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Authored by Cynical Publius via American Greatness,

The U.S. military’s growing DEI policies are creating a climate where fear of unfounded accusations erodes leadership and threatens combat readiness – leaving the nation’s future at risk…

As Pete Hegseth’s nomination for Secretary of Defense moves forward, the matter of “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) doctrines and practices in America’s military is a hot-button issue of significant importance. Our media is awash with stories of “woke” generals and admirals, critiques of women in combat, awful tales of command selection board manipulations based on race or gender, and a generalized sense of uneasiness in the senior ranks of the Pentagon over perceived massive changes to take place once Trump and Hegseth are in charge. However, this current DEI attention focuses almost exclusively on what is happening inside the five walls of the Pentagon and tends to ignore DEI’s most pernicious effect: the way it is obliterating command authority in tactical units in the field and warships at sea.

First, let me tell you how I figured out what is going on. On X (formerly known as Twitter), I have an active account of about 130,000 followers. I know that number is much smaller than that of many other X influencers, but it’s enough to give me some reach. My account focuses primarily on politics and culture, with a heavy emphasis on matters related to the U.S. military. That’s because I’m a retired Army colonel, and my views on military matters seem to resonate with veterans and active duty alike. It is that community of military followers that has fully revealed to me the DEI cancer that is eating away at U.S. military leadership at all levels.

A few days ago, I read an article from Military.com that truly shocked me. That article stated that in today’s Army, roughly half of the officers who are eligible for battalion command are refusing to even be considered for such command. The article’s author, quoting official Army sources, stated that this was a function of officers being unwilling to take on the extraordinary time demands of being a battalion commander and out of a desire for a more sedate form of service for themselves and their families. The article suggests that a career as a staff officer with retirement at 20 years is more palatable than the constant and powerful peacetime and wartime demands of commanding a battalion of many hundreds or thousands of soldiers, even if that decision prohibits ever reaching high rank.

I was shocked. As I posted on X:

“What is going on here? In the Army I grew up in, it was the almost uniform goal of the entire officer corps to become a battalion commander one day. It was the brass ring. It was the validation of all of your training and efforts, and it was the most rewarding job in your career. The only reason to hold tedious staff positions was so you could aspire to one day command a battalion. So now in 2024, officers are happy to wile away the years making PowerPoint slides and making sure the coffee is fresh, and they lack the desire to lead troops? Dear God. The rot in the culture is far worse than I imagined.”

(As background, in all of the military services, not just the Army, command at the O-5 level is the ultimate leadership experience. In the Army and Marine Corps, it means commanding a battalion as a lieutenant colonel. In the Air Force, it means commanding a squadron as a lieutenant colonel. In the Navy, it means commanding a combat warship at the similar O-5 rank of commander. It truly is the greatest reward for those who wish to lead and command, and it is usually the last time in a successful military career that you are down in the dirt (or the bilge) with the troops that you lead. It’s a special time, once coveted by the best leaders.)

I retired from active duty in 2007, so I was looking at this issue from my old-timer perspective. But that’s when X, as the “new news media,” did its job—suddenly my X comments and private messages were flooded with active duty and recently retired officers explaining to me that this phenomenon was not due to a desire to not be overworked (as suggested by the Army itself and the Pentagon-friendly author at Military.com) but was instead due to fear of DEI. DEI has made O-5-level command a risky proposition where a male or a white officer lives in fear of an unfounded DEI complaint that would destroy not only his or her military career but the officer’s reputation as well. The risk of such destruction is outweighing the desire to lead. This is a tragic result.

So let’s say you are a straight, white male Army battalion commander who has a subordinate who happens to be a racial or ethnic minority, or a female, or LGBTQ+. Let’s also say that the subordinate is a poor performer to whom you give a poor efficiency report or is someone engaged in illegal activity that you prosecute under Article 15 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Let’s say that such a poor performer or criminal then goes to the Inspector General (IG) and claims what you have done is motivated solely by racial, ethnic, or gender animus, or homophobia. (Or worse, a female soldier falsely claims you sexually assaulted her.) Back in the day, all such a commander needed to do was show the facts surrounding the issue to the IG, and the IG would go away, satisfied. But not today. Today, such claims tend to result in a presumption of guilt against the commander, which must be conclusively disproven.

As if that is not bad enough, there is a related concept here: so-called “counterproductive leadership.” Basically, counterproductive leadership is the idea that a leader’s actions are so toxic that he or she is not qualified to command. Crazily, “counterproductive leadership” (or “toxic leadership”) can be evidenced merely by such abstract concepts as subordinates refusing to look a leader in the eye or leaders holding poor performers to account for their poor performance. I’m fairly certain that iconic military leaders like George S. Patton and William “Bull” Halsey, Jr. would be considered purveyors of “counterproductive leadership” in today’s military environment, and mythical characters like Gunnery Sergeant Thomas Highway would likely be in the stockade.

“Counterproductive leadership” then gets linked to something else: “loss of confidence” by a commander’s chain of command. This is the idea that a commander’s superiors relieved him or her from command for unspecified reasons—including “counterproductive leadership.” In the past ten years, an unprecedented number of senior leaders (O-5 and above) have been relieved from command for this very “loss of confidence” reason. (Do a simple Google search and you’ll see what I mean.)

So let me please break down for you how this is all connected. Despite the fact that many commanders are, in fact, relieved for legitimately horrific reasons, many others are relieved according to the following, specious chain of events:

1. A unit commander disciplines a minority, female, or LGBTQ+ subordinate who legitimately committed some form of wrongdoing or was a poor performer.

2. The subordinate then files a race/ethnicity/gender/religion/sexuality discrimination complaint against the unit commander with the IG, claiming the discipline was unwarranted and was actually motivated by racial/ethnic/gender/religious/LGBTQ+ animus.

3. The unit commander is presumed guilty until proven innocent.

4. The IG then determines the unit commander is innocent.

5. Despite the IG’s determination, the unit commander’s higher chain of command determines that “counterproductive leadership” was the cause of the unfounded and disproven IG complaint—a complaint that presumably would never have occurred had the unit commander displayed “productive leadership.”

6. “Counterproductive leadership” causes the unit commander’s chain of command to determine it has “lost confidence” in the unit commander.

