Authored by William Jeynes via RealClearEducation,

Recently, I was on a 3-person panel discussion and debate at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. We were asked to address the question of whether religious charter schools are constitutional. We also shared how we thought the U.S. Supreme Court would rule. This issue has risen to the forefront of educational debate largely because of the U.S. Supreme Court Carson v. Makin (2022) case and an effort in Oklahoma to found a religious charter school, St. Isadore of Seville Catholic Virtual School

In 2023-2024. However, one should note that these developments did not launch the momentum to rule in favor of religious charter schools, but they built on earlier debates and statements from prior cases including Justice Stephen Breyer’s question in the Espinosa vs. Montana Department of Revenue (2020) case, asking about religious charter schools. Bill Clinton’s speech in 1995 in Vienna, Virginia stating that past U.S. Supreme Court decisions regarding faith were misinterpreted has also played an important role in the debate on religious charter schools.

The Carson v. Makin (2022) case, based in Maine, played a major role in increasing the momentum for religious charter schools. In that case, the state of Maine had provided vouchers for a good number of parents who desired to send their children to non-religious private schools. In contrast, however, Maine’s government did not provide these vouchers for parents who wished to send their children to religious private schools. In a decision penned by Chief Justice Roberts, the U.S. Supreme Court voted 6-3 that the Maine voucher program was unconstitutional because it discriminated against faith-based schools.

As important as the Carson v. Makin (2022) case is, there remain three issues that the U.S. Supreme Court needs to address in any decision on the constitutionality of religious charter schools. First, are religious charter schools constitutional? Second, to what degree may state governments impose restrictions on religious private schools that may inhibit their religious freedoms or beliefs? For example, Adam Frey, the Attorney General of Maine, clarified the state of Maine’s policy following the Carson v. Makin (2022) decision. Frey declared that in order for any private school to participate in the voucher program, it had to agree to follow Maine’s Human Rights Act. The question that the U.S. Supreme Court needs to answer is to what extent states may initiate such actions. How far is it legally permissible for them to go? Where does one draw the line?

The third issue that the U.S. Supreme Court must address is that it needs to determine whether those who run charter schools are state or private actors. This is because the vast majority of people who run charter schools are private groups. However, these charters are defined by law as public schools and are supported by tax-payer dollars. If the Court rules that those who operate the charter schools are state actors, then because they must be non-sectarian, religious charter schools will be ruled unconstitutional. However, if the Court rules that charter schools are private actors, then religious charter schools will be ruled constitutional.

The problem is that determining whether those who run charter schools are state or private actors will not be easy. This is because the courts have often disagreed with each other in their conclusions. For example, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in 2010 (in Caviness v. Horizon Community Learning Center), determined that charter schools were private actors when it came to firing educators. That is, no state hearings were necessary. The case is likely particularly salient, because it cited a U.S. Supreme Court case, Rendell-Baker v. Kohn (1982). This case involved a private school that was very similar to a charter school. It was created to help kids really struggling in school and received about 90% of its funding from the government. The U.S. Supreme Court also found the school to be a private actor in the case of an employee being fired. The Court might view the Rendell-Baker v. Kohn (1982) case as the pivotal one in terms of helping establish precedent for its eventual decisions on religious charter schools, in part because it is a U.S. Supreme Court case. However, in a 2022 Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals case (Peltier v. Charter Day School), regarding school dress codes, the ruling was that those who ran charter schools were state actors.

Whether the Court will utilize the St. Isadore of Seville Catholic Virtual School case to address these issues or wait for a future case remains to be seen. Nevertheless, given that Carson v. Makin (2022) and Justice Breyer’s 2020 statement have brought this issue to the forefront, one can foresee a scenario in which one may not have to wait long.

During the panel discussion, I opined that the U.S. Supreme Court will likely eventually rule that religious charter schools are constitutional. I did not give a precise timeline regarding when such a ruling might take place. Nevertheless, the other two academics on the panel agreed with my prediction, one of whom was a well-seasoned Harvard law professor.

