning, they do not believe in international law. For them, it is only a weapon they can use on behalf of Hamas—nothing more.

Unburdened by What Has-Been? by Mark Steyn

https://www.steynonline.com/14465/unburdened-by-what-has-been

~Now that Kamala is unburdened by that has-been and before whoever’s holding Joe Biden releases another not-quite-proof-of-life audio recording, let’s go back less than a month to when this started – the June 27th debate and the formerly loyal press corps’ amazing synchronised-shivving routine. As I wrote back then about the sudden outbreak of “third-rate dinner theatre”:

So why weren’t they able, after a week-and-a-half of dosage experimentation, to shoot the stiff enough of the juice to pass him off as being back in his State of the Union top-of-the-game mode?

As my former GB News colleague Neil Oliver observed long ago on The Mark Steyn Show, formulating a useful rule of contemporary politics:

This is happening because they want it to happen.

Just so. Over at Powerline, Steven Hayward wonders:

Was Biden set up? For more than a year, quite a lot of observers have confidently predicted that Biden would not be the nominee, and that the Democratic establishment would swap him out at an opportune moment…

But the scheme needed a catalyst to work. That catalyst was obviously the June 27 debate. It was the earliest presidential debate ever, before either candidate was formally nominated… If that debate hadn’t happened until late September, as is typical, it would have been too late.

True. And throughout that debate every Deputy Assistant Under-Staffer of Media Liaison was texting and/or DM-ing his most biddable press hack:

WHITE HOUSE CONTACT: So how d’you think it’s going?

WORTHLESS HACK: Oh, I think His Majesty’s new suit is pretty sharp…

WHITE HOUSE CONTACT: Really? You didn’t notice that the Emperor has no clothes?

WORTHLESS HACK: Well, yeah, but don’t worry, I’m not going to be saying that…

WHITE HOUSE CONTACT: Actually, we’d like you to…

WORTHLESS HACK: Are you sure? You mean one of those tentative ‘Granted he may have lost a step since he first debated Robert C Byrd on Saturday Night Klanbake in 1943’-type pieces..?

WHITE HOUSE CONTACT: Nah, just go full train-wreck. I can give you Macron and Meloni’s direct lines if you need some deep background…

Similarities between Alexander Hamilton and JD Vance By Howard Richman

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/07/similarities_between_alexander_hamilton_and_jd_vance.html

The childhoods of Alexander Hamilton and JD Vance were quite similar, and the similarities don’t end there. Both had the strong writing skills, energy, industry, and intelligence which led others to take them under their wings and advance their careers. Both had stints in the American military and became proponents of peace through strength, and both became huge proponents of American manufacturing as a key to America’s future prosperity.

Their Childhoods

Both spent their early years in households with mothers who were involved in affairs, even when living with someone else. Hamilton’s mother was even imprisoned by her second husband for adultery. Similarly, Vance’s mother had drug-addiction-related affairs with one man after another.

Both were rescued from their chaotic households when they were in their early teens, and then bloomed in their stable new households. Alexander was rescued (after abandonment by his supposed father James Hamilton, the death of his mother, and suicide by his guardian cousin) by the man who, according to Ron Chernow author of the biography Alexander Hamilton, was likely his real father.

Vance was rescued by his family-centered grandmother whose tough love gave him a sense of determination and responsibility. In his vice-presidential acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention on July 18, he told how his tough grandmother had ended one of his friendships:

She once told me, when she found out that I was spending too much time with a local kid who was known for dealing drugs, that if I ever hung out with that kid again, she would run him over with her car and she said, “JD, no one will ever find out about it!”

Literary Skills

There is nothing ‘graceful’ about Biden’s withdrawal from the race This whole unsightly circus has exposed the moral rot of the Democratic establishment. Brendan O’Neill

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/07/22/there-is-nothing-graceful-about-bidens-withdrawal-from-the-race/

And so the spin begins. Within minutes of Joe Biden announcing that he was dropping out of the presidential race, his sycophants were gushing over his ‘grace’. The New York Times marvelled like a wide-eyed idiot at the ‘historical rarity’ and ‘fundamental humility’ of a president bowing out for the good of the nation. Celebs lauded his ‘integrity’ in stepping down to ‘save democracy’. He has restored ‘honesty’ to politics after years of ‘scandal and chaos’, said Mark Hamill, as if Old Joe was Obi-Wan Kenobi to Trump’s Darth Vader. One Democratic governor hailed Biden for setting the ‘ultimate example’ to the American people. That example being what, exactly? That you should stubbornly stay in your job even when you know you can’t do it any more?

