The Emancipation Memorial in Lincoln Park, Washington, D.C., June 19, 2020. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters) President Biden on Thursday signed legislation establishing Juneteenth as a federal holiday just two days before the occasion. “Great nations don’t ignore their most painful moments,” Biden said before signing the bill.  “They don’t ignore those moments in the past. They embrace

The Alien Tort Statute gives federal courts jurisdiction to hear certain civil actions filed by aliens. Today’s ruling by the Court in Nestle v. Doe arises from a complaint filed by six individuals from Mali who allege that they were trafficked into Ivory Coast as child slaves to work on cocoa farms and that U.S.-based

U.S. President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin attend a meeting at Villa La Grange in Geneva, Switzerland, June 16, 2021. (Sputnik/Mikhail Metzel/Reuters) On the menu today: a skeptical look at what, if anything, actually changed after President Biden met with Vladimir Putin in Geneva; Democrats might finally be making their peace with voter-identification

(rarrarorro/Getty Images) A bipartisan group of 20 senators, including ten Republicans, announced their support for a compromise framework on infrastructure on Wednesday. Details of the framework were not immediately available, although the cost of the potential bill would be $1.2 trillion over eight years, according to CNN. The backing of ten GOP senators could give

Former National Security Advisor John Bolton speaks during a lecture at Duke University in Durham, N.C., February 17, 2020. (Jonathan Drake/Reuters) The Justice Department has dropped a lawsuit against former White House adviser John Bolton over the publication of his White House tell-all The Room Where It Happened. Under the Trump administration, the DOJ sued Bolton

(Jonathan Ernst/Reuters) The House voted 415 to 14 to make Juneteenth a federal holiday on Wednesday, one day after the Senate unanimously approved the measure. Juneteenth commemorates the Union Army declaration of the end of slavery in Texas on June 19, 1865. President Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation over two years earlier, in the

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) talks to reporters as he departs the U.S. Capitol after a vote in the Senate, June 10, 2021. (Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters) Two months ago, Manchin vowed not to ‘eliminate or weaken the filibuster.’ Will he break that promise now? West Virginia senator Joe Manchin has repeatedly vowed over the last nine months

Anthony Fauci discusses the coronavirus outbreak with the media outside the White House, March 12, 2020. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters) Dr. Anthony Fauci joined CBS This Morning on Wednesday for a segment in which he defended and misrepresented his record of public statements on the coronavirus’s origins. “If you go back then, even though you lean towards feeling this

(Tero Vesalainen/Getty Images) On the menu today: What Republican voters really think about big tech companies; the Chinese government tells everyone not to worry about the Taishan Nuclear Power Plant; a liberal columnist suddenly worries that celebrities may be influencing public opinion about political issues; and why progressives keep trying to “bully” West Virginia senator

A woman holds a sign during a pro-life march in Queens, New York, October 20, 2012. (Andrew Kelly/Reuters) Nearly three-quarters of church-going Catholics believe public officials who oppose Church teaching should not receive Communion, according to a new poll. CatholicVote poll results released Tuesday show 74 percent of Catholics who regularly attend Mass believe that

Stephen Colbert inside the White House press-briefing room, July 27, 2007 (Larry Downing/Reuters) The recent interplay between Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert regarding the possibility of a COVID lab leak was a fascinating example of where their recent career choices have taken them. As Kyle Smith wrote, Stewart showed that part of him is still

Workers in protective suits stand at a makeshift hospital in Wuhan, China, April 11, 2020. (Aly Song/Reuters) One aspect of the growing support for an investigation into the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s potential role in COVID-19’s origin is the way in which certain scientific journals laundered the arguments made by those who had an interest

Connecticut State Capitol in Hartford (f11photo/Getty Images) Herewith, a deserved shout-out to the liberty-loving think tank, Yankee Institute for Public Policy, overseen by the indefatigable Carol Platt Liebbau, for its diligent David role in stopping the Goliath of TCI during the Connecticut legislature’s just-ended 2021 session. (Warning: The nefarious undertaking might raise its ugly head

A Washington Post article yesterday highlights President Biden’s efforts “to boost minority and female representation on the federal courts.” The benchmark that the article uses to measure representativeness is percentage of the overall population. One striking tidbit is that even by that standard black men are overrepresented in the federal judiciary: they account for 7.9%

(Getty Images) Leaders of a Massachusetts public school system are encouraging students and staff to file complaints against one another for telling rude jokes, referring to the “China virus,” and committing microaggressions or other “incidents of bias,” according to newly uncovered documents from the district’s Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. The documents were released

