PrairiePundit

  Victor Davis Hanson: America has a lot of built-in safety backups and redundancies. But every once in a while, when tradition, science, time-tested protocols, and common sense are ignored, a fragile system utterly collapses. Usually, an iconic event reveals how vulnerable the entire country has become, and predictably occurs when suicidal ideologies and nihilism, in perfect-storm fashion, wreak havoc. The media, academia, the bureaucracy, and higher education can mask the dangers of their political agendas—at least until their sheer incompetence or toxicity can no longer be hidden or excused, and a predictable disaster ensues. Take the January 4-5, 2025, Pacific Palisades fire that destroyed an entire historic neighborhood of Los Angeles. The embers had not even cooled when we were lectured that “climate change” was responsible for the historically predictable annual autumn and early winter Santa Ana winds that whip up horrific fires before the first winter rains arrive—a phenome...

 Daily Signal: Federal small business grants intended for national defense technology have gone to create mobile apps for gay men, “transgender” women, and LGBTQ+ parents, and have funded other diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. Senate Small Business Committee Chairwoman Joni Ernst , R-Iowa, has proposed the Investing in National Next-Generation Opportunities for Venture Acceleration and Technological Excellence Act , or the INNOVATE Act, to reform certain grant programs by eliminating DEI considerations or awards. The focus would shift to expand funding to small businesses in rural America. “Your tax dollars should never be wasted on nonsense , especially when they are supposed to be spent on America’s national security,” Ernst told The Daily Signal in a statement. ... DEI is a mistake.  People should be selected for jobs based on merit and not on what they look like or who they love. 

  Victor Davis Hanson: ... ... There’s alternative governments from the mainstream socialist European model in most of Eastern Europe and Italy and the Netherlands. There’s political unrest in Ireland and Britain. What’s going on? The same thing is happening here. I would call it the “Four Horsemen of the Western Civilizational Apocalypse.” In other words, Europe and the United States, and kindred Western countries, are facing four self-inflicted wounds. The first is what I would call green madness. That is, an elite in all of these Western countries felt that they were at the end of history, they were gonna create heaven on Earth, and they started to dismantle nuclear power, oil-generated power, coal power, and in substitution, subsidized very inefficient and unreliable solar and wind. They stopped producing oil and natural gas . And the result of this is that their electricity and fuel costs skyrocketed, making them uncompetitive and destroying the viability of the middle classes...

  DC Daily Journal: The Trump administration’s push to eliminate discriminatory diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs in federally funded schools has been halted by a Maryland federal judge, despite the administration’s commitment to ensuring fair treatment for all students, including white and Asian Americans. U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher, a Trump appointee, struck down two Education Department memos from February and April that aimed to curb DEI programs deemed discriminatory. The February memo declared that “treating students differently on the basis of race to achieve nebulous goals such as diversity, racial balancing, social justice, or equity is illegal under controlling Supreme Court precedent,” citing the 2023 decision banning race-based admissions. The April memo required state education agencies to certify compliance, threatening funding cuts for non-compliant schools. Gallagher ruled that the department bypassed procedural requirements under the Admi...

 Blaze: Every time I hear a Fox News host or a Republican pundit call New York City mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani a “communist” or “democratic socialist,” I wince in annoyance. Sometimes, I even yell at the TV — not that they can hear me, and even if they could, they’d probably ignore me. In reality, however, Mamdani is not a would-be Lenin. He is, in fact, a practitioner of woke capitalism. He’s not about to nationalize the means of production or seize the assets of the wealthy progressives in Brooklyn’s Park Slope and Manhattan’s Upper East Side — the very people bankrolling his campaign and voting for him. What Mamdani will do, most likely, is strip police protection from working-class neighborhoods, pour taxpayer money into gimmicks like city-owned grocery stores, and glorify Hamas terrorists. Soviet-style central planning isn’t on his agenda for the Big Apple. Cultural revolution is. ... The greatest danger today comes from woke maniacs embedded in media, education, and g...

  Free Beacon: California's long-troubled high-speed rail project is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to taxpayer-funded infrastructure boondoggles, according to a new report from Sen. Joni Ernst (R., Iowa) first obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. With an original completion date of 2020, the California High-Speed Rail Project has now gone $95 billion over budget with a revised launch date no earlier than 2030, leading the Trump administration to pull $4 billion in unspent federal funding from the troubled effort in July. But the rail project represents just one of 13 infrastructure projects funded by the Department of Transportation and other federal agencies that are collectively $163 billion over budget, according to the Ernst report. "Slamming the brakes on the California Crazy Train, that I fought for years to defund, was a strong start but there is a lot more work to do," Ernst told the Free Beacon. "Today, I am exposing more than $160 billion in...

