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Watch live: House panel holds hearing on curriculum in US classrooms

The House Civil Rights and Civil Liberties subcommittee will hold a hearing Thursday morning to discuss the educational curriculum being taught in U.S. classrooms.

The event is scheduled to begin at 10:00 a.m. ET.

Watch the video above.

Source: TEST FEED1

A tragedy in Buffalo stokes the Democrats’ blame-game

Despite what the polls are telling us, inflation, impactful as it is, is not the biggest problem facing us at the moment. Polarization is. It’s turning Americans against each other. It’s turning everything into a political battle. And even the slaughter of innocent grocery store shoppers in Buffalo, N.Y., isn’t off limits — not as far as Democrats facing tough November elections and some of their media allies are concerned.  

The apparent shooter is an 18-year-old white racist who reportedly traveled 200 miles from his home in upstate New York just to kill Black people. “Naturally, this has progressives spewing their rote condemnations of systemic racism, Trump supporters, and Republicans generally — when not railing against the availability of guns,” as the National Review neatly put it.

As if to prove the point, Rolling Stone magazine ran a piece under the headline, “The Buffalo Shooter Isn’t a ‘Lone Wolf.’ He’s a Mainstream Republican.” To which Laura Ingraham, from Fox News on the other side of the divide, unsurprisingly snapped back, “The gonzo journalists at Rolling Stone say no, no, no, no, no, there are accomplices here: The Republicans. …  It’s so lame, because the real accomplices are in the media — the media that are propping up an administration that has brought this country to its knees with policies making American families poorer every single day. And they’ve tried this tack so many times.”

And then there’s the New York Times, which was busy connecting dots — dots that led from Buffalo to Republicans, in general, and to Ingraham’s Fox News colleague Tucker Carlson, in particular. Here’s how an editorial in the Times explains the connection: “Republican politicians, including some of the party’s top leaders, openly espouse versions of a white supremacist conspiracy theory holding that an orchestrated effort is underway to displace white Americans. … On Saturday, a gunman who said he was motivated by a version of this ‘replacement theory’ killed 10 people at a Buffalo grocery store, officials said.” 

As for Carlson’s supposed link to the mass murder, the Times editorial has this to say: “The Fox News host Tucker Carlson, a leading purveyor of replacement theory rhetoric, has promoted the idea that elites are seeking to replace white Americans on more than 400 episodes of his program, according to an analysis by The New York Times.”

I’m no fan of Tucker Carlson or his wild theories. I think he’s often irresponsible with what he says. In 2021, he reportedly said, for example, that liberals are “trying to replace the current electorate with new, more obedient voters from the third world.”  

But even if the shooter in Buffalo believes the same thing, there’s not a shred of evidence that he ever watched a single episode of Carlson’s show or was influenced by anything Carlson ever said. In fact, he allegedly wrote a 180-page, hate-filled manifesto that doesn’t mention Carlson’s name. But Tucker Carlson’s critics would have us somehow believe that he bears some responsibility for what happened at the supermarket in Buffalo?  

And Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) just couldn’t resist politicizing the shooting, as the Wall Street Journal reported in an editorial. “Every time MAGA Republicans or pundits vilify wrongly immigrants and call them invaders,” Schumer said, “every time they falsely claim that millions of undocumented people cast ballots in our elections, and every time loud bigoted voices bemoan the disintegration of an imagined ‘classic’ America, the subtext is clear: these hard-right MAGA Republicans argue that people of color and minority communities are somehow posing a threat—a threat—to the American way of life.” And then he got to the punchline: “This is replacement theory in a nutshell.”

And, as the Journal reminded its readers, because liberal media outlets aren’t interested in such things: “The media’s massacre blame-game also goes only one way. When a deranged Black man ran down white grandmothers at a Waukesha, Wis., holiday parade, the media soon turned away from the awful story. President Biden didn’t show up and claim America is at risk of losing its democracy, as he did in Buffalo on Tuesday.

“When a Bernie Sanders supporter and MSNBC aficionado nearly killed Rep. Steve Scalise at a baseball practice in 2017, no one sensible blamed the anti-Republican rhetoric of Mr. Sanders or MSNBC for the gun violence. No one sensible did this because they realized the men who pulled the trigger or drove the SUV in Waukesha are responsible for their actions.”

We’ve moved on from reasonable disagreements between the right and the left. The very idea seems quaint. We’re now in what feels like a constant state of confrontation where, as I say, everything is a political battle. So, should we really be surprised that partisans are politicizing a horrible tragedy in Buffalo? I’d be surprised if they didn’t. I mean, who wants to let a crisis go to waste, right? 