7. The unit commander is then relieved from command duties by his or her higher chain of command due to such loss of confidence.

8. Stars and Stripes and Military.com then publicly report the ex-commander’s relief for cause.

9. The ex-commander then becomes depressed and starts drinking heavily; the ex-commander cannot find a civilian job because his reputation has been publicly destroyed; the ex-commander’s wife and kids leave him; the now-broke ex-commander moves into a seedy one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district, where he is later arrested for fentanyl distribution.

(OK, I made #9 up—but I’m sure you can see how that fear of reputational destruction is valid and real.)

But that sequence of #1 through #8 that I just told you about? It’s real, without any exaggeration. There are senior folks I know personally who have suffered from this exact phenomenon. However, I’m not just speaking on this subject from personal knowledge (and back to X as the real news purveyor of the modern era), as my X feed has been overwhelmed with expressions of just what I wrote above. I have written some controversial X takes before that have garnered millions of views, but none of those resulted in so many detailed recountings of the exact same tale of woe as my discussion on this command issue did.

I’ll offer two examples out of many presented by my X followers.

My first comes from a current DoD member who is uniquely qualified in their duty position to understand the issue of O-5 command selection and the current related problems (and therefore said person requests anonymity):

“I work in a position where I encounter many of the O-5s and E-9s in that group [for prospective command]. An alarming amount of them seem low-key dreading facing the “weaponized investigation” culture that is currently pervasive. Combine that with the paltry manning (but perception from higher that everything must still get done as if they were 100%), and it is absolutely not surprising to me that the command opt-in is down.”

Then this from a recently retired Army colonel:

“100% accurate about jeopardy for commanders. I spent 75% of my last deployment conducting investigations. Did 78 AR 15-6 investigations in 9 months. The biggest problem are the sharp complaints and the “counterproductive leadership complaints.” Those are used for revenge and get out of jail. The “counterproductive leadership” complaints are virtually impossible to counter and even if you do no one escapes unscathed. Finally the religious exemptions for grooming and uniform standards are an EO trap—no matter how ridiculous the claim you have to be crazy to recommend denial because who are you to say it’s not a “sincerely held religious belief?” Deny it and you are prejudiced. Many of the active component majors and lieutenant colonels I worked with said they had zero interest in battalion command or brigade command because they were terrified of the endless investigations. It’s much less of a problem in the National Guard and USAR… until you mobilize. Then it’s the same problem.”

These are merely two of many such communications I have received. Are you sensing a pattern here?

Let me break it down one more time, as it was news to me when I finally figured it out, and it is probably news to anybody else who has not been in the U.S. military fairly recently. Here it is. Our senior civilian and military leadership in the Department of Defense have created a DEI climate across all military services where leadership at the key level of O-5 command is impossible. As a result, the best-qualified O-5s are running from command out of a legitimate fear of life-destroying lies that will stain their reputations like a scarlet letter.

The most disturbing part of all of this, however, is what the DEI cancer does at the tactical unit level to combat readiness. A military unit or warship cannot function as a combat-effective force when its commander lives in the shadow of the fear of unfounded subordinate retribution. It cannot. It is as if there is constant fear of mutiny or a gnawing sense of uneasiness that the unit you command is populated by an unknown number of zampolit. Leadership and discipline fail, unit cohesion crumbles, and the entire system disintegrates as combat effectiveness evaporates. Worst of all, the service members in such a combat-ineffective unit or ship will suffer—and some will die—as a result.

One more thing: if the best and brightest are running in fear from command, who is taking command? Answer: the “woke,” DEI-compliant officers; and because they are the ones taking command, they will necessarily one day become the officers at the top of the pyramid who make all the key military decisions. Or perhaps they are already there.

All of this leads to a very simple and devastating conclusion: if U.S. military commanders cannot command effectively, how can the U.S. military ever again win a war?

Pete Hegseth, please unwind the tyranny and combat ineffectiveness of this DEI cancer at all levels, from the Joint Chiefs of Staff all the way down to the infantry private walking point. Please. Our nation’s future depends upon it.

***

Cynical Publius is the nom de plume of a retired U.S. Army colonel, veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, and reformed denizen of the Pentagon who is now a practicing corporate law attorney. You can follow Cynical Publius on X at @CynicalPublius.

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson stepped to new lows when his hand-picked board fired Chicago Public Schools (CPS) CEO Pedro Martinez without cause.

Austin Berg at the Illinois Policy Institute Explains on X.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s hand-picked school board just voted unanimously to fire Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez without cause. Johnson and the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) have been pushing for months to oust Martinez following his refusal to back Johnson’s demand for a $300M high-interest loan to pay for a new CTU contract. The CTU is Johnson’s largest campaign funder and former employer.

Aldeman Silvana Tabares made a very important point in public comment before the board vote. CTU takes in more than $30M a year. But it spends just 17 cents of every dollar on teacher representation. The rest goes toward administration, politics and other leadership priorities. The contract with CPS is what fuels their political machine. The bigger the contract, the more money CTU can give to Johnson and his allies.

As background to this story, Johnson’s initial cohort of appointed board members resigned unanimously in November when Johnson told them to fire CPS CEO Pedro Martinez. Johnson sought to terminate Martinez because Martinez didn’t support Johnson’s push to take out a high-interest loan to cover CPS’ $300 million shortfall.

Please note the CTU proposal includes annual raises of 10-12 percent after factoring in cost-of-living adjustments. And the union demands 13,000 new positions despite falling school enrollment.

The CPS leaders say this would push the district’s deficit to $4 billion by 2029. That nearly half of the entire budget.

When Johnson demanded his own appointed board go along with this proposal, they all resigned instead. Johnson’s new handpicked board then voted to fire, without cause, Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez.

When fired without cause, CPS leader Martinez can stay on for 6 months. To get around Martinez in the interim, mayor Johnson proposes a deputy CPS leader, a position that does not even exist.

Q&A With Austin Berg

A national political reporter visiting Chicago to cover preparations for the Democratic National Convention asked Austin Berg “What do you think people outside Chicago don’t understand about Brandon Johnson’s administration?”

Berge gave his 3-Part Answer on X.

