Sweden is putting books, handwriting, and human attention back at the center of education—and reminding the rest of us that technology should serve children, not master them.

For years, parents were told the future of education was digital. Out went textbooks. In came tablets. Out went handwriting. In came keyboards. Children barely old enough to tie their shoes were handed screens and told this was progress. Sweden embraced that revolution more enthusiastically than most countries. Now Sweden is hitting the brakes.

Not, as some viral posts claim, by “banning digital classrooms.” The truth is actually more interesting. Sweden is deliberately restoring books, handwriting, and traditional learning while reducing unnecessary screen exposure. The government has invested hundreds of millions of kronor in textbooks and literature and says digital learning tools should be introduced only when they help rather than hinder learning.

Why?

Because after years of digitizing childhood, Sweden started asking the question we should have asked before we began: Is all this technology actually helping children learn? The research suggests the answer is not always.

Multiple meta-analyses have found a measurable advantage to reading on paper. A 2019 systematic review by Virginia Clinton examined 33 experimental studies involving 2,799 participants and found that reading from screens negatively affected comprehension compared with reading on paper, particularly for informational texts. Readers also judged their own understanding more accurately when reading from paper.

Another 2018 meta-analysis examining 17 studies similarly concluded that reading comprehension was better on paper than on screens.

That does not mean digital learning cannot work. Research also finds that thoughtfully designed digital books and student-centered technology can improve learning. The issue is not technology versus no technology. It is whether we are using technology because it genuinely teaches better or simply because we can.

And then there is attention.

According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) analysis of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2022, 36.9 percent of Swedish students reported that they were distracted by digital resources in most or every mathematics lesson, compared with an OECD average of 30.5 percent.

Nearly 30 percent reported distraction caused by other students’ devices.

Swedish students who reported frequent distraction from classmates’ digital use scored 16 points lower in mathematics, 15 points lower even after socioeconomic differences were taken into account. The OECD cautions that this is an association, not proof of causation, but the relationship is significant.

Sweden’s own education authorities have reached a similarly nuanced conclusion: moderate educational use can coexist with strong performance, while extensive non-learning digital use is associated with poorer results.

Then there is handwriting.

We have treated handwriting almost like an obsolete mechanical skill—a quaint predecessor to the keyboard. The brain appears to disagree.

Research comparing handwriting and typing has found differences in the neural networks involved in learning, memory, and letter recognition. Writing requires us to process information differently than simply tapping keys.

And perhaps that points to the larger issue. We are not simply teaching children information. We are building brains. We are teaching human beings how to concentrate, wrestle with an idea, remember something, imagine something, sit quietly with difficulty and remain there long enough for a thought to become their own.

Those things require something our digital world is increasingly designed to interrupt: attention.

A book does not flash. A pencil does not send a notification. A piece of paper does not offer another video when the work becomes difficult. There is no algorithm waiting on the next page to discover what will keep a child clicking. There is simply the child and the words. The child and the thought. The child and that extraordinary developing mind learning how to stay with something.

That isn’t antiquated. That is education.

Perhaps Sweden has stumbled onto something much larger than a debate over tablets in classrooms. For two decades, we have behaved as though every technological advancement must automatically represent human progress. We asked what technology could give our children without spending nearly enough time asking what it might take away. Because childhood contains only so many hours.

An hour staring at a screen is an hour not necessarily spent turning pages, writing, drawing, building, talking, exploring, staring out a window, inventing a game, or being gloriously bored enough to discover an imagination.

Technology absolutely belongs in education. Computers belong there. AI will belong there too. But they should be tools. They should never become the environment in which childhood itself is lived.

There are some things civilization should be very careful about surrendering in the name of progress: books, handwriting, conversation, imagination, silence, and boredom—and the magnificent human ability to concentrate deeply enough to learn something, create something, or discover something no one has thought of before.

Sweden is putting books back into children’s hands. Maybe the rest of us should pay attention. Because the greatest danger was never that our children would fail to master technology.

They will. The danger is that somewhere along the way, technology will master them first.

Maureen Steele, American Greatness

It’s hard to avoid the constant prophecies of doom about how AI is going to take our jobs – with some of these already being borne out.