Almost as salient as the issue of whether religious charter schools are constitutional is the context the U.S. Supreme Court establishes in their decision. The U.S. Supreme Court will either provide a narrow context for its decision or a broader one. An example of a narrow context would be declaring that religious charter schools are constitutional, but the Court will leave it up to the states to determine the degree of implementation. An example of a broader context would be if the U.S. Supreme Court decides that if a state has charter schools, it must at least offer the possibility of having religious charter schools.

Whatever the Court decides, it will have a substantial long-term impact on schools and society. If the court decides that religious charter schools are constitutional, one result is that will like give families more options in terms of choosing schools for their children. According to David Tyack in his book, The One Best System, the American system of schooling is far too monolithic and the historical trend toward increased centralization is not consistent with the nation’s diversity. In the next several years the nation will discover whether the U.S. Supreme Court agrees.

Via The Cradle

The Masnaa border crossing between Lebanon and Syria was severely damaged by an Israeli airstrike early on Friday, forcing the road to close and leaving those fleeing to cross on foot. 

Videos circulating on social media show the aftermath of the strike and the destruction it caused. Displaced Lebanese and Syrians can be seen trekking by foot across the border. 

Masnaa is the primary border crossing between Lebanon and Syria.

The Israeli army claimed in a statement that it struck a 3.5-kilometer underground tunnel crossing from Lebanon into Syria. It says it is working to stifle the flow of weapons from Iran via Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon. 

Israel’s air force bombed “an underground tunnel that crosses the territory of Lebanon into the territory of Syria, about 3.5 kilometers long, and which is used by Hezbollah to transfer weapons and store them in an underground route,” the Israeli army said in a statement on 4 October. 

The statement also announced the assassination of Mohammad Jaafar Qasir, who it said was the head of Hezbollah’s Unit 4400 that allegedly operated the targeted tunnel.

It added that it “will continue to attack and destroy any infrastructure for smuggling weapons.”

Since late last month, Israel has been waging a massive and deadly aerial campaign across Lebanon, including its capital, Beirut. At least one million have been displaced and around 2,000 killed since September 20, with the death toll on a continuously rapid rise.

Dozens of loud explosions rocked Beirut’s southern suburb just past midnight on Thursday as Israel unleashed another round of massive and destructive airstrikes. Several neighborhoods were reported destroyed as a result of the attacks.

Israeli 🇮🇱 airstrike has cut a main highway linking Lebanon 🇱🇧 with Syria 🇸🇾, first time this major border crossing has been cut off since the beginning of the war, footage by @JamilBassil

Friday’s airstrike led to the closure of a road near the Masnaa Border Crossing, from… pic.twitter.com/iT45ZynCS9

— Saad Abedine (@SaadAbedine) October 4, 2024

Hebrew and western media cited Israeli sources as saying that Hashem Safieddine was the target of the main attack on the suburb. 

Safieddine is the cousin and likely successor to Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, who was assassinated on September 27 when Israel dropped over 80 bunker buster bombs and leveled around 10 buildings in Beirut’s southern suburb. 

Tired of seeing unruly teens running amok and causing chaos inside of your local shopping mall? So are the residents, vendors and security at Moreno Valley Mall in California.

It is one of many malls on a list that includes New Jersey’s oldest mall, Westfield Garden State Plaza, that is implementing new rules to try and cut back on unruly and sometimes illegal behavior from teenagers. 

At Westfield Garden State Plaza, anyone under 18 must be accompanied by an adult after 5 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, according to KIRO Newsradio. The mall has also set up “waiting zones” for teens needing a ride after curfew, the report says.

The KIRO Newsradio report also notes that a Pittsburgh mall has implemented similar policies, where both teens and their adult chaperones face bans if a violation occurs. In Atlanta, some retailers have seen a drop in sales after enforcing such rules.

The rules are obvious consequences stemming from a spree of looting that started taking place during the ‘summer of love’ in 2020, and never really stopped. Since then, police all over the country have dealt with higher rates of theft in inner cities while liberal DAs refuse to meaningfully prosecute those breaking the law.

As a result, we have stores like CVS and Target locking up goods like toothpaste, preventing shoppers from accessing even the most basic items, and shopping malls being forced to “lock down”.

Despite the ugly reality of the situation, KIRO’s Angela Poe Russell laments the changes taking place at malls, writing: “This is happening all over the country and, to be honest, I’m grieving. I’m grieving because our teens need a safe place to go just to hang out and have fun. Remember the COVID-19 pandemic? They were locked in on screens all day. We were wishing for the days they could just go hang out at a mall in person with people.”

“When I think about some of my favorite childhood memories, they happened at the mall. It was where I had my first job. It was where I met my first real boyfriend. It was where I met the singers of my favorite band.”

The key word that you use there, Angela, is “safe” – which malls simply no longer are. In the 1980s you could go to the mall without fear of looting or assault. Sadly, those days are long gone…

Authored by Ron Paul via the Ron Paul Institute,

Many investors, businesses, and consumers cheered the Federal Reserve’s first interest rate cut since March of 2020. The Fed’s 50 basis points interest rate reduction was larger than many Fed watchers anticipated and was followed by suggestions that there are more rate cuts on the way.

A drop in borrowing costs following the Fed’s rate reduction can help make people more optimistic about the general economy and their own financial situation. The uptick in consumer sentiment could help Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris who has lagged behind Republican nominee former President Donald Trump on the matter of which candidate is seen as better on economic issues.

Even before the Fed’s rate cut, President Trump and pro-Trump commentators were suggesting that a rate cut would be a “September surprise” designed to boost Vice President Harris. This claim was dismissed by the “mainstream” media as a baseless “conspiracy theory.” However, anyone familiar with the Federal Reserve’s history of tailoring monetary policy to advance political goals would not have any trouble believing that the Fed would cut interest rates to help its preferred candidate.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has an incentive to prevent a Trump return to the Oval Office. While in the White House, President Trump regularly criticized Powell for not further lowering already historically low interest rates.

President Trump has also indicated that, if he wins, he will push Congress to give the president a direct role in monetary policy. Vice President Harris, in contrast, has promised to not interfere with the Fed’s conduct of monetary policy. It is easy to see why Powell and his Fed colleagues might want to help Harris.

Anyone who has been to a grocery store knows the Fed has not “defeated” price inflation. However, even official government data shows “softness” in the labor market. This Fed rate cut likely had more to do with concerns about increasing unemployment than the Fed’s claim that inflation will soon reach the Fed’s two percent target.

The Fed is between a rock and a hard place. If it does not lower rates, there is concern that unemployment will increase as the economy falls into a recession. On the other hand, keeping rates low runs the risk of hyperinflation and a collapse of the dollar’s value. The most likely scenario is a return of “stagflation” where rampant price inflation coexists with high unemployment.

Interest payments on the national debt will exceed one trillion dollars this year, putting more pressure on the Federal Reserve to monetize the debt, thus creating more inflation.

The Fed’s interest rate reduction may have increased Kamala Harris’s chances to win the presidency. However, the rate cut also increases the odds that the next president will face a major economic crisis. The crisis will either be caused by or result in a rejection of the dollar’s world reserve currency status.

The best thing politicians can do in the crisis is to avoid the temptation to “stimulate” the economy. Instead, they should let the recession run its course and begin dismantling the welfare-warfare state and the fiat money system.

Authored by Alex Newman via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The United Nations and its member governments, with strong support from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), adopted a landmark agreement last week to bestow the U.N. with more power and influence in global affairs.

The controversial agreement, known as the Pact for the Future, outlines 56 actions for governments and international institutions to take over the coming years.

Among the key provisions is “transforming global governance” and further empowering international institutions across a range of issues, including “sustainable development and financing for development,” as well as “science, technology and innovation, and digital cooperation.”

The pact includes a Global Digital Compact to restrict “misinformation” and “disinformation” and a Declaration on Future Generations that encompasses the 2030 Agenda climate goals that include the phase-out of fossil fuels.

It is also part of transforming the U.N. into what the organization is touting in promotional materials as “U.N. 2.0.”

U.N. leaders and top officials from the CCP celebrated the pact as a historic effort to create a better future for humanity and increase global cooperation on international problems.

“We can’t create a future fit for our grandchildren with systems built for our grandparents,” U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said.

Despite opposition from various quarters, the 193-member body adopted the pact by consensus on Sept. 22 at the Summit of the Future during the U.N. General Assembly after about nine months of negotiations.

In the days before the pact was adopted, a coalition of U.S. lawmakers and grassroots leaders held a press conference on Capitol Hill criticizing the agreement as an effort to undermine national sovereignty and freedom.

“We can’t give up any more of our sovereignty, any more of our geopolitical integrity, or any more of our economic integrity to foreign actors who have no concerns for the United States of America other than to take our power and money away,” said Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), former leader of the House Freedom Caucus.

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Mike McCaul (R-Texas) told The Epoch Times that the pact ignores the “malign influence of the CCP” within the global organization.

McCaul said that although the pact isn’t legally binding, “this 66-page pact is limitless in scope.”

“It calls for dramatically increased public spending and vague action on countless left-wing priorities,” he said.

“The pact also completely ignores the most urgent issues facing the U.N. today, like reforming UNRWA and combating malign CCP influence. It does nothing to advance U.S. interests.”

The CCP, which plays an increasingly powerful role within the U.N., boasted about its significant role in developing the pact.

Speaking at U.N. headquarters, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi described the pact as an effort to “galvanize” the U.N.’s “collective efforts for world peace and development and to map out the future of humanity.”

Wang talked about advancing “global governance.”

On the other side, the Argentine government officially distanced itself from the pact and the U.N. in general.

“Argentina wants the freedom to develop itself, without being subjected to the undue weight of decisions that are alien to our goals,” said Argentine Foreign Minister Diana Mondino, noting that Argentinian authorities are pursuing a policy of freedom.

President Javier Milei, in his address to the U.N. General Assembly, called the organization a “multi-tentacled Leviathan that seeks to decide what each nation state should do and how the citizens of the world should live.”

Milei also criticized the global organization’s central role in prescribing what he called “crimes against humanity” in responding to the China-originated coronavirus.

He called the U.N. 2030 Agenda, which features prominently in the pact, a “supranational program of a socialist nature.”

The new pact makes repeated commitments to expedite the implementation of the U.N. 2030 Agenda, also known as the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

“We will urgently accelerate progress towards achieving the Goals, including through concrete political steps and mobilizing significant additional financing from all sources for sustainable development,” the pact reads.

The Sustainable Development Goals, which U.N. leaders described as the “master plan for humanity” when they were adopted in 2015, encompass everything from education and agriculture to health care and the environment.

After they were adopted, CCP-owned propaganda outlets around the world boasted that Beijing played a “crucial role” in creating the 2030 Agenda.

The U.S.–China Economic and Security Review Commission has been sounding the alarm for years.

“Since the U.S.–China Commission began tracking officials from the People’s Republic of China serving in leadership positions in international organizations, Beijing’s influence has only grown over key U.N. agencies responsible for funding and policymaking on a wide range of important issues,” the Commission told The Epoch Times.

“Contrary to the International Civil Servant Standards of Conduct, they [Chinese officials] use those positions [in the U.N.] to pursue China’s foreign policy goals,” the Commission said.

When asked about the concerns of U.S. policymakers and other critics, Guterres’s spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric, defended the pact.

“The Pact for the Future is not about world government,” he said at a press conference. “It is about making an organization of independent, sovereign member states work better.

“It’s not as if anyone is granting the secretary-general authority over governments—clearly not.”

Still, according to Dujarric, it is important to increase global cooperation because “not one country can deal with the rising seas, not one country can deal with global pandemics, not one country can deal with international terrorism.”

“This is about bringing sovereign, independent countries, and working together,” he said, urging people to read original documents to become well informed and “make up their own minds.”

The strengthening of the U.N. and, in particular, efforts to have the U.N. secretary-general lead the response to emergencies, received special attention from opponents.

As The Epoch Times reported in April 2023, empowering the U.N. as the central force in dealing with international emergencies and “complex global shocks” was a key goal heading into the Summit of the Future.

In his original policy brief on the issue, Guterres argued that all nations, businesses, governments, and other stakeholders must recognize the “primary role” of intergovernmental organs such as the U.N. and its agencies in “decision-making,” the document states.

Former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations Kevin Moley, who oversaw U.S. relations with the U.N. during the previous administration, warned of the dangers.

“Allowing the U.N. to deal with this is the equivalent of putting the CCP in charge of global emergencies,” Moley told The Epoch Times.

He warned that the CCP takeover of international organizations represents a potentially mortal threat to the West.

Francis Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law, told The Epoch Times that Americans must resist what he described as a “power grab” of historic proportions.

“The U.N. secretary-general has arrogated to himself dictatorial powers … upon his mere proclamation of an ‘emergency,’ as defined by himself,” he said.

Boyle, who wrote the implementing U.S. legislation for the Biological Weapons Convention and serves on the board of Amnesty International, said that because of the involvement of heads of state and government in the process, the new U.N. pact could constitute a “treaty” with “legal obligations” under both domestic and international law.

“This totalitarian arrangement constitutes a grave and immediate threat to the sovereignty and independence of all United Nations member states,” he said.

Free Speech, Free Press

One of the major components of the U.N. deal, adopted as an annex to the pact, focuses on U.N. governance of artificial intelligence (AI). Wang said that the CCP “supports the U.N. in serving as the main channel in AI governance.”

Another major concern for critics is the targeting of free speech in the Global Digital Compact, approved as an annex to the Pact for the Future.

Stating that it is protecting “information integrity,” the U.N. deal calls for drastically scaling up efforts to combat “hate speech,” “discrimination,” “misinformation,” “disinformation,” and more.

Global censorship about the COVID-19 pandemic, with YouTube removing content that went against the World Health Organization’s pronouncements, has been cited by opponents of the plan as an example of the threat.

The U.N. has also become more aggressive on this front. In 2022, at a World Economic Forum sustainability event, U.N. Undersecretary-General for Communications Melissa Fleming announced a partnership with Google.

“We started this partnership when we were shocked to see that when we Googled ‘climate change,’ we were getting incredibly distorted information right at the top,“ she said. ”We’re becoming much more proactive. We own the science, and we think that the world should know it, and the platforms themselves also do.”

Fleming has also highlighted working with CCP-linked TikTok and recruiting “influencers” to promote U.N. messaging.

Asked about the U.N. partnership with Google, Fleming declined to comment.

The compact calls for “Internet governance” to be “global and multi-stakeholder in nature.”

“We will strengthen international cooperation to address the challenge of misinformation and disinformation and hate speech online and mitigate the risks of information manipulation in a manner consistent with international law,” the Global Digital Compact reads.

The repeated emphasis on the alleged “risks” of misinformation is one of the most concerning elements of the agreement, said Reggie Littlejohn, president of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers and co-chair of the Sovereignty Coalition.

“We need only look back to the pandemic to see that these terms will be defined as anything that is counter-narrative to the U.N., the WHO, and their collaborators,” she told The Epoch Times, referring to the World Health Organization.

“Controlling the narrative by suppressing dissenting voices is an unconstitutional violation of freedom of speech. It is, moreover, a hallmark of totalitarianism, which begins with and relies upon censorship.

“Further, censorship deprives both individuals and nations of their sovereignty.”

Littlejohn has been working with U.S. lawmakers to protect U.S. independence from international organizations.

“Sovereign persons and nations make decisions concerning how they will govern themselves,” she said. “They are deprived of this decision-making process if they are denied access to the true facts upon which their decisions will be made.”

Littlejohn also said the pact should be understood as a treaty under the traditional definition. As such, treaties are required to be ratified by the U.S. Senate—something she said would be unlikely to happen.