1️⃣ The Chicago Teachers Union dictates the mayor’s priorities and allocation of political capital. They are by far the most powerful political actor in city government right now, which means the administration fixates on the demands of a small base of far-left activists. This explains things like the cancellation of ShotSpotter despite community support, the mayor casting the tie-breaking vote on a ceasefire resolution, attacking selective enrollment schools, defending the most radical members of city council despite their horrific behavior, hostility toward ethics reform, and banning schools from hiring cops as security officers. Watch the @illinoispolicy
documentary “Local 1: The Rise of America’s Most Powerful Teachers Union” for the best account of this.

2️⃣ Because of No. 1, the administration is staffed by a relatively large number of people with little to no executive experience, including the mayor himself. This explains a wide range of unforced errors: trying to build a migrant tent camp on toxic land, losing the “mansion tax” referendum, announcing an unpopular proposal for a publicly funded Chicago Bears stadium that was immediately dead on arrival in Springfield, ghosting the Sun-Times editorial board after they refused to hold an off the record conversation, and over/underpaying thousands of Chicago government employees due to clerical errors.

3️⃣ You could elect Mother Teresa or Pericles to be mayor of Chicago and they would still have a difficult time fixing the city’s problems. That’s in large part because we’re the only major city among the top 10 in the U.S. lacking a city charter. This means there are no constitutional checks and balances on authority. No thoughtful delegation of power. And little democracy on issues of citywide importance. This explains why the Council and the Mayor can’t agree on who really has authority over the ShotSpotter deal, why the Chicago Police Department is in compliance with just 6% of the federal consent decree and thus lacks community trust, why City Council is not able to provide a meaningful check on the mayor’s budgeting and forecasting, why Chicago alone holds more pension debt than 44 U.S. states, and why the mayor can sign major deals (Lollapalooza, NASCAR) behind closed doors with no oversight. The best account of this is “The New Chicago Way: Lessons from Other Big Cities” which compares Chicago’s governance structure to other major cities and offers a comprehensive solution set. You can buy the book or listen to our podcast mini-series at http://newchicagoway.com. DM me if you can’t afford a copy and I’ll send you one.

The State of the City

Last year the Ethical Humanist Society of Chicago asked Berg to give a talk about the state of the city.

He discussed Chicago history, the city’s problems, solutions, and the main findings in his video “The New Chicago Way.”

CTU History of Anti-Parent Actions

Please note the CTU Has a Long History of Anti-Parent Actions.

The Chicago Teachers Union is the enemy of parents’ rights. It’s efforts to unionize charter schools, push them to the brink of closure and then take them over as typical public schools bears this out.

Step 1: Unionize. In January 2018 – the same year Acero’s unionized employees merged with CTU – former CTU President Jesse Sharkey explicitly admitted his motivation to “undermine further charter expansion,” using tactics such as unionizing and merging charter schools into CTU.

Step 2: Undermine. Later that year, CTU employed its go-to tactic in leading Acero’s teachers out on strike, marking the first charter school strike in the nation and cancelling class for the 7,000 students at the 15 schools.

Step 3: Absorb. After Acero announced schools were closing, current CTU president Stacy Davis Gates claimed she wanted to “save” them by absorbing them into CPS. The school board followed her directive on Dec. 20 and did just that.

Now those charters will no longer exist.

The CPS Budget

The district’s budget is about $10 billion. It’s up nearly 30% increase in five years while serving fewer students.

By 2029 or 2030, the deficit is projected to be $4 billion per year on a $10 billion budget.

The city is broke.

Worst in Class

Johnson is the most corrupt mayor in the nation. And the CTU is the most corrupt union in the nation.

It is a one-two punch with unfortunate kids held hostage for the benefit of leaders who belong in jail.

I can’t help but think Johnson will eventually find jail because history suggests these corrupt politicians eventually get there.

Meanwhile, the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent kids are destroyed in a worst in the nation public school system.

When Do Mayor Brandon Johnson and the City of Chicago Finally Implode?

On November 25, I asked When Do Mayor Brandon Johnson and the City of Chicago Finally Implode?

Chicago slashed 2,103 public safety job but added 184 administrators. The budget deficit is nearly $1 billion.

Openly Rooting for Implosion

I am openly rooting for Chicago and the entire pension system of Illinois to implode.

That sounds harsh bit it isn’t.

There will be no reform until crisis hits, and the sooner the better because those currently collecting unwarranted massive pensions are bleeding the pension funds dry.

The sooner the collapse, the more pension money will be saved for the average Joe.

Meanwhile, please note that In Chicago There’s Under a 50 Percent Chance Police Show Up If You are Shot

Good luck in Chicago getting the police to show up if you are shot, stabbed, a victim of domestic violence, or any number of other serious crimes.

But hey, Chicago hired 179 new community services administrators. How’s that working for you?

Authored by Roger Kimball via American Greatness,

Move over, Trump Derangement Syndrome! It is time to make room for the latest pathology: Musk Derangement Syndrome.

The hysteria has been building for some time.

It wasn’t so long ago that Elon Musk enjoyed enviable street cred among the brotherhood of snotty, self-congratulating elites. A green energy guru, he made the hearts of the Sierra Club Sultans go pit-a-pat with his talk of “sustainable transport” and solar roofs.

Then Musk made several missteps. The first was buying Twitter and restoring open discourse to a platform that was started to encourage, well, open discourse but had become a headquarters of government surveillance and censorship during the first Trump administration. Musk never recovered his progressive credentials after he came out as a supporter of free speech.

But the atmosphere of left-wing disapproval that was swaddling Musk since his purchase of Twitter turned toxic and hysterical this past summer when, following the assassination attempt against Donald Trump, he announced that, gasp, he was supporting Trump’s reelection bid. Could you believe it? Supporting Trump’s reelection—especially actively, ostentatiously, effectively supporting Trump’s reelection bid—was like the sin against the Holy Ghost: unforgivable.

And then Musk compounded the perfidy by joining forces with Vivek Ramaswamy to form DoGE: the “department” of government efficiency, a time-limited initiative to help bring government spending and regulation under control. They have set an expiration date of July 6, 2026, by which date they hope to have been able to give America a 250th birthday gift of fiscal solvency and rational regulation.