However, AI leaders such as Elon Musk have declared that the population will be supported by Universal Basic Income (UBI) instead, in which the government will financially support everyone through the huge revenues produced by AI. “Universal HIGH INCOME via checks issued by the Federal government is the best way to deal with unemployment caused by AI,” Musk posted on X earlier this year.

Musk imagines that we wouldn’t be unemployed but rather liberated – UBI would allow us to live without the mundane tasks of everyday life, like making PowerPoint presentations, writing emails or finding synergies in our deliverables. We’d be pensioned off to enjoy endless leisure time, to pursue our own interests rather than pesky career development.

I wouldn’t be so sure. While many of us look forward to vacations and retirement, history shows us that humans like to be busy, and we’re unhappy when we can’t be or when this busywork is meaningless.

To demonstrate this we need only look back to the 1950s and 1960s, when Betty Friedan wrote about “the problem that has no name.” Middle-class housewives, with their husbands out working to support the family and their homes now full of modern labor-saving appliances, had virtually unlimited free time. However, we now know that many of these women were desperately unhappy without a sense of purpose, with high rates of depression and alcoholism. Endless leisure time had created a void that all the modcons and activity groups in the world can’t fix. It would probably affect men in the same way.

Already, research shows that male unemployment is linked to rising rates of suicide and substance abuse, and while this cannot be untangled from the pressure on men to be the breadwinner, it seems simplistic to say this is the only factor (and it seems too early to tell whether this cultural pressure would vanish once everyone is relying on UBI).

We also see how the loss of a clear purpose affects retirees, often adrift once the structure and stimulation of work is removed. Even when the job itself is unappealing or unsatisfying, humans take pride in feeling we’re supporting ourselves and our families, whether it’s young women #girlbossing with side hustles or a parent providing for their children.

While hobbies can fill some of the gap, people are reporting fewer of these; in fact any leisure activity outside of doomscrolling is now in steep decline.

Consumers are increasingly choosing convenience over quality, fast fashion over independent designers, shorter books over the weighty classics. Without an awareness of what it takes to be successful at a task or activity, or an appreciation for a finished product, these hobbies can seem pointless and obsolete.

UBI reliance could very well make this worse, because it is much harder to take up a new hobby or calling if you are already in a rut of doing nothing. Looking at housewives aged 25-35 in The Feminine Mystique, Friedan noted that:

“[T]hough they wanted jobs and felt inadequately prepared, of the 45 percent taking courses, very few were working toward a degree… When an alumnae association sponsored a two-session forum in the suburb on ‘How Women in the Middle Years Can Return to Work,’ twenty-five women attended. As a beginning step, each woman was asked to come to the second meeting with a résumé. The résumé took some thought, and, as the researcher put it, ‘sincerity of purpose.’ Only one woman was serious enough to write the résumé.”

It is easy to see how universal UBI would produce more and more of this unseriousness in the population, a basic shiftlessness about applying any effort to try something new.

Techies continue to create tools that automate other people’s interests – too focused on their own passion for technology to see their role in taking away those of others. It’s hypocritical of tech leaders, working notoriously long tech startup hours to develop these new technologies, to assume that everyone else simply wants endless leisure time. UBI would trap the populace, not empower it.

This does not mean that leisure time is in itself a bad thing. But if our jobs become obsolete, UBI won’t bring about a utopia of leisure. In all likelihood, our sense of purpose will simply be the latest sacrifice to technology’s relentless drive towards optimization.

The Spectator ^ | 08/29/2026 | Sarah Beth Spraggins

Sam Craig, lifenews

On August 27, 2026, Attorney General Josh Kaul announced that the Wisconsin Department of Justice (DOJ) is joining a suit to block a federal policy requiring providers and states to comply with updated U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) funding rules for the next five-year grant cycle.

“This is what Josh Kaul isn’t telling you: that this is just another example of him using lawfare to protect special interests like Planned Parenthood, Wisconsin’s largest abortion provider,” stated Heather Weininger, Executive Director of Wisconsin Right to Life. “Instead of expanding their counseling services to patients, Planned Parenthood wants to maintain the status quo, and has turned to Josh Kaul to protect their bottom line – at the taxpayers’ expense.”

