Vought has also been a behind-the-scenes leader in opposing critical race theory in churches and school boards and has openly supported forms of Christian nationalism. ///

This is bad?

“The days of irresponsibly shoveling boatloads of cash to far-left activist groups in the name of environmental justice and climate equity are over”

The Paradox of DEI
DEI programs were instituted to ensure that workplaces and educational institutions reflect a broad spectrum of human diversity. Yet, there's growing concern that these initiatives sometimes overlook those who should benefit from true inclusion—individuals with disabilities, including those on the autism spectrum and other neurodivergent conditions.

Legal Protections vs. DEI Practices
Under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, disabled individuals are entitled to reasonable accommodations. This law was meant to level the playing field, ensuring equal access to education and employment for Americans with disabilities. However, the push for DEI often focuses on demographic diversity in terms of race, gender, and identity, which can conflict with the accommodations needed by people with disabilities. //

The Employment Dilemma
The statistics are telling. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, only about 21 percent of disabled Americans were employed in 2022. This stark figure highlights not a lack of skill or ambition but rather systemic barriers, including those inadvertently created by DEI policies.

Real-Life Implications
In practice, this means that schools and companies might prioritize hiring for diversity in a way that doesn't account for the need for individualized learning or working accommodations. There are stories of autistic individuals being passed over for roles or being pushed out of jobs for not being a "cultural fit," a term often used to mask the inability or unwillingness to accommodate an individual's disability. //

The Path Forward
The irony of DEI policies marginalizing people with disabilities while claiming to be inclusive cannot be ignored. True inclusion means adapting our systems to genuinely accommodate all forms of diversity, including disability. //

anon-onh5
4 hours ago
"DEI programs were instituted to ensure that workplaces and educational institutions reflect a broad spectrum of human diversity."

DEI programs were instituted to divide people along racial lines and keep fostering race hatred. FIFY

He traveled to Europe by way of a C-17 cargo plane with a command pod rather than in a Gulfstream executive jet. //

He traveled with his wife and child. This has become something of a standard image of all Trump Cabinet secretaries. Trump has had his grandchild at his desk. Sean Duffy's family is prominent in events. JD Vance's wife and kids travel with him. Musk's kid was at the press conference he held yesterday. The image of family as a central point in life rather than an adjunct to your job is striking when compared to previous administrations, including Trump 1.0. See my colleague Brandon Morse's post on the subject: Elon Musk Is Demonstrating the Best Pro-Life Strategy Right Now and It's Heartwarming to See – RedState. //

I'm old school on uniforms. I think the custom of wearing BDUs (utilities, fatigues, whatever you want to call the field uniform) all the time is horrendous. When I was a young officer, you weren't allowed to wear BDUs off-post. Period. You couldn't go to a fast food place or run an errand on the way home or at lunch wearing BDUs. In my view, if you can't break out the Class A uniform to welcome the SecDef and note the color guard is in dress uniform, then there is no possible occasion that calls for them. But, if you do wear BDUs to greet the SecDef, show him the respect of wearing a fresh set. Meeting the head of the Department of Defense in wrinkled BDUs is a calculated insult because I really don't believe this three-star or his aide are that stupid. //

This is just the tip of the iceberg. If you're willing to greet your boss in wrinkled clothes and allow him to be heckled by dependent wives, you can imagine what else is going on out of sight.

Restructuring The Bureau To Remedy What Ails It Or Turning It Into A Vehicle To Pursue The Malfactors Inside It And Other Aligned Agencies? //

What happened is what Kash Patel is going to need to confront and fix. The daunting task in front of him stems from the fact that the changes in the Bureau have become nearly universal. It worked like a underground weed that spread far and wide before sprouting up through the soil to start taking over separate parts of the organization.

How did that happen? Nowhere in the Government is the phrase “personnel is policy” more true than in the FBI. //

Patel is going to be taking over an organization where a large percentage of its work force, maybe approaching 75%, were hired in the past 15 years — since 2009, the first year of the first term of President Obama.

Not too far into that year the hiring priorities of most federal agencies changed, including at the FBI. Rather than continue the influx of former military, state and local law enforcement, and holders of graduate degrees in engineering, accounting, law, etc., the FBI’s recruiting was adjusted to fit the goal of achieving a work force that “looked like the population at large.” That goal supplanted other priorities that focused on recruiting the “best and brightest” as had for decades been the foundation for FBI hiring. //

The Special Agent work force that began to be created in 2009 was recruited more from college campuses than at any time in FBI history. That’s where a work force that “looked like the population at large” could be most easily found. Since academia has been the breeding ground for 40+ years of crusading social justice warriors — dedicated to recognizing and correcting social injustices of yesteryear more than addressing criminal conduct of yesterday and today — the new agents coming into the Bureau starting in 2010 arrived with that mindset.

But, as was explained to me by FBI Agents in a position to know, many of the new agents had post-college “work experience” with groups such as Sierra Club, Environmental Defense Fund, Southern Poverty Law Center, Innocence Project, Justice Policy Institute, National Women’s Law Center, Human Rights Campaign, NARAL, etc. They came in trained already in how to seek out offenses involving “injustice” rather than focusing on crime.

This remained the hiring paradigm for more than a decade. //

The abuses in the intelligence gathering by the FBI and other parts of the IC community over the past 10 years will likely result in Patel — himself a victim of such efforts — taking steps to severely limit what will be allowed to continue. At the same time a comprehensive analysis will likely be done as to whether intelligence gathering domestically — to the extent it is allowed at all — should be moved to an agency without law enforcement responsibility. Intelligence is to inform decision-making by policy makers — not as a directional device to steer law enforcement in the direction of suspected law breakers. When the latter is allowed, the temptation to abuse that power is simply too great to resist. That is how we find ourselves where we are today. //

“Domestic terrorism” — meaning by citizens and not foreign invaders — has always been a police responsibility. It is nothing more than violent crime. Most domestic terrorism “crimes” are violations of state laws at the same time. Using the massive intelligence gathering capacity of the federal government — often leveraging Big Tech to assist — all for the purpose of interdicting the commission of state crimes, has come with a price to liberty I don’t think the majority of citizens are willing to continue to pay. //

It’s a daunting task. Taking a wrecking ball to the current internal structure is only half the solution. Fixing what is broken by introducing hundreds of new management personnel into the ranks, while at the same time working to cull the resistance from among the Special Agent work force will be the more lasting legacy of what Patel leaves behind when his time is done.

"The bipartisan FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024 directs the Administration to hire the maximum number of air traffic controllers. That’s what the law says, so the Administration must rescind this ridiculous executive order,” Ranking Member Larsen said. “Hiring air traffic controllers is the number one safety issue according to the entire aviation industry. Instead of working to improve aviation safety and lower costs for hardworking American families, the Administration is choosing to spread bogus DEI claims to justify this decision. I'm not surprised by the President’s dangerous and divisive actions, but the Administration must reverse course. Let’s get back to aviation safety and allow the FAA to do its job protecting the flying public.”

The Obama administration dropped a skill-based system for selecting and hiring air traffic controllers (ATCs), and replaced it with a new system designed to favor applicants on the basis of their race. It makes no sense. Worse yet, it is illegal and unconstitutional. The FAA purged its system of thousands of previously-qualified, ready-to-hire applicants simply because they did not fit the right biographical profile. The government endangered public safety and owes restitution for this grave injustice.

Many bureaucracies within the federal government are stocked with people who believe they are above being accountable to voters, and one of the worst is the Government Services Administration (GSA). While it ostensibly exists to manage federal workspaces, it has long been run by far-left lunatics who seek to subvert any attempts at reform while pushing woke nonsense. //

Remember that viral video from 2022 of Kamala Harris telling people at a meeting that her pronouns are "she and her," and that she's "wearing a blue suit"? That was the doing of 18F's policies. //

neverenoughcaffeine
an hour ago
Anyone wonder what PDT was doing over the last 4 years besides fighting lawsuits and criminal prosecutions? I'd say he was learning a whole lot about the crap that goes on inside the US government and then hiring the peole who clued him in. No other way he could have uncovered this nonsense and done what he has in less then 2 weeks. //

Cafeblue32
an hour ago
I think describing people for the blind is hilarious. What if they're born blind or have been from infancy? How does a born blind person know what the color purple looks like? I don't know. For me, describing things to blind people they can't see and that they never asked for is just one more reminder of the world they're missing out on.

Describing a color is impossible. We know what they do and scientifically how they are made, but the actual color itself defies description. Thus, it is all for the sighted people in the room to approve of their virtue. //

Tech in RL
41 minutes ago
GSA was in Trump's crosshairs because of the documents "scandal." The National Archives and the GSA have a service for every outgoing president to organize and ship their documents. GSA has offered this service to every president but Trump. They didn't coordinate with Trump's transition team but just jammed documents randomly into boxes so that no one knew what was in any of them. That's how napkins and magazine articles ended up in the same boxes as classified documents. I doubt Trump even knew half of the documents that went to Mar-a-lago because GSA didn't bother to organize them.

The Trump team probably thinks GSA set the trap for an FBI raid by stuffing classified documents in places no one expected. That is their incentive to gut that agency.

We are well past the point of this being a matter of Republicans being confident this stuff is an electoral loser. The empirical data tells us it is. The 2024 election saw Donald Trump come roaring back into the White House, winning the popular vote while heavily promoting an anti-woke agenda. Analysts in the press repeatedly claimed the now-president's ads on transgenderism that ended with "Kamala is for they/them, Trump is for you" (or some variation) would alienate people. Instead, they were the most effective ads of the cycle.

Democrats hinted at changing course on far-left identity insanity shortly after the election, but if the answers at this DNC forum are any indication, they've dropped that idea altogether and are going full-bore in the other direction. //

Democrats can't help but do the Principal Skinner meme again and again. You see, it's not that they are out of touch and completely unappealing to normal people due to their insane policy prescriptions and ideological viewpoints. It's just that people are too stupid to see how great they are and simply need to be fed better propaganda. //

But hey, if Democrats want to keep banging the woke drum, I'd encourage them to do it. Republicans may never lose another election if they keep this up. //

The Left only destroys
35 minutes ago
Bonchie, I HATE this headline. It ain't over till it's over, and it will never be over. Complacency almost cost us the republic, and we came back from the brink. Conservatives need to run their elections at all times as if they are behind. Don't let up on efforts to eliminate leftism. Never assume victory.

Vince Lombardi told his players in their first meeting, "Gentlemen, we are going to relentlessly pursue perfection, knowing all along we will never achieve it, but in pursuing perfection, we will catch excellence." A similar sentiment applies here. We must relentlessly pursue elimination of Leftism, knowing all along we will never achieve it, but in pursuing it, we will catch peace and prosperity. //

Laocoön of Troy bk
23 minutes ago edited
There might be a reason for the Dems to keep American Indians out of the leadership of the DNC. In the 2024 election, 65% of American Indians voted for Trump. That was his highest percentage among the various "minorities". 65% is a MASSIVE landslide in terms of preference in a General Election.

The craziest of the crazy lefties...I'm lookin' at you Hogg...are soft, white, wealthy women with a terminal case of white liberal guilt. Except for the girl thing...that would be Hogg and his comrades.

Brytek
4 hours ago
As a “brown” person, I see DEI for what it is - A sustainable means to keep brown and other peoples down and ignorant, forever needing these white elites hand ups. As a brown person I compete quite well against any and all takers in my chosen profession, without the need for some a-hole lefty looking to “help” me out of my dignity and self worth. DEI is an apartheid tool masquerading as manna from heaven. Did it help KJP, no, as it set all who look like her who are competent back a generation, back into the chattel pens of the democrats. DEI is the Democrats Evil Indoctrination system. //

anon-fl4c
4 hours ago
Do you see what Trump is doing here? JD is going to be part of the package at every turn. Not the guy in the back looking stern or smiling and nodding when the situation calls for it. Trump is going to make JD the most recognized VP in history so that by 2028, everyone knows JD Vance. Brilliant move.

stripmallgrackle anon-fl4c
an hour ago edited
Vance will have a record he can run on. He will not only speak for Trump, he will be given credit for his input on decisions made, and he will be given the latitude to rise or fail. In short, he will have credentials when he runs in '28.

I vaguely remember a think piece I read, probably during the Carter excursion, about the need for a co-presidency as an answer to the increasingly complex responsibilities of the president. I suspect this presidency will be just that.

Wherever Trump goes there will be at least one man in the room who knows, with every fiber of his being, that he isn't a lame duck. Anyone who believes he can't buck history needs to rewatch The Apprentice.

anon-fl4c stripmallgrackle
an hour ago
And this is why I think this is so extraordinary. I was a teenager in the Carter years so I didn’t read what you are referencing but I will say this, there has never been a promotion of a VP like this in my lifetime. The ego of Clinton would not permit it, and the disastrous choices of Bush 43 and Obama would not allow it. Vance is being groomed by Trump for good reason, as is the rest of his cabinet choices. Trump is protecting the future legacy of MAGA for us all. A beautiful thing indeed.

stripmallgrackle anon-fl4c
an hour ago
Add to that, that whatever remains of conventional wisdom in the DNC forced Biden to choose Kamigula II as his running mate. Clearly, there is a difference between craving power and knowing how to use it.

That last part may be the most MAGA thing I've ever said.

mopani stripmallgrackle
2 minutes ago
Exactly. Trump doesn't crave power, and so he is not afraid to share it, to share the spotlight. Just like he gave his podium to the victims in North Carolina, he gives his VP the podium and the limelight.

Staffing at the air traffic control tower at Ronald Reagan National Airport was “not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic,” according to an internal preliminary Federal Aviation Administration safety report about the collision that was reviewed by The New York Times.

The controller who was handling helicopters in the airport’s vicinity Wednesday night was also instructing planes that were landing and departing from its runways. Those jobs typically are assigned to two controllers, rather than one.

...

The tower [at Reagan] was nearly a third below targeted staff levels, with 19 fully certified controllers as of September 2023, according to the most recent Air Traffic Controller Workforce Plan, an annual report to Congress that contains target and actual staffing levels. The targets set by the F.A.A. and the controllers’ union call for 30. //

This shocking event follows problematic and likely illegal decisions during the Obama and Biden Administrations that minimized merit and competence in the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The Obama Administration implemented a biographical questionnaire at the FAA to shift the hiring focus away from objective aptitude. During my first term, my Administration raised standards to achieve the highest standards of safety and excellence. But the Biden Administration egregiously rejected merit-based hiring, requiring all executive departments and agencies to implement dangerous "diversity equity and inclusion" tactics, and specifically recruiting individuals with "severe intellectual" disabilities in the FAA.

On my second day in office, I ordered an immediate return to merit-based recruitment, hiring, and promotion, elevating safety and ability as the paramount standard. Yesterday's devastating accident tragically underscores the need to elevate safety and competence as the priority of the FAA.

Is there an ATC shortage? Yes, there is, and we'll get to that. Was it caused by any action of the Trump administration instituted eight days ago? There's no planet on which that's true. You don't train to be an air traffic controller in eight days, much less would you be assigned to what is one of the most senior sectors in the country.

But if Democrats want to go down this road, we can. What caused the current ATC shortage? The Biden administration, which took its cues from diversity programs created by the Obama administration, rejected over 3,000 qualified applicants who didn't meet DEI standards. How do we know this? Because it led to a major class action lawsuit that is still ongoing. //

In other words, Democrat presidents put DEI above safety, purging thousands of people who could have solved the shortage because their skin color didn't match up with the left's political wants. That's what the Trump administration is trying to fix by eliminating diversity quotas at the FAA. So again, if Democrats would like to go down this road of trying to place blame, Republicans should be happy to do so. It won't work out well for the former.

With that said, it does not appear that ATC was primarily at fault here. There may be questions about how much separation was allowed to begin with, and an investigation will figure all that out. In the meantime, these attempts to blame a presidential administration that's been in office for eight days are laughable. Not only that, they are ghoulish and disgusting.

DaveGinOly | January 29, 2025 at 4:26 pm
Remember, Milley created a bottleneck in the chain of command during the final hours of the Trump administration, requiring that only orders issued or approved by him were to be followed, effectively elevating himself above the POTUS, the lawful civilian authority at the top of the military chain of command. He can’t be tried for this criminality, but he should be demoted for it. (Nancy Pelosi encouraged him in this venture, and she remains exposed to prosecution for her part in it.)

MACKIE: For me, Captain America represents a lot of different things & I don’t think the term, you know, "America" should be one of those representations. It’s about a man who keeps his word, who has honor, dignity, and integrity. Someone who is trustworthy and dependable.

I've never been much of a comic fan so far be it from me to offer a correction here, but I'm pretty sure that "Captain America" does represent America. I mean, that seems to be the entire point, from the character's backstory to, you know, his name. //

Now ask yourself if any of this is going to help dig Disney out of its massive hole. Mackie's commentary wasn't even ambiguous. He's clearly suggesting that America as a nation does not exhibit honor, dignity, and integrity. Whatever one may think about that in a modern context, "Captain America" as a character is literally a World War II super-soldier whose entire existence centers on representing America.

Disney desperately needs "Captain America: Brave New World" to be a success. Instead, this may ensure it's a box office failure.

Our Birthright as Americans has always been known as the American Dream.

The American Dream: No matter what color you are, regardless of your social class, your level of education, or how much money you may or may not have, you can always improve your life if you work hard and keep at it. You can attain the level of success that you want. There are no limits. That's the American Dream. That's why people from all over the world want to come here and that's why they always have. The law treats us all the same, and society encourages our individuality as we try to rise out of our current situation to attain a better one. Maybe it would be more accurate if I said that is the Promise of the American Dream. That's what our founders sought to establish when they codified the values of a brand-new country.

I think MLK Jr saw this pretty clearly when he crafted his I Have a Dream speech:

When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men — yes, Black men as well as white men — would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today. //

And merit was usually at the center of many of these values. If you could perform, you could be rewarded by the natural outcomes of your actions. If you didn't perform, you kind of stayed where you were. Today's culture doesn't always reward merit. In fact, sometimes, it holds you back if you're competing in the job market. Or in academics. Identity carries more weight and often excludes one from advancement. Certain boxes that once required checking, like experience, accuracy, performance, and timeliness, have now frequently been replaced by race, sexuality, and political orientation. See Sam Brinton, see Kamala Harris, see Karine Jean-Pierre. //

How did we get like this in just a few short years? Today, you don't have to Google very far to find that values like merit or timeliness or individuality are now considered relics of whiteness and misogyny. This mindset exists in the corporate world now, which is sad, but it's also made significant headway into the military, which is dangerous and reckless. //

So again, how did we ever get to the point where presumably normal people would undermine the mission of their job to countermand it and replace it with the opposite? How did it become commonplace, if not very nearly mainstream, to undermine long-treasured American values of meritocracy (especially critical in the military) for the sake of a bunch of DEI/Utopian Unicorn Dust? And by extension, in other critical roles such as nuclear waste management or medical training or airline pilot proficiency? None of these make any practical sense. Who cares if your pilot is gay if he forgets to lower the flaps on takeoff or if your surgeon is black when he forgets which side your appendix is on? //

But I bring this up because it seems that popular culture has now become saturated with the message to the degree that it thinks this is the sum total of the American experience, and therefore, America is bad. Possibly, this has led to a general belief that we are a racist country now and beyond redemption. How did that get traction? Collective guilt, I suppose. Which, of course, when the glass gets full enough, leads to collective atonement. And when you hit that stage, you feel justified if not duty bound to usurp your once-held convictions that merit is good. Even racism can be good if pointed at the right people, and sometimes it is necessary to give up your birthright if it means adopting a new birthright where people are advanced because they are righteous in their color, sexuality, or politics and therefore oppressed.

I don't know. Maybe I have a point here, maybe not. But still, the question nags at me. How did we give up our core American values so quickly and so easily? I admit that I am still vexed.

Still the best speech on Westernised Cultural Marxism ever made. The mind virus enables this.

Removing this garbage from the military—and I'm under no illusion that the Air Force is unique in having commands that are surreptitiously telling the Commander-in-Chief to get lost—will require diligent effort and ruthlessness. Anyone involved in rebranding USAF DEI programs must be terminated if civilian or administratively separated if military. What we are seeing here is really nothing less than a mutiny.

A federal judge ruled Friday that American Airlines's pension fund had violated the law by making investment decisions using criteria other than the interests of the plan beneficiaries. The decision by Judge Reed O'Connor, a George Bush appointee serving the Northern District of Texas, comes from a decision by American Airlines management to allow the pension fund to be managed by BlackRock, which in turn used Environmental, Social, and Governance principles rather than financial performance to guide investment. //

For the reasons explained below, the Court concludes that the facts compellingly demonstrated that Defendants breached their fiduciary duty by failing to loyally act solely in the retirement plan’s best financial interests by allowing their corporate interests, as well as BlackRock’s ESG interests, to influence management of the plan. However, the facts do not compel the same result for the duty of prudence. Defendants acted according to prevailing industry practices, even if leaders in the fiduciary industry contrived to set the standard. This is fatal to Plaintiff’s breach of prudence claim. //

The day before Judge O'Connor ruled that BlackRock had sacrificed the pension payout to plan beneficiaries on the altar of ESG investing, BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, with $11.5 trillion in assets under management, announced its withdrawal from Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative, an international group of asset management companies "committed to supporting the goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 or sooner."

This makes BlackRock the latest asset manager to reconsider the business model of screwing over investors in exchange for invitations to all the right events. //

The exits are clearly linked to the American Airlines lawsuit, which imposes liability for damages on asset managers for breaching their fiduciary responsibility. One can't ignore the effect of an incoming Congress that is skeptical of ESG. Last summer, the House Judiciary Committee labeled the ESG movement as violating antitrust law.

One of the primary drivers of the devastation has been a lack of water due to unfilled reservoirs in Los Angeles County and unmaintained, failing infrastructure that caused fire hydrants to run dry. As RedState reported, the Ynez Reservoir was taken offline for maintenance during wildfire season, a decision that has turned out to be catastrophic.

When three 1-million-gallon capacity water storage tanks in Pacific Palisades went dry Tuesday night, firefighters were forced to abandon efforts to save thousands of homes. LA Department of Water and Power (LADWP) CEO Janisse Quiñones has repeatedly claimed during press conferences that her utility did everything it could to prepare for the forecasted wind event and support the Los Angeles Fire Department as it responded, but left out one key fact: The Santa Ynez Reservoir in the hills above Pacific Palisades, which holds 117 million gallons of water and normally feeds those tanks, had been drained and taken offline for repairs to its cover even though the state's brush fire season was ongoing. //

Is Quiñones a unique talent, though? She sure doesn't seem to be given how badly and quickly the infrastructure failed in this case. Not filling the Ynez Reservoir for wildfire season was bad enough, but clearly, the water pumping facilities and hydrant system were not prepared for what should have been treated as an inevitability. For context, the hydrant issue has been known about since at least 2021.

What Quiñones did do well, though, is push the preferred narratives of the far-left. When Bass hired her, the mayor touted the new "CEO" as a person who could shift the city to "100% clean energy," but take a wild guess what else Quiñones was really concerned with? If you said "equity" and "social justice," collect your winnings at the window: //

Bearsblow
8 hours ago
They're achieving equity! The rich and the poor are suddenly homeless!!

Well done Janisse Quiñones. You deserve a raise!

With this announcement, Meta becomes the third major corporation to bail out of the burning DEI airplane since Trump was reelected. Walmart terminated its DEI programs in late November, and McDonalds dropped its programs Tuesday. They join a growing list of companies deciding DEI is terrible for business since the US presidential election season got underway:

Boeing — November, 2024
Toyota — October 2024
Harley-Davidson — August 2024
Caterpillar — September 2024
Stanley Black & Decker — September 2024
Brown-Forman — September 2024
Molson Coors — September 2024
Lowe's — August 2024
Ford — August 2024
John Deere — July 2024
Tractor Supply — June 2024