Many people have wondered what DoGe would be able to accomplish since it would just be making recommendations with no real power to enforce them.

We have just been vouchsafed a glimpse of its possible potency.

For several years now, the approach of Christmas has brought not just visions of sugar plums and Santa sightings but also the annual Congressional budget snit known as CR, short for “Continuing Resolution.”

The exercise now seems almost venerable. In fact, though, it is an admission of failure, begotten in legislative irresponsibility, bred in malodorous sluices of pork-laden, politically correct greed.

Every year, Congress is supposed to deliver a budget before it breaks for Christmas. America’s last real budget was passed in 1996. The usual expedient is the stopgap measure of a “continuing resolution” in which Congress says it will just continue funding things at more or less the same level as it had been, kicking the can down the road and into the next fiscal year. (For an excellent explanation of the process, I recommend this brief but gimlet-eyed presentation: some college government department should hire this chap.)

Contemplating the embarrassing sideshow that was this year’s CR squabble, a friend reminded me of the old quip. If “con” is the opposite of “pro,” what is the opposite of “Congress?” This year, as has become the usual practice, Congress waited until the last possible moment to plop the text of the Continuing Resolution on the desks of our Conscript Fathers. What had started as a twenty-page document had lizzoed into a 1547-page behemoth. This was no “continuing resolution” but a porker full of self-serving giveaways to Congress as well as numerous woke initiatives designed to stymie the incoming Trump administration.

Among many noxious items were a provision to scuttle any serious inquiry into the activities of Liz Cheney’s January 6 investigation and another provision to continue funding the State Department’s Global Engagement Center. This innocuous-sounding initiative (we’re all in favor of “global engagement,” right?) funds the Britain-based Global Disinformation Index, which encourages advertisers to flee media outlets of which the guardians of the Narrative disapprove. This includes the Washington Examiner, RealClearPolitics, Reason, the New York Post, Blaze Media, the Daily Wire, the Federalist, the American Conservative, Newsmax—and American Greatness. It is, as Vivek Ramaswamy observed, a “key node of the censorship industrial complex.”

This monstrosity was stopped, but how? Critics of Musk blame him. “He tweeted about our beloved monstrosity,” they skirled. “He killed the bill.”

But this is wrong. Musk did indeed post, with Olympic assiduity, about the egregious piece of self-serving lard.

But what scotched the original bill was the public outcry.

Musk may have been the catalyst, the tocsin in the night.

The fire brigade was manned by ordinary citizens.

As one social media poster put it, “All Elon did was read a bill, post on a public platform that the reckless spending in it was unacceptable, ask others to contact their representatives if they agreed, and made clear that he will help primary Ds + Rs who support it.”

This is exactly right.

But to listen to the Dems, you would think the world was coming to an end.

On December 18, Rep. Richard Neal (D-MA), knickers twisted tight, asked angrily, “Can you imagine what the next two years are going to be like if every time that Congress works its will and then there’s a tweet? Or from an individual who has no official portfolio, who threatens members on the Republican side with a primary? And they succumb?” Yes, just imagine, Dick, if it is the people themselves, and not your little club of coddled thumb suckers, who shed light on the activities of Congress as it pretends to go about the people’s business?

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) sounded a similar note. “We had a deal to avert a shutdown,” this pathetic tool skirled. “Musk et al. blew it up because it didn’t help billionaires enough.”

Right.

Then came the sweaty lie.

“They wrote a new bill to cut cancer treatment for kids and grease a new tax cut for the rich.”

There are no “tax cuts for the rich.” And although “cutting cancer treatment for kids” got massive circulation for fifteen minutes, Murphy neglected to mention that the funding for pediatric cancer treatment was passed by the GOP-controlled House last March and was awaiting passage by the Democrat-controlled Senate.

It is an ill wind that blows nobody good, however, and I am grateful to this latest nocturnal emission of Democrat ire for my introduction to Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT). Some unkind people have said that she is an escapee from the set of an Addams Family movie. That is grossly unfair—to the Addams family. I am not sure whether it was DeLauro who first referred to Musk as “President Musk.” She certainly helped circulate the epithet, which is part of a flaccid, already failing effort to drive a wedge between Musk and Donald Trump. De Lauro, understand, is not just another of the 538 members of Congress. She was chair of the House Appropriations Committee for the first two years of the Biden administration and has, since the GOP takeover in 2022, been its ranking member. She is the perfect face for the Democrat Party circa 2024. Savor her here as she casts her imprecations, like one of the weird sisters in Macbeth, against Elon Musk.

In the event, the final bill, called the American Relief Act, 2025, passed in the opening minutes of Saturday, December 21. It was the third version of the CR. At some 120 pages, it is less than a tenth as long as the original Brobdingnagian version. Who applied the Ozempic? Notwithstanding the wailing of the Dems, it wasn’t Elon Musk. It was the duly elected representatives of the people who, caught with their hands in the cookie jar, withdrew almost all the pork and politically noxious provisions of the original. It was a big win for Trump.

What tipped the scale? I suspect that a widely circulated picture of the original bill side by side with its slimmed-down cousin had people aghast and searching for their congressman’s telephone number. Donald Trump had wanted them to raise the debt ceiling now, presumably so he wouldn’t have to do it on his watch, but they denied him that concession. It was about the only one they did deny him.

Everywhere one turned, there were shouts and whispers that we’d just missed a major tragedy. “Government Shutdown Averted!” the headlines rang out. But what difference would a government shutdown have made? As John Stossel noted on X, past shutdowns show that such contingencies are largely theatrical events. “Life went on,” he observed. At the end of the day, “government demonstrated how needless most of it is.”

There are two main lessons to be drawn from this episode.

• One is that timely, forceful, and rapidly repeated exposure of government malfeasance can prompt the public to intervene and end it. Musk is accounted a villain by the left because he repeatedly shone a klieg light on the worst aspects of the adipose abomination that was the original bill. Somehow, no one had been so effective a town crier before.

• The second lesson has to do with the utterly irresponsible, but by now habitual, process that Musk helped to expose. The insidious practice of turning to “continuing resolutions” as a substitute for timely legislation is an invitation to corruption. The Dems have eagerly accepted the invitation, injecting all manner of tendentious (and, it may go without saying, expensive) desiderata into the annual CR fest, convinced that the public won’t notice.