Since 2018, Planned Parenthood Advocates of Wisconsin has spent over half a million dollars in independent expenditures on behalf of Josh Kaul.

“We believe taxpayer dollars should support a truly comprehensive approach to women’s health and include meaningful support for pregnant women,” continued Weininger. “Don’t believe Josh Kaul when he says this is about protecting health care. This is about protecting the status quo for a special interest group, Planned Parenthood, and their access to taxpayer dollars.”

Dr. Stanley Plotkin is considered the godfather of vaccines. He reluctantly admitted the horrific facts about abortion and vaccine manufacturing — facts the pharmaceutical industry has spent decades hiding.

He claimed only two fetuses were involved in his work. Then the lawyer handed him a study he authored — using 76 aborted babies. Plotkin was forced to admit the truth: They weren’t miscarriages. All were over three months’ gestation. All were normally developed. They were aborted for social and psychiatric reasons — so their organs could be harvested. Lungs. Kidneys. Hearts. Tongues. Pituitary glands. Chopped into pieces and cultured for vaccine production.

When the lawyer noted that his client objected to vaccines developed from aborted babies, Plotkin responded by claiming the Catholic Church approves the vaccines — and that only the researchers involved will go to hell for it. Then he said: “I am glad to do that.” He is glad to go to hell.

Bishop Athanasius Schneider has a different view: “We have to resist and not collaborate in any way with these vaccines.” Receiving abortion-tainted vaccines, he warns, marks the body with a sign connected to the greatest evil.

The proof is undeniable. The question is whether Catholics will continue to accept what the culture tells them — or recognize the horror they are being asked to receive. The godfather of vaccines is glad to go to hell. The question is whether the faithful will follow him there.

We know almost nothing about this story…and that’s a big part of the problem.

Jim Davis | August 30, 2026

The chief spokesman for the United States Secret Service, Anthony Guglielmi, has now been placed on administrative leave along with two other agency communications employees, while the Secret Service investigates what it calls “potential misconduct.”

Their security clearances and access to government devices have reportedly been suspended.  The government has not disclosed what they allegedly did.  Guglielmi’s lawyer says he is fully cooperating and maintains his innocence.

The agency has disclosed remarkably little about the investigation, other than that its Office of Professional Responsibility is handling it.  Guglielmi’s attorney, Gregg Bernstein, says his client is a man of “deep integrity” who is fully cooperating.  And until investigators disclose more, Americans should demand answers without pretending unanswered questions are already proven facts.

Other circumstances, discussed by Jonathan Gregory at Instagram:

[This follows] two explosive leaks that compromised presidential security: first, the revelation of a clandestine Air Force One aircraft-swap maneuver executed through a catering cart to evade detection, and second, granular details of Vice President JD Vance’s protective movements that never should have left a secure briefing room. These breaches occurred under Guglielmi’s watch and handed adversaries a playbook on how the Trump administration moves its principals.

Guglielmi did not arrive at the Secret Service as an obscure civil servant.  Before joining the agency, he held prominent communications positions with the Chicago, Baltimore, and Fairfax County police departments.  (Note that these are all left-wing citadels.)

He subsequently became the public face of the Secret Service and was chosen for that role by Team Biden, which notoriously packed law enforcement and intelligence agencies with partisan Democrats.  That makes his current issues particularly noteworthy.

For years, Americans have been told to trust official explanations from government agencies, while those agencies have become increasingly politicized and increasingly hostile to scrutiny.  I’ve described this entrenched federal bureaucracy and its political sympathies as the Democratic Party Deep State (DPDS).

For the past 18 months, DPDS operatives in law enforcement, the DOJ, and intelligence agencies have been furiously deleting emails and text messages regarding January 6 and other DPDS operations.  Guglielmi may or may not be one of them, and he deserves a presumption of innocence.

What remains unknown is the central question: What, exactly, did he allegedly do?

Being placed on administrative leave isn’t a finding of guilt, and there’s presently no public evidence establishing that Guglielmi committed a crime.  The Secret Service has not publicly identified the alleged misconduct.

Nevertheless, this is no ordinary bureaucratic employee.  Guglielmi has been the agency’s chief communications official since 2022, promoted by the POC/LGBT committee that was operating Joe Biden like a Muppet — and this was the man responsible for explaining the Secret Service to the American public during some of the most serious security crises in modern presidential history.