The propaganda machine is in full swing. The spindoctors are working overtime. They’re determined to depict Biden’s retreat from the race as an act of unparalleled altruism. As a brave effacement of the self in order that democracy might yet live. As something ‘utterly extraordinary’, in the words of the NYT. Be awed at the ‘bigness of what Biden just did’, it says. Get a room. History is being rewritten in real time. And we cannot let it stand. Not in order that we might kick Biden when he’s down, but in order that we might uphold the truth. The truth here being that Biden’s late retreat, and his anointing of Kamala Harris as his rightful successor, speaks not to the integrity of his administration but to its chaos and corruption.

The speed with which Biden’s relinquishing of his candidacy has been turned into a tale of ‘integrity’ should horrify everyone who cares for truth. It is three weeks – three long weeks – since he took to the stage of that CNN debate and shocked the world with his confusion and incapacity. And in those three weeks we all saw him furiously cling to the Oval Office desk. We all watched him haughtily dismiss concerns that he was no longer fit for office. We all heard that Jill Biden was batting aside his critics – from George Clooney to Barack Obama – as just so many Brutuses come to remove her perfectly capable husband. Grace? Humility? This was one of the most unseemly spectacles of jealous power preservation of modern times.

The Joe Biden debacle shames the Democrats His chaotic withdrawal from the presidential race has exposed the cynicism and dishonesty of the party elites. Sean Collins

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/07/22/the-joe-biden-debacle-shames-the-democrats/

So, he finally caved. On Sunday, Joe Biden announced he was dropping out of the 2024 race for the White House. This followed weeks of intense pressure on him from Democratic Party bigwigs, who were shocked into action after his disastrous debate performance on 27 June.

Biden’s decision is historic – there has never been a withdrawal from a US presidential contest so late in the process. It reveals a Democratic Party in shambles, trying to pick up the pieces before November’s ballot. This chaos is an indictment of both Biden and his party’s elites.

By running for re-election, Biden selfishly put himself above the party. Back in 2020, he claimed he was just a transitionary figure, a defence against Donald Trump’s re-election and a bridge to the future Democratic Party. That implied he would not run for a second term. But then he proceeded to do just that. He (and his family) knew that he, as an 81-year-old, was no longer physically and mentally up to the job. Yet the vain Biden thought that, even as a shuffling old man, he was the only one in the country who could now beat Trump in 2024.

The party’s leaders – among them the old guard of Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi, as well as current congressional leaders like Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries – are as much, if not more, to blame for this debacle. They have also known – for years! – about Biden’s declining health and diminishing faculties. They were quite happy to have a puppet in the White House who would do what he was told. They cynically thought they could continue to get away presenting this Weekend at Bernie’s frontman for re-election in 2024. Rather than have a messy primary contest, they cleared the way for Biden to enjoy a virtual coronation as the party’s nominee again, without any real debate or contestation (which would have revealed Biden’s poor state).

Biden was made the presidential nominee in spite of a majority of Democratic voters saying, for many months, that Biden was too old to run again. Now, in forcing Biden to withdraw from the race via behind-the-scenes pressure, the party elites will no doubt claim that they are simply following the will of their voters. But what the country is seeing is an incumbent president, whom party members still voted for in the primary, being brought down by a palace coup. And this is happening in the party that says it is defending democracy.

Another Reason To Vote For Trump

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/07/23/another-reason-to-vote-for-trump/

Late last year, Donald Trump said if he wins in November, he will on day one close the border and “drill, drill, drill.” He’s now added to that list a promise to “end the electric vehicle mandate” upon taking office. It will be refreshing to have a president who isn’t beholden to crackpot activism.

“I will end the electric vehicle mandate on day one,” Trump said last week during his acceptance speech, “thereby saving the U.S. auto industry from complete obliteration which is happening right now and saving U.S. customers thousands and thousands of dollars per car.”

Four months ago, the Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency finalized a new emissions rule that requires “up to two-thirds of new cars and trucks sold in the U.S. to be electric vehicles (EVs) in eight years.”

It was of course heralded as “one of the most significant climate regulations in the nation’s history,” “a day to celebrate” and “a positive step forward in protecting communities.”

So it’s just that easy to set the world on its proper course. It seems that anyone could do it.

But there’s much more to this issue.