The remedy is twofold:

1. Insist that proposed legislation be published well in advance of its deadline and

2. disaggregate the pieces of any proposed legislation so that each bill covers only a single subject. No more sneaking woke expedients into general spending legislation at the last minute.

Mentions of “spending” bring me to the existential pressure that first prompted Musk and Ramaswamy to embark on their quest for “government efficiency”: out-of-control, potentially paralyzing government spending. Together with the regulatory nightmare that the bureaucratic state has saddled us with, incontinent spending (the federal debt is currently north of $36 trillion) threatens to impoverish the United States and, hence, the world. Milton Friedman was right to advise us to keep our “eye on one thing and one thing only: how much government is spending because that’s the true tax. . . . If you’re not paying for it in the form of explicit taxes, you’re paying for it indirectly in the form of inflation or in the form of borrowing.”

Musk has said that he hopes to trim government spending by $2 trillion per annum. If he and Vivek can manage a quarter of that, they will be national heroes. In fact, they already are.

Authored by Catherine Yang via The Epoch Times,

Seven Chinese nationals were arrested recently for illegally entering Guam around the time of a recent U.S. missile interception test on Dec. 10 and 11, according to Guam authorities.

The Guam Customs and Quarantine Agency said at least four of the seven were found “in the vicinity of a military installation” and that the investigation is ongoing.

The Chinese nationals had arrived on a boat from Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands, according to authorities.

Guam is home to several U.S. military installations, including the Andersen Air Force Base, where the U.S. military conducted a live ballistic missile interception test using a new radar on Dec. 10.

A military aircraft dropped a ballistic missile about 930 miles from Guam, and the interceptor tracked and destroyed it mid-flight at 600 kilometers (373 miles) above sea level before it reached the island.

The first-ever missile interception test on Guam occurred as part of efforts to strengthen defenses in and engage threats aimed at the island or the broader Indo-Pacific region.

“This is a tremendous group effort and provides a glimpse of how organizations within the Department of Defense have come together to defend our homeland Guam now and in the future,” stated U.S. Missile Defense Agency Director Lt. Gen. Heath Collins.

“Collectively, we will use this to build upon and validate joint tracking architecture and integrated air and missile defense capabilities for Guam.”

Guam, a Micronesia island, is strategically important for the United States in the Indo-Pacific as the Chinese communist regime aggravates military tensions in the area with U.S. allies while strengthening its own influence over island nations.

Its strategic location also makes it a potential target for U.S. adversaries, according to the Pentagon. Former congressman Mike Gallagher last year sounded the alarm that Guam is “highly vulnerable” to an attack by the Chinese military because of gaps in missile defense.

U.S. officials and lawmakers have also raised concern about Chinese espionage on U.S. military bases.

Recently, a Chinese national was arrested for flying a drone over a military base in California during a Space Force launch.

In October, five Chinese nationals were charged with covering up their visit to Camp Grayling in Michigan, the largest Army National Guard training facility in the United States, during last summer’s annual Northern Strike training event.

In July, a Chinese student pleaded guilty to espionage misdemeanors for for using a drone to take photos of naval shipyards in Virginia.

Lawmakers have urged law enforcement to shore up detection of this type of “non-traditional” intelligence collection, such as the Chinese regime utilizing civilians including tourists and foreign exchange students.

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

Disney has decided to abandon plans to have a transgender storyline in its upcoming animated series Win or Lose.

The show, which centres around characters on a co-ed middle school softball team, was originally scheduled to feature a transgender character.

However, The Hollywood Reporter notes that while the character will remain in the show, all references to its transgender identity have been removed.

A Disney spokesperson told the outlet “When it comes to animated content for a younger audience, we recognize that many parents would prefer to discuss certain subjects with their children on their own terms and timeline.”

The report notes that the decision was made several months ago, but the company has not provided any further details.

The decision comes following backlash directed at several recent Disney productions that have pushed similar themes and flopped.

The tide must definitely be turning on transgenderism if Disney ditched a whole character’s storyline from their new series. They’re finally getting the message: if you want people to pay to watch your movies and TV shows, quit pandering to the demands of a tiny minority. https://t.co/qbKfk91COi

— Sal Robins 💜🤍💚 (@Sal_Robins) December 18, 2024

if this is a show aimed at kids, This is perfectly fair.

if it was a show aimed at an older audience that includes relationships then it’s a different story.

— Devski (@DevskiTweets) December 17, 2024

why was there a transgender storyline in the first place

— Sepzeno⚡️ (@SepzenoOfficial) December 17, 2024

They finally learning

— Sniper (@sniperdagoat12) December 17, 2024

*  *  *

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Significant progress has been made in the fight against malaria over the last two decades.

According to a new report by the World Health Organization, there were 83 countries in which the disease was still endemic in 2023, down from a total of 108 endemic countries in the year 2000. Between 2022 and 2023, the number of malaria endemic countries decreased from 85 to 83 as a result of Timor-Leste and Saudi Arabia maintaining zero indigenous cases for three consecutive years.

The number of deaths have fallen too since the turn of the century, with the WHO estimating the toll at 597,000 last year compared to 897,000 in 2000.

But, as Statista’s Katharina Buchholz reports, there is still a significant amount of work to be done.

Cases were up again last year, rising from 249 million in 2022 to 263 million in 2023.

You will find more infographics at Statista

Of these, the highest numbers occurred in Nigeria (68,136,000) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (33,141,000).

According to the report, the WHO African Region continues to carry the heaviest burden of mortality, accounting for 95 percent of estimated global malaria deaths.

The WHO South-East Asia Region had eight malaria endemic countries in 2023.

India reported more than two million cases last year, accounting for half of all cases in the region. It was followed by Indonesia, which had nearly 1.1 million cases.

Malaria deaths fell from about 35,000 in 2000 to 6,000 in the South-East Region in 2023 – a drop of 82.9 percent.

In the early morning hours of Sunday (local), two US Navy pilots were shot down over the Red Sea in an apparent friendly fire incident. This comes after more than a year of war against Yemeni Houthi rebels, who have targeted international transit in regional waters.