The man whose job was to explain the Secret Service’s actions is himself under an internal misconduct investigation.  And the timing raises questions.

Guglielmi’s suspension comes amid a period of extraordinary scrutiny of the Secret Service.  The agency has been dealing with the aftermath of multiple threats against President Donald Trump, including at least three assassination attempts and other security incidents.  It is also investigating a separate alleged leak involving a member of Vice President J.D. Vance’s security detail.

That does not establish that Guglielmi was involved in any leak.  But it does explain why the development is attracting so much attention.

According to CBS News, Guglielmi and the two other employees lost their security clearances and access to their government devices as part of the investigation.  Officials described those measures as standard procedures during internal investigations.  The New York Post has reported that the investigation is connected to suspected leaks of sensitive information, and that the FBI and CIA are involved.

The Secret Service is not the Department of Agriculture.  Its mission is protecting the president, the vice president, and other designated individuals, such as the First Family.  Its credibility depends upon operational security, internal discipline, and public confidence.

The agency’s own statement says its personnel must maintain an “unwavering commitment to duty, honesty, and courage.”  Fine.  Then Americans have every right to ask whether those standards were violated — and, if so, how.

The answer may ultimately be mundane.  It may turn out that Guglielmi committed no serious wrongdoing whatsoever.  Administrative investigations sometimes end that way.

But if the investigation concerns sensitive leaks, as some reporting suggests, the public deserves to know whether government personnel leaked information concerning presidential security, whether anyone endangered a protected person, and whether the people responsible for safeguarding the nation’s most important political figures were themselves compromising that security.

That question is more important than partisan politics.

At the heart of the European Union, Belgium exemplifies better than perhaps any other Western European country the extent to which political elites seem to almost relish the degree to which Europe is being Islamized.

In July 2026, Israel’s Channel 12 News aired a report warning that Hamas terrorists, including high-ranking members of the organization’s Al-Qassam Brigades, now live in Antwerp — some of whom, according to local Gazans opposed to Hamas, are receiving Belgian citizenship.

“Little Gaza,” as the neighborhood in northern Antwerp is called in the report, has a large population of Gazans from Khan Younis, a major Hamas stronghold. Hamas-linked residents there traffic in illegal narcotics, run shops and restaurants, and send the proceeds to Hamas in Gaza, according to the interviewed Gazans, who only dared speak anonymously out of fear of revenge from local Hamas supporters.

“You feel as if you are visiting Palestine”, one Arab said. The local baker, who sells only Gazan specialties, agreed that walking on that street was like “walking in Khan Younis.”

According to the Channel 12 report:

“In little Gaza in the heart of Antwerp you get the scent of the Strip, literally. From restaurants… to shops and supermarkets, most business owners come from Khan Younis. The names of the stores also reflect the character of the immigrants here: From ‘Haifa market’ on the way to ‘Rafah Market’, and, of course, ‘Al Quds….’

“Some people here in the street support Hamas, they are also from Gaza. Others say it’s a terrorist organization. But no one dares to say that out loud, because they know that this terrorist organization can get anybody through their people, who are also here…voices against Hamas are only a whisper in Gaza because of fear from the threats of the terrorist organization. But the strange thing is that they are also afraid here in Antwerp, in Belgium, in Europe…”

The journalist, an Israeli, asked a Gazan whether he personally knew anyone from Hamas living in Antwerp. The man responded:

“The man who investigated me when I was in Israel is in Antwerp…and now has a Belgian citizenship. He was even a leader in Hamas in the regiment of Din Al-Qassam… he collects money…. all these businesses they [Hamas] opened here. Donations are collected through banks. They have businesses here, they have drugs.”

“They send money to Hamas and support them,” said another local Gazan. He mentioned fundraisers for the children of Gaza as one way to drive donations.

“Europe should wake up. If they remain silent it will be destroyed from within. It is almost already destroyed. If Europe does not wake up and prosecute these people… these people are not only Hamas. These people are against freedom, against democracy, against secularism, they are against the basic principles of the country they live in.”

