Category: The American Spectator
GAVIN M. WAX: Trump Quietly Set Up Future Of American Manufacturing With Stroke Of A Pen
Trump signed a way to beat Europe’s climate bureaucracy
Iran Escalates Tensions With US, Sending Gunboats To Harass US Tanker and Drone To Confront US Aircraft Carrier
Iran escalated tensions with the United States on Tuesday, harassing a U.S.-flagged oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz hours after sending a drone toward a U.S. aircraft carrier—an aggressive move that ended with an American fighter jet shooting the drone down.
The post Iran Escalates Tensions With US, Sending Gunboats To Harass US Tanker and Drone To Confront US Aircraft Carrier appeared first on .
Confessions of a Hospital Hypochondriac
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The Weekend Spectator Ep. 55: TPUSA Announces Alternate Pro-America Super Bowl Half Time Show
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‘ICE OUT’: Celebrities Hit ICE at the Grammys
The Grammys traded music for anti-ICE messaging Sunday night, as top stars rallied behind a new left-wing slogan: “ICE Out.”…
Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal Stands Up for Fascism
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My court fight over DEI at Arizona State isn’t culture-war noise
“Who will rid us of this meddlesome philosopher?”
Arizona State University hopes the Arizona Supreme Court will. I’m confident that my case against required diversity, equity, and inclusion training raises issues far larger than one professor or one ideological program. Fundamental questions about employee rights, public accountability, and the rule of law hang in the balance.
If I succeed in showing that ASU bears legal responsibility — and that employees can hold it accountable — the implications reach far beyond one HR program.
Why would the largest state university in the country defend mandatory DEI training in court? Why would it spend thousands — likely tens of thousands — defending its “inclusive communities” training, a program that teaches employees about the alleged moral and social failures of “whiteness” and “heteronormativity”?
The answer defies common sense. Yet ASU presses forward. In doing so, it has turned what many dismiss as a culture-war skirmish into an employment-rights case with statewide consequences.
Most people hear “DEI” and instantly map the political lines. This case deserves a different reaction. Required ideological training should make any employee — left, right, or indifferent — pay attention.
First, the training relies on racial essentialism. It instructs ASU employees to view themselves and others primarily through skin color, then assigns moral weight and collective guilt on that basis.
Second, it attacks traditional Christian moral teaching, especially marriage as the union of a man and a woman.
Either flaw should have pushed administrators to retire the program long before I raised formal objections.
A third issue should unite every employee, regardless of where they stand on DEI: ASU treated this as an employment matter. The university did not admit error, revise the program, and move on. It hired Perkins Coie to defend racial essentialism. Yes, Perkins Coie — the firm widely associated with the Hillary Clinton-era Steele dossier controversy. ASU employs a full team of in-house attorneys. Why pay a nationally prominent and politically charged firm to defend a training program many already viewed as controversial — and, I argue, unlawful?
ASU’s posture gets stranger. The university has since taken down the required training, yet it continues paying lawyers to defend it in court. When this ends, Arizona lawmakers and taxpayers will want a number: How much did ASU spend on legal fees, and which administrators approved the contracts?
RELATED: Feds probe ASU for racial bias — will other universities be held accountable?
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ASU’s legal strategy aims at dismissal. The university claims I lack standing. Put plainly, ASU argues that an employee cannot hold his public employer accountable for violating state law. At that point, the dispute stops being about DEI and becomes about every employee in Arizona. If ASU wins at the Arizona Supreme Court, employees across the state lose a crucial tool for legal accountability.
Professors to my political left may sneer at my critique of DEI. They should still worry about the precedent.
Imagine a scenario pulled from their nightmares: A future administration takes over ASU and imposes mandatory ideological training from the opposite end of the political spectrum — required ICE-themed training, or MAGA-themed training. If that training violated Arizona law, those same professors would demand the right to sue. ASU’s argument would bar them. This case concerns enforceable employee rights, not just contemporary politics.
ASU’s first bid to dismiss the case failed. A lower court rejected the university’s argument. ASU appealed, and the appellate court sided with the university. That posture put the case on a path to the Arizona Supreme Court.
RELATED: A gay whistleblower just punked Colorado’s DEI machine
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Two facts matter here. The Arizona Senate and the state representative who authored the law I claim ASU violated have filed an amicus brief supporting my position. Their message is simple: A public employee has standing to hold a public employer accountable for breaking the law. The statute prohibits the kind of racial blame and collective guilt that ASU’s training promoted. The principle should not require explanation: Don’t assign moral fault to entire groups based on skin color.
So why does ASU defend this?
Because ASU does not view this fight as one training module that can be swapped out and forgotten. Race-based blame sits near the center of the contemporary left’s approach to education. If I succeed in showing that ASU bears legal responsibility — and that employees can hold it accountable — the implications reach far beyond one HR program. ASU’s initiatives aimed at combatting “whiteness” would come under scrutiny. Its embedded social justice goals face legal challenge and public examination. Students could follow with suits over race blame in a “decolonized curriculum.”
“Who will rid us of this meddlesome philosopher?” ASU really hopes the Arizona Supreme Court will.
Every employee in Arizona should watch what happens next. The outcome will determine whether public institutions answer to the law — or whether employees must comply silently, no matter what ideology administrators impose from above.
Civil war chatter rises when Democrats fear losing power for good
Barack Obama used the same U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement tactics as Donald Trump. During his eight years in the White House, his administration deported more illegal aliens than Trump has.
Yet the Obama years did not feature mass protests over deportations. No governors or mayors compared ICE to the Gestapo, a comparison so obscene it should end careers. No district attorneys vowed to “hunt down” ICE agents for doing their jobs. No late-night comedians insisted that ICE agents ranked “worse than Nazis.”
Democrats once drove the country into a civil war to protect slavery. Today they court conflict to protect power.
That backlash became routine only after Trump. Two factors explain why.
First, the left hates Trump to the core. Not as a political rival, but as a personal and moral affront. This visceral, uncontrolled hatred has swallowed identities and replaced judgment. It fuels social media tantrums, office politics, family feuds, and the constant need to punish dissent. Among allies, people congratulate each other for hating the right man. For everyone else, they virtue-signal.
This hatred will not fade with time. It will persist after Trump leaves office, and it may even outlive him. Ronald Reagan hate still lingers decades after his death. Trump hate runs hotter, deeper, and more irrational. It will not burn out on schedule.
Second, the immigration fight has turned strategic.
During the Obama years, the left had not yet internalized two tactics that now help it hold power.
Once Democrats win office, many push policy as far left as state and federal constitutions allow: higher taxes, soft-on-crime governance, heavier regulation, and soaring costs that punish families. That agenda drives productive citizens out of blue cities and blue states and into red states. Conservatives hold few truly red cities now; the activist class has captured many local institutions.
Red states gain taxpayers and workers. Blue states lose them.
Democrat leaders have chosen to replace the citizens who leave, but not with similarly productive citizens. They replace them with illegal aliens.
That strategy helps explain Joe Biden’s first-day border reversals and the torrent of executive actions that followed. The signal was plain: Enforcement would relax, entry would rise, and the federal government would look away. Millions came, many without legal status. Many settled in blue jurisdictions that offer sanctuary policies and advertise benefits.
Politicians sell those benefits as “free”: child care, health care, schooling, housing programs. Taxpayers pay the bills. Debt fills the rest.
California offers the clearest example. The state has lost large numbers of residents to Texas and Florida. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) does not treat the exodus as a crisis. He treats it as ideological sorting. If taxpayers leave, he can replace the head count with people who will not challenge his machine at the ballot box.
Illegal aliens are not allowed to vote. They still count. Biden made sure of that.
The census counts residents, and those numbers drive seats in the United States House of Representatives and votes in the Electoral College. Add population, gain power. Lose population, lose power. Democrats understand the arithmetic, which is why they fight enforcement as fiercely as they fight elections.
RELATED: ‘This isn’t organic’: Joe Rogan says Minnesota’s anti-ICE protests are ‘coordinated’ to induce chaos
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Then comes the long game. Children born here can vote. Democrats assume those children will vote Democrat for life. They are building a future electorate while padding current representation.
Trump’s deportation strategy threatens that structure. Democrats have already watched citizens flee Illinois, New York, California, and other strongholds. If deportations also shrink the illegal-alien population those states have absorbed, Democrats lose House seats, Electoral College strength, and national leverage.
So they raise the temperature. They smear ICE as “secret police” and dare Trump to enforce the law anyway. They bait confrontation because chaos can create a veto: If streets burn long enough, Washington may flinch.
If Trump refuses to flinch, they reach for the next weapon: the camera. A clash becomes a “crackdown.” An arrest becomes “political persecution.” A dead protester becomes a martyr, and the headlines write themselves. The moral damage does not scare them; it serves them.
Democrats once drove the country into a civil war to protect slavery. Today they court conflict to protect power. They do not need tanks to do it. They need prosecutors, mayors, and media partners willing to treat law enforcement as evil and disorder as virtue.