The incident is highly unusual given that US and Western allied coalition ships have come under repeat drone and missile from from the Houthis, but have thus far suffered no disclosed losses. The Western coalition has reported no damage or casualties from this long-running battle, and yet it appears the first shootdown of an American fighter jet in the conflict has come by way of US aircraft carrier fire.

The two pilots ejected after their F/A-18 fighter was hit and have been safely rescued in Red Sea waters, with one of the pilots suffering injuries.

The Associated Press and ABC News are reporting the following details after official CENTCOM confirmation:

Two U.S. Navy pilots ejected safely over the Red Sea after their F/A-18 fighter aircraft was mistakenly shot down early Sunday in what military officials are calling “an apparent case of friendly fire.”

One of the pilots has minor injuries, according to a news release from U.S. Central Command.

The guided-missile cruiser USS Gettysburg, which is part of the USS Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group, mistakenly fired on and hit the aircraft, that was flying off the USS Harry S. Truman, according to the news release.

CENTCOM says it is investigating the incident. Again, it is clearly bizarre given the aircraft had just taken off from the same carrier strike group of which the USS Gettysburg is part.

“The F/A-18 shot down had just flown off the deck of the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier,” Central Command indicated. 

The US military was conducting an assault against militants in Yemen at the time of the incident. AP details further, “The U.S. military had conducted airstrikes targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebels at the time, though the U.S. military’s Central Command did not elaborate on what their mission was and did not immediately respond to questions from The Associated Press.”

There appears to have been some ‘fog of war’ confusion given that just prior to the friendly fire shootdown the Houthis had launched drones and a cruise missile at the US battle group. The F-18 may have been mistakenly identified by the Gettysburg warship as an inbound Houthi UAV.

“However, Central Command said that warships and aircraft earlier shot down multiple Houthi drones and an anti-ship cruise missile launched by the rebels. Incoming hostile fire from the Houthis has given sailors just seconds to make decisions in the past,” the AP notes.

Needless to say this is highly embarrassing for the Pentagon, and will be celebrated as a major ‘win’ by the Iran-backed Houthis. The Houthis have clearly been able to put the US warships on the defensive, given the confusion of the battle zone and trigger-happy premature response evident in this fresh incident.

Authored by Bradley Smith via RealClearPolitics,

The reelection of President Donald Trump could serve as a historic turning point for free speech in America. President Trump has said he will investigate censorship practices by the federal government, end the rampant disrespect for First Amendment rights on our college campuses, and take on Big Tech’s Orwellian policing of speech on the Internet. If successful, these efforts would make the First Amendment stronger than ever before.

Yet President Trump’s opponents will not simply stand by and watch as he dismantles their carefully crafted censorship machine. Controlling who gets to speak and what can be said is essential to the left’s dominance over our institutions. They will not give up such an important source of their power without a fight.

To ensure the success of Trump’s free speech agenda, the right must anticipate and prepare for the left’s inevitable attacks. Fortunately, their methods are not hard to predict. In fact, Democrats tipped their hand during the campaign.

Back when the party’s out-of-touch leadership thought Kamala Harris would propel them to victory, they set about making plans to silence opposition to their agenda once in office. At the Democratic National Convention, Sen. Chuck Schumer promised sweeping changes to elections, voting, and campaign finance if Democrats won control of Congress and the White House. All of these efforts would slant the political playing field further in the left’s favor.

Among the bills was legislation that would strip Americans of their privacy when supporting nonprofit groups that speak out on hot button issues like abortion, crime, the border, or extreme gender politics. The importance of this provision should not be underestimated.

The left calls it “transparency” when they publicly expose a private citizen’s personal information, including their name and home address, but Americans know it better as doxxing. They also know the purpose is not good government, but power politics. Exposing donors allows the left to build enemies’ lists and harass anyone who backs the “wrong” cause.

Harris, who co-sponsored the DISCLOSE Act in the Senate, has her own long record of attacking conservative donors and journalists. As California Attorney General, her demand that nonprofits expose their confidential donor lists to her office led to lawsuits and a rebuke from the U.S. Supreme Court. The First Amendment protects the right to give privately, as the justices reminded her.

Now that the election is over, Democrats’ designs for regulating speech and exposing conservative donors may form the heart of their resistance strategy to splinter the Trump coalition. We have seen this movie before.

After the fight over Obamacare sparked a massive conservative movement known as the Tea Party, the left painted targets on the backs of the organizations and donors at its heart. IRS bureaucrats began grilling conservative groups about their activities and intentionally slow-walked their applications for nonprofit status. The massive targeting campaign succeeded in suppressing grassroots conservative activism in the run-up to the 2012 elections, where Democrats made gains.

Yet Democrats do not even need to control the White House to target conservative donors. Threats can arise from inside federal agencies like the IRS, or from state legislation or regulatory actions, or even from unscrupulous media aided by leaks and hacking of confidential donor data. President Trump himself saw his tax returns illegally leaked in a politically-motivated scheme.

Organizations that are successful in promoting conservative policies have also seen coordinated campaigns to bully their donors into ending their support. These harassment campaigns are one of the tactics that allowed the left to seize control of corporate America. Today, many companies pay a heavy price for any public association with the right.

America First organizations and citizens are more than familiar with this kind of discrimination. This time, however, they must not merely persist through it but fight back and defeat it. If not, the left’s control over our institutions will soon reemerge, strong as ever, despite our best efforts.

The solution is simple: Ensure every American can freely, safely, and privately support the organizations that represent their values and beliefs. We must end the ability of bureaucrats and political operatives to spy on donors and nonprofits.

If the Trump coalition can do this and protect its own, it can achieve its bold free speech agenda – and more.

Bradley Smith is chairman of the Institute for Free Speech, a former chairman of the FEC, and a professor of law at Capital University.

A shocking video surfaced on X early Friday, appearing to show an assassin holding a smartphone to film the killing of Swedish rapper “Gaboro.” This brutal execution highlights the ongoing plague of gang violence in the Scandinavian nation amid a national migrant crisis.

Swedish rapper Gaboro was chased down by an individual holding a smartphone and filming with what appears to be a 9mm pistol.