Belgian politicians, however, do not appear particularly bothered by this increasing political, cultural and demographic threat. After the report was issued, Belgian federal MP Sam van Rooy, who also serves as a representative in the Antwerp City Council for the Vlaams Belang party, requested a city council emergency session, but could not find enough votes to get one.

According to Van Rooy:

“This particularly worrying report shows that Hamas members and terrorists not only live in Antwerp and operate shops and restaurants, but also sponsor Hamas in Gaza and threaten opponents of Hamas,” They have no place in our city and must be tracked down, detained, and deported.”

No meeting was held; no other party found it necessary.

This indifference to the security of the local Christian and Jewish communities, the city and country at large, is particularly jarring after documentation exposed that Hamas was planning an October 7-style mass attack against Jewish and Israeli targets in Europe, scheduled to coincide with the second anniversary of the October 7, 2023 atrocities.

Already in February 2024, Belgium’s Minister of Justice Paul Van Tigchelt confirmed that Belgian authorities are fully cognizant of Hamas’ activities in the country. He implicitly made it quite clear that no one could care less. “So far, we know that Hamas is active in Belgium through various companies. The activities (…) focus on lobbying and fundraising,” he remarked at the time.

Hamas, in fact, has much more than shops and restaurants in Belgium. It has front companies operating next to the European Commission and the EU Council.

Perhaps one might argue that the Belgian government, which has shown itself to be extremely anti-Israel, does not care that Hamas raises funds in the country: the victims are “only” Israelis and Jews. So far.

Europe’s status, however, has changed. German Federal Prosecutor General Jens Rommel – whose office has been arranging the arrests of nine of the Hamas suspects behind the European October 7 terrorist plot – warned in June that Europe no longer mainly serves as a place where terrorist organizations generate funds to finance their terrorism.

“Rather, Germany and other European countries are now increasingly being viewed as operational areas for possible attacks. This becomes particularly evident in the case of Hamas. To prepare attacks in Europe, their foreign operatives, sympathizers, or individuals connected to organized crime acquire and smuggle weapons. They often hold European citizenship, or residence permits within the Schengen Area, allowing them to move freely. They are highly mobile and extensively networked, and some possess significant financial resources.”

In Belgium, however, such concerns seem to play no role whatsoever. In 2024, the country received half of all Palestinian asylum applications submitted in the entire EU. In that year alone, 3,281 Palestinians were granted formal refugee status by Belgium.

A Hamas terrorist from Khan Yunis, Mohannad al-Khatib, who participated in the October 7, 2023 massacre but calls himself as a freelance journalist, was able freely to enter Belgium to claim asylum there. Belgian authorities were only alerted to his terrorist background because the Antwerp-based Jewish Information and Documentation Center (JID) compiled information about him appearing in footage inside or near Israeli territory during the Hamas invasion.

Ralph Pais, vice-chair of JID, said:

“It is incomprehensible that volunteers and citizens could identify this man through open sources, while our security services apparently never noticed him. The material clearly shows that he filmed the violence, applauded it, and openly expresses support for Hamas, rocket attacks, and martyrdom.

“Anyone in Europe who wants to protect synagogues, schools, churches, metros, or events has every interest in ensuring that terrorists do not enter unnoticed. This is not a Jewish problem, but a European problem. We demand full transparency about how such individuals gained access to Europe, and immediate security checks by the competent authorities.”

Although Al-Khatib’s application was ultimately rejected by Belgium, he remained in the country — where he apparently continues to live — and is free to travel throughout the EU. Nobody cares.

Twice already, Hamas has thanked Belgium for its support. Perhaps Belgium and other countries that align with and harbor terrorist groups should be viewed as security threats to Europe?

Robert Williams, Gatestone Institute

Libertarian commentator and self-described internet troll was arrested at the airport in New Orleans after “failing to show up for his immigration hearing” in July, according to DHS.

Milo Yiannopoulos, a self-described libertarian and professional internet troll who became known for his controversial right-wing political views, is in ICE custody.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security told NBC News that ICE arrested Yiannopoulos, a United Kingdom national, on Thursday at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport in Kenner, Louisiana.

The DHS spokesperson said Yiannopoulos legally entered the U.S. on May 14, 2019, through New York City, but then “chose to overstay his welcome in violation of our nation’s laws.”