Bernard Goldberg is an Emmy and an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University award-winning writer and journalist. He was a correspondent with HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” for 22 years and previously worked as a reporter for CBS News and as an analyst for Fox News. He is the author of five books and publishes exclusive weekly columns, audio commentaries and Q&As on his Substack page. Follow him on Twitter @BernardGoldberg.

Source: TEST FEED1

Congress asked, the Pentagon answered — but UFOs remain mysterious

After a 90-minute congressional hearing about UFOs on Tuesday, they retain their air of mystery.

A House Intelligence subcommittee held the first congressional hearing in over half a century on military reports of unexplained aerial phenomena (UAP). UAP rebrands what most people refer to as UFOs, to avoid the stigma attached to a phenomenon that is the subject of lurid conspiracy theories.

Pentagon officials who testified were Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security Ronald Moultrie and Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence Scott Bray.

Little new light was shed on UFOs, but the two officials tried to clarify the situation by ruling things out.

There’s no evidence to suggest UAPs are extraterrestrial.

There have been no collisions with Navy aircraft, but 11 near misses.

They’ve found no unexplained wreckage.

They’ve received no communications from the UAPs.

The military have never fired shots at them.

They believe no foreign adversary could create such technologies.

These unequivocal statements mask a large degree of uncertainty. The hearing was a follow-up to the release of a report in June last year from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Among 144 sightings in the report, only one could be explained. It was a large, deflating weather balloon. In November, the Pentagon formed a new group to coordinate efforts to detect and identify objects in restricted airspace, with the unwieldy title of the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group. The title does not convey confidence that the group will be nimble and sharply focused.

At the hearing, the Pentagon officials admitted that the number of reports now totaled 400, but many are anecdotal. Reports of sightings are frequent and continuing. As detailed in the earlier report, they noted 18 occasions when aerial objects moved at considerable speed without visible means of propulsion, acknowledging that sensor artifacts could be the explanation in some cases. They admitted that the data were often insufficient to draw any conclusions.

A sign of the challenge came when the subcommittee spent five minutes scrutinizing a video shot last year through the window of an F18 fighter jet. It showed a spherical object in the distance. But the clip only lasted a few seconds and fragmentary data is unlikely to resolve the nature of UAPs. Skeptics have already debunked some of the grandiose claims for earlier videos. However, the Pentagon officials did assert that many of the sightings are of real, physical objects.

Several members of the subcommittee were skeptical that the military was committed to getting to the bottom of this mystery. In response, Bray said, “I’m impatient. I want immediate understanding as much as anyone else.”

Moultrie agreed noting, “There’s no other higher priority we have,” and he admitted he’s a science faction fan, adding “I am an inquisitive mind.”

One House member in the room had a particularly jaundiced view of the proceedings. Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) asserted the Pentagon was not being transparent and were too quick to dismiss the alien spacecraft hypothesis. He says he even sells a t-shirt on his website that says “More people believe in UFOs than believe in Congress.”

It’s unlikely that the closed session yielded any startling insights either. More likely, it was classified because it covered sensors and capabilities that the military does not want revealed.

While we wait for the military to gather more and better data, scientists and the public have already decided. Astronomers know there are hundreds of millions of habitable planets in our galaxy, with a good chance that life on some of them could have evolved to have the capability for space travel. However, they are skeptical and they know that most UFOs sightings have mundane, terrestrial explanations. The public, on the other hand, has largely adopted the alien hypothesis: Half of Americans think UFOs are extraterrestrials visiting the Earth.

Chris Impey is a professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona. He is the author of hundreds of research papers on observational cosmology and education, and he has written popular books on black holes, the future of space travel, teaching cosmology to Buddhist monks, how the universe began, and how the universe will end. His massive open online courses have enrolled over 300,000 people.

Source: TEST FEED1

Electricity operators must wake up to climate change — or brace for summer outages

Summer may still be a month away, but electric system operators are already feeling the heat.

With above-average temperatures forecast for much of the U.S. in coming months, system operators are facing the prospect of high electricity demand and reduced supply, which will make it difficult to keep the lights on. System operators should have expected this. After all, it is well known that climate change is driving average temperatures up and leading to more frequent heatwaves, which stress the electricity system. But many system operators still aren’t planning for this new normal. If they don’t start soon, the consequences could be devasting.

Electricity consumers in Texas saw a preview of what might be coming last week. On Friday, at the start of a multi-day heatwave, six of the state’s natural gas power plants unexpectedly went offline. As temperatures in some areas approached 100 degrees Fahrenheit, the Texas grid operator Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) asked residents to limit their use of air conditioners and other large appliances. Most residents complied and widespread power outages were avoided. But one has to wonder – if this is happening in May, what will July and August look like?