According to the Mirror, the assassination occurred in the city of Norrköping and comes just six months after rapper “C.Gambino” was gunned down. 

🇸🇪 Famous Swedish Rapper ”Gaboro” was shot multiple times and killed in a car park!

You can hear him screaming out loud ”I beg you” in Swedish in the end.

Crazy … Sweden was a safe country. pic.twitter.com/W9aV4b581t

— Lord Bebo (@MyLordBebo) December 20, 2024

Here’s more about the shooting incident from the UK newspaper:

The murder of Gaboro, 23, was even allegedly recorded by his gunman with the terrifying footage being shared on social media. The disturbing footage looked to have been filmed by the gunman as he repeatedly attacks the star as he tries to get away. Sadly, Gaboro, whose real name is Ninos Khouri, was unable to evade the incident.

The footage shows a man heading towards a vehicle in a car park before he is attacked. A number of gunshots are then heard before the shooter stands over the stricken man and fires more. It appeared as though the man was pleading for his life before the final fatal shots.

Police were informed of a shooting in a parking lot in the city centre at around 8pm last night and have said no arrests have yet been made in connection to the tragedy. It’s said police arrived at the scene to find the rapper with gunshot wounds. He was rushed to hospital but sadly died shortly after from his injuries.

Research firm Geopolitical Intelligence Services recently pointed out that the Scandinavian country has the “highest rate of gangland killings in Europe” and has “transitioned from being a model of inspiration to becoming a warning example.” 

GIS continued:

“The main cause of the crisis is a combination of an open-door migration policy with no accompanying policy to help the newcomers integrate. The consequence has been the emergence of neighborhoods where almost all residents are immigrants, where unemployment rates are very high and where the children of immigrants go to schools where no other children, often not even teachers, are proficient in Swedish. This has served as an incubator for crime, as gangs take over where society fails.”

None of this should come as a surprise to readers…

• Sweden Turns To Military For Help Amid Daily Shootings, Bombings In Migrant Gangland Chaos

• Sweden Introduces Draconian ‘Security Zone’ In Gang-Crime Hotspot, Indiscriminate Police Powers To Search Anyone

• Criminals Rake It In As Violent Crimes Soar In Sweden

It’s remarkable that Sweden was once considered a model country, but now it has become a crime-infested gangland after nation-killing mass immigration from third-world countries. Well done, liberals!

Authored by Pepe Escobar,

Tehran and Moscow harbor no illusions – and are preparing accordingly. The war on BRICS is just getting started.

Syria as we knew it is being eviscerated in real time – in geographic, cultural, economic and military terms – by an appalling confluence of mercenary Rent-a-Jihadi mobs and psychopathological genocidals praying at the altar of Eretz Israel.

All of that is fully supported by rabid NATOstan hyenas – masters of narrative control – and fully intertwined with the eradication of Palestine.

Across the avowedly dejected Global Majority, there’s a feeling that the momentarily exhausted Axis of Resistance will need to go turbo-Sisyphus to rearrange, resupply and recalibrate the defense of Palestine.

Predictably, there’s not a peep across the NATOstan sphere about Tel Aviv’s feral, indiscriminate bombing and snatching of sovereign Syrian territory. That represents a glaring illustration of the “rules-based international order” in action.

Collective West Think Tankland is in rapture. Chatham House preaches a Syrian rebuilding in this “watershed moment” led by the U.S., EU, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye, capable of “forging a consensus around Syria” that “could serve as the foundation for a new regional order.”

The rabidly anti-BRICS Center for a New American Security (CNAS) demands “expelling Russia’s military presence” from Syria and “to close the country as an avenue for Iran’s power projection.”

The Axis of Resistance is being mourned across the spectrum. Not so fast. The deeper meaning of the “ceasefire” between Israel and Hezbollah is that the psycho-pathologicals, for all practical purposes, were defeated, even if they wreaked horrendous havoc on southern Lebanon and Beirut’s suburbs.

Changing the narrative – and the focus – to the Greater Idlibistan offensive allowed an avowedly massive tactical victory not only for Eretz Israel goons but for the assembled NATOstan/Turkiye combo. Yet the real nitty-gritty starts now, even as the partition of Syria is already in effect.

The Rent-a-Jihadi mob, in theory under the control of the aspiring Caliph of Al-Sham, the Saudi al-Jolani, real name Ahmad Ibrahim al-Sha’a, sooner or later may turn against the Eretz Israel project, considering they entertain cozy relations with Hamas in Gaza.

At least for the moment, everything is swell for the Oded Yinon and/or Bernard Lewis plan to subdue West Asia via time-tested Divide and Rule. This harks back not only to Sykes-Picot in 1917, but even earlier, to 1906, when British PM Henry Campbell-Bannerman asserted that,

“There are people [Arabs] who control spacious territories teeming with manifest and hidden resources. They dominate the intersections of world routes. Their lands were the cradles of human civilizations and religions.”

So if these “people” united, they would then “take the fate of the world into its hands and would separate Europe from the rest of the world.”

Ergo, the necessity of “a foreign body” [later constituted as Israel] to be “planted in the heart of this nation to prevent the convergence of its wings in such a way that it could exhaust its powers in never-ending wars. It could also serve as a springboard for the West to gain its coveted objects.”

Pirates of the Levant

The Eretz Israel hallucination does not exactly mingle with Sultan Erdogan’s neo-Ottoman dream, even though they coincide in the broader urge to redraw the map of the Eastern Mediterranean and West Asia.

As for the Exceptionalists, they can barely believe their luck. In a swoop, they just gobbled up the key strategic node of a now buried idea: Arabism, or anti-imperialism in the Levant.

Ever since Barack Obama, in the early 2010s, declared war on Syria under orders from Tel Aviv, the Empire of Chaos had thrown everything and the kitchen sink at Damascus for at least 13 years: the longest and most expensive regime change campaign in U.S. history, complete with toxic, forced-starvation sanctions – until suddenly the big prize fell on their lap.

The prize involves – in theory – smashing an ally of three top BRICS, Russia, Iran and China, with the added bonus of turning it into a geoeconomic black hole while doctoring the narrative to sell “the end of the dictator” to the Global Majority as the precondition for the rise of a new Dubai.

We still don’t know how rump Syria will look like – and even for how long it will be governed by a bunch of neoliberal Salafi-jihadis with trimmed beards and cheap new off-the-rack suits.

The fact is the Hegemon is already controlling at least a third of Syrian territory for at least a decade – and will continue to steal Syrian oil and wheat with absolute impunity: Pirates of the Levant in full regalia.

Playing the role of sidekick, the UK’s MI6 will continue to excel in providing P.R. ops, across-the-board lobbying and gun-running opportunities for the gullible motley crew of mercenary Salafi-jihadis.

When it comes to Tel Aviv, they are destroying Eretz Israel’s largest remaining Arab military opposition; stealing/annexing land non-stop; and dreaming of total domination, aerial and naval, in case Russia loses its bases in Tartus and Hmeimim (that’s a major “if”). Not to mention they somewhat indirectly control the new Caliph, who has meekly asked them to please, don’t conquer too much Syrian land.

The partition will proceed along three other major vectors.

1. Hegemon-controlled land and military bases – which might be used to attack Iraq. Forget about a fake sovereign Syria recovering their oil fields.

2. Turkiye-annexed land which will inevitably lead to the full absorption of Aleppo (already proclaimed by the Sultan on the record).

3. Damascus run by an ISIS offshoot directly manipulated by Turkish intel.

All of the above might lead, already in the first quarter of 2025, to a sort of Salafi-Jihadi Zionization arrangement with just one objective: to ease sanctions from the U.S. and the EU.

As for al-Jolani, real name Ahmad Ibrahim al-Sha’a, for all his woke rebranding, he was Al-Zarkawi’s lieutenant and Emir of Nineveh during the al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI, later reconverted as ISIS) rampage in Mesopotamia. There’s no way Baghdad will have political relations with a Salafi-jihadi who’s on Iraq’s most wanted list.

An additional headache is the EU’s conditions for normalizing Syria, as spelled out by the unelected batshit crazy Estonian responsible for its foreign policy (and representing nearly 500 million European citizens): Brussels will only lift sanctions if there are no Russian bases and “Russian influence” left in the Caliphate of al-Sham.

Meanwhile, the Empire of Chaos will continue its plunder – in conjunction with Israel. The Syrian oil stolen by the Americans is sold by the Kurds to Israel in Erbil with a huge discount. After all, this oil is “free” – as in stolen. At least 40% of Israel’s oil comes from the Erbil racket.

And it gets worse.

Israel has annexed the Al-Wahda dam in the basin of the Yarmouk river, close to the city of Al-Qusayr in the Dara’a governorate, and near the Jordanian border. This dam provides at least 30% of Syria’s water and 40% of Jordan’s water.

Everything is so predictable: what the NATOstan/Israel combo really wants is an amputated, disaggregated, vulnerable Syria.

Empire of Chaos goes Full Anarchy

Yet the whole toxic equation is far from over. Aspiring Caliph Jolani may be tempted to allow Russia to keep its bases – and to transport their weapons systems out of the country intact. He is in close contact with Moscow, and HTS is de facto protecting Russian assets.

In parallel, Hezbollah signaled it is willing to “cooperate” with HTS, which by the way is also protecting the Iranian embassy in Damascus. ​​

There is no evidence whatsoever that the Greater Idlibistan invasion was a Trojan Horse agreed on the negotiating table by the – dead – “Astana process” even before the fateful Doha meeting on Saturday, January 7.

What is certain is that the analysis in Moscow and Beijing privileges the Long Big Picture. The Chinese for now are extremely circumspect on the record about the whole Syrian drama, apart from declaring themselves “ready to play a constructive role”. Beijing and Moscow see Syria as a temporary setback on BRICS inflicted by an Empire on Desperation Row, along with its equally desperate Eretz Israel ally and a Sultan biting more than he can chew.

The lame duck Biden combo is absolutely clueless on the emergence of a – possible – Israeli-Turkish hegemonic vector in a key node of West Asia. The only thing that matters for Straussian neo-cons and their Tel Aviv psycho-apocalyptic buddies, when it comes to the disintegration of Syria, is the window of opportunity ahead for Israel to attack Iran.

The Times of Israel is in rapture: while previously the “IAF would not fly directly over Damascus when carrying out strikes on Iran-linked targets in the capital, it now can.”

The key to unlock the whole riddle may lie, once again, with Jolani. Everything in West Asia is always in perpetual flux. Only a few days after the fall of Damascus, Sultan Erdogan as well as NATO have refused to help Jolani against the Israeli onslaught in Syria.

Talk about the aspiring Caliphate’s “sovereignty”.

So where Jolani could turn to in a quest for possible allies? And who can he rely on to impose some order in totally disaggregated Syria – including air power to fight ISIS pockets across the desert?

Enter Tehran and Moscow. Ergo, the back channels on overdrive. They would not bat an eye when it comes to “cooperating” with the infant Caliphate – as long as their national interests are not threatened.

The Empire of Chaos will remain unmatched in terms of narrative control, P.R. stunts, monopolizing social media spheres and non-stop psy war. All hybrid fronts. But that’s about it.

The Empire was miserably defeated in both Afghanistan and Iraq. And continues to be humiliated by the Houthis in the Red Sea. Washington has less than zero advantage over Russia on the military sphere – except on electronic warfare (EW), at least on the West Asian theatre, and ISR (Russia is catching up), which instantly translates into inflicting more and more terror.

As for Iran, it’s far from weaker now than before the fall of Damascus. That’s imperial narrative spin, inbuilt in the self-pleasing Exceptionalist mechanism. Ayatollah Khamenei, a fine strategist, does not waste his words. Tehran will eventually develop an alternative supply chain to Hezbollah and the West Bank.

Besides, follow the money. The Iranian Foreign Ministry has already noted that “the new Syrian government will take on all of Syria’s financial obligations to Iran.” That’s a lot of money – that Jolani does not have.

Michael Hudson is adamant: “Anarchy is what the U.S. plan is.” This being West Asia, where backstabbing is an art, there will be blowback. Tehran and Moscow harbor no illusions – and are preparing accordingly. The war on BRICS is just getting started.