Yiannopoulos was taken into ICE custody Thursday after “failing to show up for his immigration hearing” on July 22, prompting an immigration judge to issue a final order of removal against him, according to the spokesperson. “He will remain in ICE custody pending removal,” the spokesperson added.

TMZ first reported Yiannopoulos’ ICE arrest.

Yiannopoulos has ties to Kanye West, known now as Ye, and previously served as the rapper’s chief of staff when Ye tried to run for president in 2020 and 2024. He also worked at Ye’s clothing brand Yeezy, but resigned from that job two years ago after the singer announced he was launching an adult entertainment studio under his Yeezy brand, TMZ reported.

Ye is scheduled to perform in Louisiana Friday night at the New Orleans Caesars Superdome. It’s unclear whether Yiannopoulos was in the state to attend the concert.

A former editor for Breitbart, the conservative internet publication President Donald Trump once considered one of his favorite news sources, Yiannopoulos resigned from the role in 2017 amid backlash to his reported comments about teens and sexual abuse.

The DHS spokesperson said that the Trump administration is “working diligently to ensure that aliens in our country illegally can no longer fly unless it is out of our country to self-deport.”

Nicole Acevedo, NBC News

Earlier this month the California Democrat Party held a vote to endorse the California billionaire tax which is on the ballot in November. As I described here, it was a surprisingly close vote which failed when it first came up and barely passed on a second attempt.

The pitched and often emotional vote over Proposition 40 exposed deep fissures in the state party over how to respond to growing grassroots anger over wealth inequality. And the endorsement, which narrowly failed to clear the 60% threshold on its first vote, only occurred after two delegates switched sides on a subsequent round. 

Delegates and observers erupted into cheers after 61% of the 235 executive board delegates in attendance voted to support Prop. 40.

Insiders revealed that the deciding moment was the intervention of Rep. Maxine Waters.

A first floor vote barely failed on Sunday, but then Waters walked in to cheers, according to two attendees. On a re-vote, she turned to a room full of around 200 board members and proxy voters with her card in hand. The motion cleared the 60 percent margin it needed by less than two percentage points.

And with that vote the state party was formally behind the wealth tax proposal known as Prop. 40. But earlier this week Democrats in San Francisco held their own vote and came out strongly against the tax. Unlike the state level vote, this one wasn’t close.

The San Francisco Democratic Party broke with the statewide party Wednesday, voting overwhelmingly to oppose a proposed tax on California billionaires — the latest sign of how the measure had divided Democrats across the state.

Of the 22 members present, 17 voted to oppose Proposition 40, a one-time tax of 5% on California’s billionaires. The vote came after the lengthiest debate of the night, with supporters of Prop. 40 questioning who the local Democratic Party represented: billionaires and the wealthy? Or the working class?

Unlike other contentious votes held on Wednesday night, it only took one round of voting for the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee to break with California’s statewide democratic party in rejecting the billionaire tax.

Opponents of the tax pointed out that the people being targeted, about 200 billionaires in the state, could simply leave.

Members of the Democratic County Central Committee, the local party chapter, said California would suffer from billionaires fleeing the state.

“[My union is] particularly disturbed, because we feel it sets up an uneven playing field for California,” said Patrick Boileau, a DCCC member and the political director of the Operating Engineers Local 3. “The billionaires that are going to be taxed with this measure also have the ability to vote with their feet and move out of California.” 

Supervisor Matt Dorsey put it bluntly: “This is terrible public policy.” 

Lanier Coles, a DCCC member who was diagnosed with a chronic neurological disorder at 28 and had trouble getting healthcare coverage, said she opposed Prop. 40 because it is not “a long-term viable solution to provide affordable healthcare.” 

But the more progressive members of the committee didn’t want to hear about the problems.

“California needs this money now,” said Michael Nguyen, a progressive DCCC member. “There are reasonable questions here around implementation, long-term revenue projections, but those questions cannot become an excuse for doing nothing.”

Gordon Mar, another member, agreed. “The bottom line is Prop. 40 is the only proposal before voters and on the table, more generally, that approaches the scale of this crisis.”