Demand for electricity typically spikes during the warm summer months, with the highest peaks occurring during summer heatwaves, when people rely heavily on their air conditioners to stay cool.

Just as people struggle with the heat, so to do many electricity generating facilities. Natural gas power plants, in particular, operate less efficiently and so produce less output when temperatures are high. Delivering electricity also becomes more difficult as higher temperatures can impair the operation of transmission infrastructure and result in more electricity being lost before it reaches consumers.

The combination of high demand, reduced supply, and transportation challenges increases the potential for summer outages, which can be deadly.

A 2021 study found that an outage during a summer heatwave in Atlanta, Detroit or Phoenix would put at least 68 percent of residents in those cities at heightened risk of heat exhaustion and heat stroke. According to the study, public cooling centers in each city can only accommodate 2 percent of residents, leaving most with no protection against extreme heat.

This risk is not merely theoretical. Last month, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) — the entity responsible for operating the power grid in 15 Midwestern and Southern U.S. states — predicted that above average temperatures this summer will lead to a peak in demand that is likely to exceed regularly available supply. Unless MISO can make up the shortfall — e.g., by convincing consumers to use less electricity — outages are inevitable.

Other grid operators, including in Texas and California, are also projecting high demand for electricity this summer. In Texas, ERCOT has expressed confidence that sufficient supply will be available to meet demand, but the events of last weekend are a reminder of how unplanned generation disruptions can quickly cause problems.

California is also bracing for a tough summer. The California Independent System Operator (CAISO), which manages the electricity grid for most of California and parts of Nevada, has warned of potential supply shortages, especially in late summer.

CAISO and other electricity system operators could well be underestimating the risk of summer outages. Most system operators, including CAISO, base their summer electricity demand and supply projections on historic average weather conditions. With climate change driving temperatures up and increasing the likelihood of heatwaves, historic averages are no longer a good indicator of future conditions.

Electricity system planning must account for the new reality of climate change. But that is not yet happening, even at CAISO, which has first-hand experience with the effects of climate change.

In summer of 2020, a heatwave impaired the operation of a number of natural gas power plants in California, leading to a significantly reduction in their output. Hydroelectric generation in the state was also down due to a prolonged drought, while solar generation was impaired by clouds from a storm, and a series of wildfires threatened transmission lines, which further restricted electricity supply. All of this led to two days of rolling blackouts for California residents.

A state inquiry identified “climate-change induced extreme heat” as a key contributor to the blackouts. California regulators subsequently recommended changes to electric system planning to “better account for [h]eat storms and other extreme events resulting from climate change.”

Nevertheless, CAISO based this year’s summer demand forecast on historic weather data that, it admits, “does not fully reflect” the risk of climate change-induced extreme events. For example, as CAISO has noted, the forecast does not account for the possibility of extreme heat, drought and wildfire occurring simultaneously. But precisely that combination of events occurred just two years ago and caused major disruptions to the electricity system.

It is well past time for electric system operators to recognize reality — climate change is here, and they must plan for it. A good start would be for system operators to use forward-looking climate projections to inform their assessment of electricity demand and supply.

Some in the electricity industry have already done that successfully. For example, New York’s Consolidated Edison has used climate projections to evaluate how anticipated changes in temperature and humidity will affect demand in its service territory (among other things). Unfortunately, though, this is not the norm. That is a real problem.

Unless and until things change, and system operators begin planning for the impacts of climate change, we should all brace for more summer outages.

Romany Webb is an associate research scholar at Columbia Law School and senior fellow at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law.

Source: TEST FEED1

House Democrats call for Brittney Griner’s immediate release

Democratic House Reps. Greg Stanton (Ariz.), Sheila Jackson Lee (Texas) and Colin Allred (Texas) introduced a resolution calling for the release of Brittney Griner, a seven-time WNBA All-Star selection and Olympic gold medalist who has been detained in Russia for months. 

The resolution calls for the “immediate release” of Griner, who has been detained since February when cannabis vape cartridges were allegedly found in her luggage at the Moscow Airport.

“I’ve been lucky enough to watch Brittney develop and grow as a professional athlete, but also as a leader in our Phoenix community. We won’t stop working until she’s safely back with her family,” Stanton said in a statement.

Jackson Lee added that the resolution reinforces the important position that “Brittney Griner is ‘wrongfully detained’ in Russia.”

“She is a victim of Putin’s desperation to rule the world, and unfortunately, her freedom is made more difficult by inconsistent Russian responses to our embassy personnel and a bad legal system in Russia,” Jackson Lee also said.

Her comments echo the State Department’s message when it declared earlier this month that the WNBA player had been detained wrongfully in Russia.

The continued push for her release comes after earlier this week the U.S. said that Russia prohibited the U.S. Embassy from visiting Griner multiple times in May.

Her detention, which was reportedly extended for another 30 days last week, has been largely seen as a political move amid Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. 

Source: TEST FEED1

The painful national issue candidates refuse to talk about

America’s national debt is currently $30.4 trillion — an astronomical number confounding most Americans who are more familiar with the word “billion.” Thus, a more relatable calculation is that $30,000 billion equals $30 trillion. And, if our government cared to raise public awareness about this massive debt, the Treasury might consider sending us a monthly “national credit card statement.” For example, the May balance would appear as $30,457,000,000,000 (rounded because it grows by the second), with an asterisk warning about rising interest rate charges that add another $433.8 billion.

Furthermore, the 43 percent of Americans who paid some federal income tax in 2021 might receive their monthly statement printed on gold-tinted paper to highlight their $242,985 share of the debt. But all “citizens” could receive a monthly postcard indicating a more manageable debt share of $91,476. 

All of this data is shown on the U.S. Debt Clock, which I have called the “ticking time bomb of doom” in past writings. Meanwhile, as the ticking grows louder, the debt clock displays troubling vital signs of a nation on an unsustainable economic trajectory. Note that today’s $30.4 trillion in national debt increased by $2.1 trillion from June 2021. At current spending rates, it is projected to reach $41 trillion by 2026.

Now brace yourself for the shocking truth concerning U.S. unfunded liabilities — payments the government owes and promises its citizens without the funds to fulfill those obligations. These payments include Social Security, Medicare Parts A, B and D, federal debt held by the public, plus federal employee and veteran benefits.

When I last wrote about unfunded liabilities in January 2019, the tab was $122 trillion, with a 2023 four-year projection of $157 trillion. Today, only three and a half years later, unfunded liabilities are $169.2 trillion. More astonishing is the 2026 projection of $214.4 trillion.

All Americans should be alarmed by these jaw-dropping numbers, with soaring inflation and rising interest rates part of this broader problem. For decades, our nation has spent and promised more than it can generate through federal tax revenue — currently at $4.2 trillion. Although a vast amount of revenue, it is still a small percentage compared to federal government spending and out-of-control unfunded but promised payments.

Remember when a “balanced budget” used to be among the top issues and goals in Washington? When was the last time you heard any elected official utter that phrase?

Our elected leaders are reluctant to discuss mounting debt and unfunded liabilities because that would force them to make painful decisions about increasing taxes and cutting spending — actions that put them at risk of being voted out of office. And that is why, during this midterm election year, you will not hear federal candidates or incumbents mention the warnings found in an April report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Ominously titled “The Economic Effects of Waiting to Stabilize the Federal Debt,” the report states: “Perpetually rising debt would also increase the likelihood of a fiscal crisis and pose other risks to the U.S. economy.”

To explain those “risks” of “rising debt,” I asked Desmond Lachman, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who specializes in economic issues, for some comments. In an email, he wrote:

“The very high public debt level means that for many years the government will be obliged to dedicate a large amount of its spending to pay interest on its debt. That will leave less money for the government to be spent on other items that might improve public welfare. It will also likely require higher interest rates that will limit investment needed to get the economy to grow more rapidly. In short, by running up the debt, we have mortgaged the economic future of our children and our grandchildren.” 

So far in the 21st century, let’s examine how the national debt has spiraled out of control compared to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

In 2000 the national debt was only $5.7 trillion, and the GDP was $9.5 trillion.

By 2008 that debt had nearly doubled to $10.1 trillion, with GDP at $13.8 trillion.

In 2012 the debt had reached $15.2 trillion — slightly surpassing the $15.1 trillion GDP.  Also significant is that in the 10 years since 2012, the national debt has doubled in size to the previously mentioned $30.4 trillion.

Four years later, in 2016, the national debt rose to $19.5 trillion, starting to drift away from the $18.6 trillion in GDP.

Then in 2020, the COVID-19 economic shutdown, combined with President Trump initially pumping $2.2 trillion into the economy, resulted in the national debt rising to $26.9 trillion, with the GDP lagging at $22.1 trillion.

Today our economy is still recovering, with a growing gap between the $30.4 trillion debt and the $23.6 trillion GDP — yielding a federal debt-to-GDP ratio of 129 percent.

AEI’s Desmond Lachman included a stunning fact in his email comments: “Our debt to GDP ratio now is higher than it was at the end of the Second World War.”

Moreover, the previously mentioned CBO report also warned: “A perpetually rising debt-to-GDP ratio is unsustainable over the long term because financing deficits and servicing the debt would consume an ever-growing proportion of the nation’s income.”

Our leaders in Washington are not leveling with the American people about our economic unsustainability. The CBO report advises that to avoid a fiscal crisis, “debt must be stabilized.” That means the pain of spending cuts in conjunction with raising taxes must be instituted as soon as possible.

Therefore, incumbents and House and Senate candidates who fail to make the national debt crisis a national priority during an election year contribute to this national travesty.

Myra Adams writes about politics and religion for numerous publications. She is a RealClearPolitics contributor and served on the creative team of two GOP presidential campaigns in 2004 and 2008. Follow her on Twitter @MyraKAdams.

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George W. Bush condemns 'unjustified and brutal' invasion of Iraq in speech mix-up

Former President George W. Bush slipped up during a speech on Wednesday about Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, condemning instead the “unjustified and brutal” invasion of Iraq.

The comment came as Bush, who has been mocked over the years for his verbal stumbles, was criticizing Russia’s electoral system and the country’s history of imprisoning or eliminating political opponents in some other manner from participating in elections.

“The result is an absence of checks and balances in Russia and the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq,” Bush said in Dallas.

“I mean, of Ukraine,” he added.

The former president shrugged off his gaffe by making a joke about his age.

“Anyways. I’m 75,” Bush said, resulting in laughter from the audience.

Bush’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003 in pursuit of weapons of mass destruction has been widely condemned over the years by critics for being an unjustified invasion.

Source: TEST FEED1

Zelensky: Russia's search for 'wonder weapon' illustrates failure of invasion

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday said that Russia’s announcement that it has been using powerful lasers to target drones was like Nazi Germany’s propaganda about their own “wonder weapon.”

“In the propaganda of Nazi Germany there was such a term ‘wunderwaffe,’ wonder weapon,” Zelensky explained. “The clearer it became they had no chance in the war, the more propaganda there was about the wonder weapon, which would be so powerful that it would provide a turning point in the war.”

“And here we see that in the third month of a full-scale war, Russia is trying to find its ‘wunderwaffe,’ allegedly laser,” he added, saying “all this clearly indicates the complete failure of the invasion.”

Zelensky’s remarks come after Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed Moscow was using a new generation of laser weapons in the war in response to an influx of Western weapons for Ukraine, Reuters reported.

Though the details of the laser are largely unknown, Yury Borisov, Russia’s deputy prime minister of military development, said that some weapons, labeled by Russia as Peresvet, were capable of blinding satellites above Earth while others were even more powerful.

“If Peresvet blinds, then the new generation of laser weapons lead to the physical destruction of the target — thermal destruction, they burn up,” Borisov said on Russian state television, according to Reuters.

He claimed that the weapons were already being used in Ukraine. 

Since the invasion began on Feb. 24, Ukraine has for months fought off Russian forces and has received billions of dollars in support and weapons supplies from the U.S. and other nations. 

This week, a $40 billion Ukraine aid package to further aid the besieged country is likely to pass the Senate on Thursday, according to Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.).

Source: TEST FEED1

Russia firing senior commanders over poor performance in Ukraine: UK intelligence

Russia has fired senior commanders in recent weeks whose performances have been deemed unsatisfactory in the country’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, according to an intelligence update from the United Kingdom’s defense ministry on Thursday.

A few notable officers have been suspended, the ministry said, including Lieutenant General Serhiy Kisel, who commanded the 1st Guards Tank Army, and Vice Admiral Igor Osipov, who commanded Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. Kisel was likely suspended for his failure to capture Kharkiv and Osipov for the sinking of the cruiser Moskva in April, UK intelligence reports.

Russian Chief of the General Staff Valeriy Gerasimov is thought to still be in his position but UK intelligence said officials cannot be certain.

In regards to these notable suspensions, the report pointed to a likely culture of cover-ups and scape-goating within the Russian military.

UK intelligence surmised that officials involved in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “will likely be increasingly distracted by efforts to avoid personal culpability for Russia’s operational set-backs,” leading to a “strain on Russia’s centralised model of command and control.”

The report comes as Russia approaches its third month of fighting since it launched the invasion into Ukraine on Feb. 24.

Although Western intelligence initially predicted Ukraine’s capital city of Kyiv would fall to Russia within days, the country has failed to accomplish a swift takeover, resulting in low morale and the loss of thousands of Russian soldiers.

Source: TEST FEED1