 Federalist Wire: ... Pete Buttigieg’s time as Transportation Secretary under President Joe Biden sparked debate over his focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives at the expense of modernizing the nation’s outdated air traffic control systems. Federal spending records reveal that the Department of Transportation (DOT) allocated over $80 billion to DEI grants over four years—roughly half its typical annual budget—while air traffic infrastructure, unchanged since the Carter era, continued to cause flight delays and cancellations, according to airline industry insiders. In a candid moment, Buttigieg, rumored to be eyeing a 2028 presidential run, reportedly told airline executives that upgrading air traffic systems would only allow them to fly more planes, “and so why would that be in his interest?” sources said according to the New York Post. This remark fueled perceptions that he showed “little to no interest” and took “definitely zero action” toward modernizing av...

 Trending Politics: The Supreme Court handed down a unanimous decision on Thursday involving an Ohio woman who alleges reverse discrimination. The decision could become a key victory in ongoing ideological wars against diversity, equality, and inclusion initiatives. In a 9-0 decision that, believe it or not, was penned by left-leaning Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the highest court in the land ruled that Marlean Ames was not required to meet a “higher burden of proof to prove that she was discriminated against despite being part of a ‘majority’ group,” the New York Post said. ... This should put an end to the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion discrimination against white job candidates.  Hiring should be done on the basis of merit.  That gives a measure of fairness to job candidates and also increases the productivity of the hiring company.  See also: Teen suspended for using legal term for migrant invaders comes out on top, will likely receive apology from school boa...

 Blaze: ... What’s astonishing is that Harvard — the oldest corporation in the Western Hemisphere, chartered in 1650 — still behaves as though it needs government money. Its endowment, by the latest count, stands at more than $53 billion . Yet judging from the panic issuing from the president’s office, one might think bankruptcy was imminent. The reason? DEI is embedded so deeply into Harvard’s research infrastructure — even in the sciences — that stripping funding from DEI-tainted grants strikes at the university’s financial core. In academic circles, panic now masquerades as prophecy. Professors speak as though the world is ending — though, given their long record of failed doomsday predictions about climate catastrophe, one might be forgiven for tuning them out. I remember, early in my career, being told by an administrator that Al Gore’s book was a “road map to the future.” It turned out to be more of a road map to irrelevance. Global warming’s great success was posting more f...

 Headline USA: Doctor: DEI is an Infection to Medical Education, Standards Must be Merit-Based Do No Harm is an organization of medical professionals focused on “keeping identity politics out of medical education, research, and clinical practice…” I have been fortunate to have medical insurance that uses the Methodist system in this part of Texas.  I have been pleased with the doctors and the hospital system.  It does help that my wife is a doctor of psychology who is careful about what doctors I need.

 Headline USA: Hegseth Announces Fate of DEI at West Point and Military Academies 'Our officers will be the best of the best—full stop...' The military needs leaders who can direct troops in combat.  That is much to important to give jobs to DEI hires.  I recall going through OCS and Basic School as a Marine Corps officer, and I would not want a DEI hire trying to lead Marines in combat.  The danger could be catastrophic. 

  Washington Examiner: Harvard University is changing the name of its diversity, equity, and inclusion office to the Office of Community and Campus Life after battling with the Trump administration over its DEI initiatives. Sherri Charleston, Harvard’s chief diversity officer — now the university’s chief Community and Campus Life officer — announced the restructuring of the DEI office in a Monday email. “In the weeks and months ahead, we will take steps to make this change concrete and to work with all of Harvard’s schools and units to implement these vital objectives, including shared efforts to reexamine and reshape the missions and programs of offices across the university,” Charleston wrote. The announcement came just hours after university lawyers and the Trump administration held a conference regarding the government’s freeze of $2.2 billion in federal funding due to the university’s DEI initiatives and lack of action on campus antisemitism. Harvard University filed a laws...

 Federalist Wire: ... A leading U.S. defense contractor, long celebrated for its commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), now finds itself under scrutiny for its role in a colossal government contract. The Air Force’s Sentinel program, a critical initiative to replace the aging Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), has spiraled into a financial and logistical quagmire, drawing sharp criticism and calls for reform from lawmakers, analysts, and advocates of Elon Musk’s DOGE cost-cutting initiative. The Sentinel program, designed to secure the land-based component of America’s nuclear triad, has seen its costs skyrocket. Initially pegged at $96 billion, the program’s price tag has surged to at least $141 billion, with some Pentagon estimates suggesting it could climb as high as $264 billion over the coming decades, according to Bloomberg. Northrop Grumman, a first-time ICBM developer, secured a $13 billion contract in September 2020 to spearhead the pro...

 Chase Jennings: Where do we go when the judges that make up the judicial branch are the ones subverting the law? The branches of our government, as they currently stand, are not coequal. The judiciary has gone off the rails, and it’s time for President Trump to teach them a lesson. In this instance, a constitutional crisis is exactly what I voted for.  I’m not talking about packing the court or lawlessness across the country, I’m talking about an out-of-control activist judiciary that is working in tandem to completely subvert the authority of the executive branch regarding each individual part of President Trump’s agenda, undermining the clear authority of a duly elected president. If we allow this to happen, we will have wasted our golden age of opportunity.  Biden and his terrible administration allowed millions upon millions of illegal aliens to enter the United States, without so much as a peep from the judicial branch. The same judicial branch that, when he ignored...