What’s really happening here is that no one in the party seems to have any real problem with the idea of a wealth tax or taxing billionaires and seizing what they own. The only reason some unions and Democrats object to this is that it was created by the SEIU to commit at least 90 percent of the money to state-funded healthcare services. 

That means the powerful teachers unions and lots of other unions won’t get a cut. And that’s why many of them oppose this. Had the SEIU agreed to split the spoils of this terrible idea a bit more evenly with other unions, there would be universal support and San Francisco Dems would be happy to vote for it.

In any case, Party member Peter Gallotta gave the most impassioned plea to soak the rich and stick it to Fox News.

The richest people in California do not need the San Francisco Democratic Party to be their shield. Billionaires already have plenty of lobbyists, political allies, and money to fight for their interests. They do not need this party to join them. Meanwhile, working families who are barely holding on here in San Francisco and across the state are paying their taxes. Billionaires making ungodly sums of money with more wealth than they could ever spend in their lifetimes can afford to contribute more. That should not be controversial for Democrats, especially San Francisco Democrats. And it should come as no surprise that this body is considering doing the bidding of the billionaires given its cozy relationship with some of the loudest opponents of Prop 40, including, and I will say names, Chris Larson and Gary Tan. But this vote, I want to be clear, has consequences. When opponents of a billionaire tax can point to San Francisco Democrats and say even they agree with us, that is politically damaging. It is politically damaging for all of us and for what it means to be a San Francisco Democrat. We should not hand billionaires and Fox News a talking point against this measure.

That’s the voice of legalized theft. He’s defending this effort to single out a handful of people and seize their stock in companies they created. And if he’s willing to do it once, he (and the rest like him) will do it again and again as many times as it takes until everyone who creates something valuable knows to stay away from California. 

Seizing from people who build things is a short-sighted and ultimately destructive way to govern. Hopefully the voters in California are wise enough to recognize that this November.

John Sexton, Hotair

Picture the feelings of Lake Ontario this morning. It was christened Lac Saint-Louis by Samuel de Champlain, but it’s woken up to Canada calling it William and the US calling it Pat – or rather, Lake America (without the “of,” as Trump helpfully specified in his video on Truth Social).

Although Lac Saint-Louis is surely a better and more historically founded name than Lake America, one can sympathize with the American compulsion to rename things. After all, what would Texas be without a little American intervention? (Mexico, as it happens.) But while President Trump has the map out on his desk and a good pen in his hand, there are a few other names he might like to update.

First of all, from up north here, calling your capital Washington, DC seems like a wasted opportunity. You already have Washington State. Why don’t you add George to the capital and call it George Washington, DC? It’s much catchier, it fleshes out the historical reference and it would save an awful lot of confusion. Or better yet, you could simply call it America City. Like New York City, Kansas City, Sin City and all those other great American cities. It would fit right in.

Canada has heard that America is feeling uncomfortable because the oceans on either side of it have alien, foreign-sounding names like Atlantic and Pacific. Here there is no room for subtlety or historical allusion, because other countries also have coastlines on these oceans and you don’t want there to be any lack of clarity about who’s most important. Best to keep it simple: in the east, Ocean of America, and in the west, American Ocean. So the coast with America City borders on the Ocean of America, and the coast with Washington State borders on the American Ocean. As a bonus, the new name would send a clear message to China.

No offense intended on this next one, and of course Canadians understand people who live there have a lot of feelings about this. We don’t want to be insensitive or anything. But do you really need two Dakotas? Dakota is a very nice name. But is the relative location of these two states truly the most important thing about them? To be honest, the North-South thing sounds a bit like an ideologically fractured east Asian country. Maybe the northern one could be renamed American Frontier. That actually sounds pretty cool, and would nip any would-be Kim Jong-uns in the bud.

Now this is more about home decoration, but we do think that having your nation’s most important building painted white is a bit of a missed opportunity. What about a new, patriotic color scheme? Red, white and blue suits the Home of the Stars and Bars.

There’s a classic Cold War joke about the space race, in which the Russians get to the moon with a space tanker full of paint and color it a bright Soviet red. The US, not to be outdone, sends up a tanker of white paint and a giant made-in-America stencil. When they’re finished their work, the moon projects the victor’s slogan: Drink Coca Cola. There’s a lesson here for contemporary America: stay on message.