Ships and shipping containers at the port of Long Beach in Long Beach, Calif., January 30, 2019. (Mike Blake/Reuters) There’s an old joke about an economist and an engineer who fall into a deep hole together. As the engineer is devising ways to get out of the hole, the economist says, “Don’t worry, I’ll get

The Supreme Court’s ruling today in Terry v. United States is a huge embarrassment for the Biden administration, the Biden Department of Justice, and the Office of the Solicitor General in particular. On top of other actions, it powerfully exposes the falsehood that the Biden DOJ is abiding by nonpolitical norms of independence. In Terry, the

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) holds a press conference outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., June 14, 2021. (Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters) Representative Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R., Ga.) apologized Monday for her comments last month comparing COVID-19 restrictions to the persecution of Jews by the Nazis. After a visit to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington,

Tom Hanks presents at the Oscars show during the 92nd Academy Awards in Hollywood, Los Angeles, Calif., February 9, 2020. (Mario Anzuoni/Reuters) How an ideology leads to mental contortions — and to not-so-quasi-totalitarianism. Last week, the actor Tom Hanks responded to calls for a more robust accounting of America’s racial history by penning a piece

Recently, renowned US Democratic Party strategist James Carville decided that, so far as Wokeness is concerned, silence is violence:[1] “Wokeness is a problem and everyone knows it,” the mastermind behind Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential election said. “It’s hard to talk to anybody today… who doesn’t say this. But they don’t want to say it out

The Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C., May 8, 2020 (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters) This was another uneventful morning at the Supreme Court, with two uncontroversial decisions (one unanimous, one split between 9–0 and 8–1 decisions in two related cases) involving the First Step Act and the felon-in-possession statute. But the big news came in case number

President Joe Biden holds a news conference at the end of the G7 summit at Cornwall Airport Newquay, England, June 13, 2021. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters) All eyes will be on the upcoming Biden–Putin summit. On April 13, as tens of thousands of Russian military forces deployed along the Ukrainian border, U.S. president Joe Biden picked up

Then-President Obama listens as he participates in his last news conference of the year in Washington, D.C., December 16, 2016. (Carlos Barria/Reuters) In a revealing interview, Obama tried to burnish his image for progressive posterity — but he still doesn’t understand his fundamental errors. NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE B arack Obama rose to political stardom in

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) holds her weekly news conference in Washington, D.C., May 20, 2021. (Ken Cedeno/Reuters) House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) denied that House leadership rebuked Representative Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) following a tweet in which Omar compared the U.S. and Israel to Hamas and the Taliban, in comments on CNN’s State

(Thomasaf/Getty Images) 1966—In a 5-4 ruling in Miranda v. Arizona, Chief Justice Warren’s majority opinion declares that a voluntary confession made during custodial interrogation will be conclusively deemed involuntary and inadmissible unless police first provide what are now known as the Miranda warnings (or unless other effective safeguards are adopted). It therefore vacates Miranda’s conviction.

Salman Rushdie during an interview with Reuters in 2012. (Paul Hackett/Reuters) His new essay collection vies for attention through studied insults of sacred cows. Even all these years after Salman Rushdie dominated headlines following the fatwa declared against him for his alleged anti-Islam blasphemy in the 1988 novel The Satanic Verses, the name still evokes

A Thick-billed longspur (formerly known as a McCown’s longspur) in Colorado. (kahj19/Getty Images) Those who think bird names reinforce prejudice have gone stork raven mad. NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE C ancel culture is at it again, and this time, they’re coming after . . . birds? Look out, Bachman’s sparrow. Because you were named after a

SEIU members and supporters take part in a protest march at Los Angeles International Airport in 2012. (Gus Ruelas/Reuters) Their dominance is far from over, and there is still work to do. But a brighter future is now visible. Anybody with eyeballs is pretty thrilled to read the news out of California: One of the

Police clear the U.S. Capitol with tear gas in Washington, D.C. January 6, 2021. (Stephanie Keith/Reuters) The rioters will be punished appropriately, but not punished as if they were terrorists who were trying to overthrow the United States government. NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE T he office of the United States attorney for the District of Columbia

Ibram X. Kendi on CBS This Morning in 2019. (CBS This Morning/via YouTube) So are we doing the thing where we are pretending that curriculum, instruction, and materials can’t be determined by school boards and state legislatures and should be left to radical education consultants who are hired by bureaucrats? What is popularly known as