On that note, why not rename Disneyland Americaland?

Disney is one of America’s biggest exports, after all. And then you’d have an Americaland just east of Paris, which would be kind of cool. All it would take is one tiny executive order. And McDonalds sounds Scottish; AmericaBurger sounds way better. (Best merge with Five Guys while you’re at it). Would you like freedom fries with that?

At the end of the day, Lake Ontario doesn’t really mind. It’s had name changes before. Canada has more important things to worry about, like a trade deal. Call it what you want, just don’t call us late for dinner.

The Irish Rovers sang about the biggest mixup that you have ever seen: he was christened David Anthony, but still in spite of that, his father called him William while his mother called him Pat.

Picture the feelings of Lake Ontario this morning. It was christened Lac Saint-Louis by Samuel de Champlain, but it’s woken up to Canada calling it William and the US calling it Pat – or rather, Lake America (without the “of,” as Trump helpfully specified in his video on Truth Social).

Although Lac Saint-Louis is surely a better and more historically founded name than Lake America, one can sympathize with the American compulsion to rename things. After all, what would Texas be without a little American intervention? (Mexico, as it happens.) But while President Trump has the map out on his desk and a good pen in his hand, there are a few other names he might like to update.

First of all, from up north here, calling your capital Washington, DC seems like a wasted opportunity. You already have Washington State. Why don’t you add George to the capital and call it George Washington, DC? It’s much catchier, it fleshes out the historical reference and it would save an awful lot of confusion. Or better yet, you could simply call it America City. Like New York City, Kansas City, Sin City and all those other great American cities. It would fit right in.

There’s a classic Cold War joke about the space race, in which the Russians get to the moon with a space tanker full of paint and color it a bright Soviet red. The US, not to be outdone, sends up a tanker of white paint and a giant made-in-America stencil. When they’re finished their work, the moon projects the victor’s slogan: Drink Coca Cola. There’s a lesson here for contemporary America: stay on message.

Canada has heard that America is feeling uncomfortable because the oceans on either side of it have alien, foreign-sounding names like Atlantic and Pacific. Here there is no room for subtlety or historical allusion, because other countries also have coastlines on these oceans and you don’t want there to be any lack of clarity about who’s most important. Best to keep it simple: in the east, Ocean of America, and in the west, American Ocean. So the coast with America City borders on the Ocean of America, and the coast with Washington State borders on the American Ocean. As a bonus, the new name would send a clear message to China.

No offense intended on this next one, and of course Canadians understand people who live there have a lot of feelings about this. We don’t want to be insensitive or anything. But do you really need two Dakotas? Dakota is a very nice name. But is the relative location of these two states truly the most important thing about them? To be honest, the North-South thing sounds a bit like an ideologically fractured east Asian country. Maybe the northern one could be renamed American Frontier. That actually sounds pretty cool, and would nip any would-be Kim Jong-uns in the bud.

Now this is more about home decoration, but we do think that having your nation’s most important building painted white is a bit of a missed opportunity. What about a new, patriotic color scheme? Red, white and blue suits the Home of the Stars and Bars.

On that note, why not rename Disneyland Americaland?

Disney is one of America’s biggest exports, after all. And then you’d have an Americaland just east of Paris, which would be kind of cool. All it would take is one tiny executive order. And McDonalds sounds Scottish; AmericaBurger sounds way better. (Best merge with Five Guys while you’re at it). Would you like freedom fries with that?

At the end of the day, Lake Ontario doesn’t really mind. It’s had name changes before. Canada has more important things to worry about, like a trade deal. Call it what you want, just don’t call us late for dinner.

Jane Stannus, The Spectator

Any alleged ‘right’ of one man, which necessitates the violation of the rights of another, is not and cannot be a right.” (Ayn Rand)

It seems so obvious. It really seemed obvious back in the 1960s, when Rand wrote it. Part of her brilliance and foresight was her understanding that it needed to be said even back then — and much more now.

Everything that AOC, Mamdani and the rest of the now fully radicalized Democratic Party claim as a “right” actually belongs to another — not to them. The under-40 snowflakes who will never grow up, the biggest group cheering on socialism, are morally untenable, although they fancy themselves as morally superior.

All socialism is theft.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason