AwesomeCapital

Tuesday, June 30, 2026

American Education: No child left un-radicalized

by Scott McKay

Iknow, I know. The first half-dozen comments under this piece will provide the criticism that I shouldn’t use mealy-mouthed words like “almost” in a headline like the above.

Which is another way of saying that among the American Spectator’s readership, there isn’t a lot of dissent to the idea that our educational system, from bottom to top, has gone to seed.

I will defend the use of “almost” only by noting that there are still educational institutions out there providing quality instruction. In virtually every city of size, there are at least a handful of options where kids won’t be indoctrinated into the kind of anti-American woke stupidity that has become virtually omnipresent in the public schools. And of course, there is the burgeoning panoply of resources available to homeschoolers, which stands as the silver lining to the mess we’re in.

So I’ve now provided the justification for my hedge. And we can move on.

To saying that the education system, chiefly in the public sector but certainly not limited to it, is beginning to calcify as a fundamental, existential threat to the American way of life.

I could regale you with polling data and statistics showing the cavernous ignorance that our schools are infecting our youth with, but you almost certainly already know these things.

For example…

Darializa Avila Chevalier is about as total a poster child for American education as there is, given that she’s 32 years old and has never not been in school, including more than 14 years of post-secondary education, and with every utterance, she demonstrates that she knows literally less than nothing.

And Chevalier has studied largely at competitive institutions — most notably Columbia — which at one time were known as centers of learning.

Now Columbia produces communist Dominicans with genocidal attitudes toward Jews.

And those lunatics with functionally room-temperature IQs are celebrated by fellow “highly-educated” and privileged urbanites in cities like New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago, and Los Angeles.

This isn’t a new problem. Joy Reid has a degree from Yale, after all.

But the stupid is one problem. The crazy is another.

How does this draw a salary at an American institution of secondary education?

A radical, Israel-hating California teacher claimed she married a Gaza resident online to help him gain American citizenship — and push her pro-Palestinian agenda.
Americanpolitics discussion
Laura Pinho, a dance teacher at Canoga Park Senior High School in California, announced her nuptials in a wild June 16 CODEPINK Zoom webinar called “Challenging Zionism In Our Schools.”
When CODEPINK activist Marcy Winograd congratulated her on her marriage and asked her to share details about her life, Pinho, 51, launched into a pedantic monologue about how she only married Salem S.E. Abu Amra to advance “Palestinian rights and freedoms.”
“I have power as an American citizen. I have a passport that I was just born with, and how can I live in this world if I don’t make every effort to equalize the playing field on whatever way that I can,” she said in the webinar, first uncovered by the North American Values Institute.
Englewood New Jersey Mayor Michael Wildes — who is also an immigration attorney and former federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of New York — told The Post that Pinho is playing with fire.
“She can be prosecuted criminally, brought up on federal conspiracy charges. Marriage fraud is one of the top five crimes you can perpetrate including terrorism and drugs. The fact that somebody would be foolish enough to say they actually did it makes it actionable for the federal government to investigate,” Wildes said.
Marrying someone to obtain a green card is federal crime and can carry a five-year prison sentence and up to a $250,000 fine, according to the Department of Justice.
The odd couple tied the knot April 5 in Utah, which allows marriages to be conducted via Zoom, according to records posted online by the Utah County Clerk and obtained by Israeli nonprofit NGO Monitor.
Utah allows virtual marriages in which both parties aren’t in the same location so long as they have secured a Utah County marriage license and provide valid ID and two witnesses, who also don’t have to be physically present in the state.

It’s fair to allow that high-school dance teachers might not be possessed of the most intellectual rigor on campus, but even so… huh?

And the open advertisement of marriage fraud isn’t even the most shocking piece to the puzzle that is Laura Pinho’s extracurricular life…

The bride has a 5-year-old child with Derek J. Reid, 51, an improv coach who also lives at her address, according to public records.
Reid told The Post that he and Pinho were domestic partners and never officially married, and that they’re currently separated and the two sleep in different rooms at the same address. He said he had no knowledge of her marriage to Abu Amra.
…
“She’s been radicalized — I don’t know anything about that… the crowd she runs with… I’m worried for her,” Reid said.
…
She claimed she first met her husband through mutual friends on Facebook and donated an undisclosed amount of money to him, and he proceeded to message her to say thanks.
…
Pinho heads her school’s Students for Justice in Palestine club and bragged about injecting her virulent anti-Israel politics into her dance curriculum.
Politics
She posted video from a school cultural event in which her students performed the “Dabke Dance” — a Palestinian folk dance that has come to be associated with terrorism.
…
She boasts that she steered her students into radical anti-Israel protests.
“Students have rights, powers and abilities…. they do the fighting, they do the protesting, and we are there to guide them…. that is the role that I have found as one of the co-sponsors actually for the Students for Justice in Palestine Club,” she said.
Pinho has a long history of antisemitic posts on social media.

If you don’t like that horrific story as evidence that something is broken, then feel free to make this make sense…

There was a time when Smith College was considered a good school. I’m not sure how that could still be true if they can’t get the most basic things right.

You might ask how it’s possible for formerly respected institutions to go so badly wrong, and this is a fairly wide window into why…

Bringing this back to Miz Chevalier, there is a line of correlation — I would argue causation — between the graph above and the subject on everyone’s mind, namely the communist takeover of the Democrat Party.

And it’s this: the Gramscian long march through the institutions, in which committed Marxists have invaded everything from university administrations to scout troops and then corrupted them like viruses or cancer cells infecting a host, has now penetrated to the heart of the Democrat Party.

And at no point during that march, at least since the early 1960s (I’d argue even that isn’t true), were liberals ever willing to stand effectively against the Hard Left.

Conservatives allowed liberals to run institutions like schools, the arts, publishing, and the like because liberals were, at least nominally, willing to keep those institutions open to people of diverse intellectual and philosophical viewpoints.

Then came the Marxists, who pushed the liberals around. And when the liberals sided with the Marxists, the conservatives simply went elsewhere. That’s why you can’t find conservatives in education — or if you do, they’re on the fringes and alternate institutions.

Now the liberals are finding themselves without homes at places where they’re now discriminating in their appeasement of differing sorts of the transgender confused.

And we wonder, when the moral and intellectual rot infects every level of a system which should have become a marketplace, if not an industry, 100 years ago or more, why we’re setting record levels of money on fire to produce armies of Darializa Avila Chevaliers and Laura Pinhos.

The answer is obvious. When you put the worst people in the country in charge of basic, fundamental institutions through which we run most of the population, you will reap very predictable results.

Which begs the most important question: when will we stop throwing good money after bad?

https://spectator.org/american-education-is-in-almost-irredeemable-decline/

NPR Alito retirement report retracted

An earlier article published today on our platform stated that United States Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito was retiring, citing a report from NPR.

Minutes after publication, NPR said the story had been "taken down" and that it had been "published in error," without providing further details.

The original NPR story detailed that the 76-year-old was appointed to the Supreme Court in 2006 during the George W. Bush administration. As one of the court's conservative majority, Alito has voted in favor of several impactful opinions, including striking down the landmark abortion ruling in Roe v. Wade.

Justice Alito's retirement has not been confirmed by the Supreme Court.

https://breakingthenews.net/Article/Correction:-Alito-retirement-report-retracted/66604458

BLS took steps to fix data release failures but watchdog says more safeguards needed

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has taken steps to address issues that led to the release of key economic data at improper times in 2024, though a watchdog said it has more work to do in establishing safeguards.

A report by the Labor Department's inspector general looked at a trio of incidents in which economic data was either released early or late, or methodology was shared externally before it was made available to the public. In each case, BLS leaders didn't learn of the situation until up to an hour after they occurred.

BLS data for key reports like CPI inflation data and the benchmark revisions to the employment data that underlies the monthly jobs reports carries a great deal of significance for economic decision-makers and financial markets, and untimely or unauthorized releases could give some traders an advantage over their peers.

The report explained that the watchdog had identified shortcomings in procedures around data release processes, and the BLS inadequately emphasized the importance of equitable access to information and safeguarding internally-restricted materials. The IG said that the BLS' deviations from policy in those cases "negatively affected its reputation and credibility."

In May 2024, the monthly consumer price index (CPI) data was published 31 minutes before it was scheduled to be released, while in August 2024 the publication of BLS' preliminary benchmark revision to employment data was delayed for 34 minutes even though it was provided to some users who reached out to the agency.

Additionally, internal or inaccurate methodology information was shared externally three times that year before it was published.

"In response to these incidents, BLS closed gaps in IT safeguards, revised performance standards, strengthened management oversight, and training," the IG report said.

"However, we identified additional improvements BLS could make to reduce the risk of improper disclosure of essential economic information," the inspector general added.

"BLS still needs to update its testing procedures, clarify its recently updated policies and procedures, and ensure staff's compliance by improving buy-in, understanding of expectations, and accountability," the IG explained, adding that it should also finalize its crisis communications plans and perform related exercises to ensure staff are prepared for such scenarios.

Acting BLS Commissioner William Wiatrowski included a letter responding to the report which said that the results of the audit are "generally consistent with the previous reviews" aimed at guarding against early or unauthorized disclosures.

Wiatrowski explained that the IG's report acknowledges several of the corrective measures the BLS has undertaken, saying that in some cases the report and its recommendations "fail to recognize the totality of corrective measures taken or clarifying documentation provided."

"The OIG conclusion does not recognize that BLS has already strengthened IT testing, updated customer service policies, procedures and training, updated and disseminated the BLS Crisis Communication Plan to all BLS staff with defined roles and those staff have exercised said plan," he added.

The report comes as the BLS is scheduled to release the June jobs report on Thursday, rather than the usual Friday due to the observance of Independence Day.

Economists polled by LSEG are projecting that the economy added 110,000 jobs in June, a figure that would mark the fourth straight month of steady job gains despite representing a deceleration from growth seen in the last three months.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/bls-took-steps-fix-data-release-failures-watchdog-says-more-safeguards-needed

Diarrhea parasite outbreak in the US

A stomach-churning parasite that causes explosive, watery diarrhea has sickened over 140 people across multiple states — with the highest number of cases in New York.

According to the CDC, 145 people ranging in age from 5 to 86 years and from 20 states contracted the parasite Cyclospora cayetanensis between May and June 16, with 20 hospitalized.

Fortunately, there have not yet been any deaths.

Since none of the patients had traveled recently, officials believe the cause is food — although they’re unsure of the exact source.

The cyclospora parasite causes cyclosporiasis, a type of food poisoning that leads to diarrhea, severe cramping, nausea, vomiting, and fatigue.

This infection is usually contracted during travel outside the United States, as a result of consuming food or water that’s been contaminated with feces. It is more common in tropical areas.

None of the current US patients, however, reported taking any recent trips.

There’s also no evidence that it can be spread from human to human, leading the CDC to believe the patients became sick after eating food in the US.

“Local, state, and federal (CDC, FDA) public health authorities are investigating several clusters of cases in more than one state. Investigations to identify potential sources are ongoing,” the agency reported.

Since there may be patients who haven’t been diagnosed, the actual number of cyclosporiasis cases is likely higher than initially reported — and it’s likely present in states besides those that have been reported.

In addition to New York, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C., the current states with reported cases include Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Illinois, Georgia, Florida, Texas, Louisiana, Colorado, and Alaska.

Symptoms of the disease typically appear a week after infection, and mainly affect the intestines.ne of the main signs is explosive, watery diarrhea, but others may include loss of appetite, bloating, fatigue, low-grade fever, stomach cramps, nausea, and vomiting.

However, sometimes symptoms may not appear at all.

While a cyclosporiasis infection can go away on its own, symptoms can last for a month or longer if not treated, increasing the risk of dehydration.

Treatment is a course of antibiotics, typically trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole, also known under the brand names Bactrim, Septra or Cotrim.

In addition to avoiding food or water at risk of contamination, the CDC also recommends following food safety handling recommendations for safe preparation and storage.

While the risk of infection is highest when eating food in subtropical or tropical areas, generally outside the US, eating fresh, imported produce can also increase the chances.

Several veggies have been previously linked to cyclosporiasis cases in the US, such as cilantro, raspberries, sweet peas, mesclun lettuce, and basil, which was connected to a 2019 outbreak of the herb imported from Mexico.

A 2018 outbreak also infected nearly 400 people, thanks to tainted McDonald’s salads.

In this current outbreak, New York has the most cases, between 31 and 80, followed by Texas and Illinois experiencing between 11 and 30 cases.

https://nypost.com/2026/06/30/health/mystery-of-explosive-diarrhea-parasite-outbreak-in-the-us/

The New Socialists: Elite, Ungrateful, And Toxic As Ever

by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

Win some blue-state and blue-city races, and the cocky new socialist Jacobins believe that they have either already taken over the Democratic Party or will soon absorb it. And in reaction to these new swarms, an increasingly terrified and ossified old Democrat guard either limps away from the hive or invites them in to take over more.

It is fascinating but ultimately depressing to watch old-style Democrats say or do anything to avoid the new mob of Robespierres. Democrat candidates who recently begged for a Schumer/Pelosi/Jeffries endorsement now are telling them to get in line at the guillotine.

Jewish American Democrats are terrified that what happened to the primaried and defeated Rep. Dan Goldman of New York, an arch-Trump hater, could befall them. Goldman's obnoxious showboating hatred of Trump and championing of neo-socialist agendas offered no defense against the Jacobins' antisemitism and hatred of Israel.

A number of Jewish Democrat candidates, like wannabe California congressman Scott Wiener, are backing off from Israel and now join the "genocide!" mob. Wiener hopes that the throng will reward his new anti-Israel position by overlooking the now inconvenient fact that to the anti-Semitic Democrat base he is still Jewish.

Some of the rich, likewise, think they can escape the guillotine - the various proposed taxes on "billionaires" and "millionaires" on their net worth or unrealized capital gains or plans to confiscate private properties deemed "not in the people's interests." They will either flee to Florida or join the mob and hope their donations spare them from the blade.

The hard socialist agenda, which lacks even 50 percent popular support, is often recognizable despite efforts to conceal it until after elections. Given the clickbait lunacy of these socialists' mindset, their true views often trickle out from prior social media posts, hot mics, leaks, and occasional temper-tantrum outbursts (cf. Mamdani's "monsters" or Talarico's "I hate Christianity" or Platner's litany of unapologetic racist, antisemitic, and misogynistic outbursts).

In general, the socialist challenge is to "fundamentally transform America" into a statist, inert redistribution machine - nuttier than socialist Europe, a prescription for North Korean-style poverty, and completely unrecognizable to the Founders and most contemporary Americans. As far as we can distill, here are their agendas:

The New Demography: Open borders, massive, unaudited new immigration ending the distinction between mere residence and citizenship.
Dismantling the "System": Packing the court, destroying the Electoral College, ending the filibuster, bringing in new left-wing states, defunding the police, ensuring same-day registration/voting, no voter ID, foreign nationals residing here being eligible to vote.
The Islamization of America: Ending America's traditional friendship with Israel and realigning the U.S. with the West Bank, Hamas, Hezbollah, and their autocratic and illiberal, terrorism-sponsoring Muslim regimes. Restoring massive USAID subsidies to fund left-wing takeovers abroad and mainstreaming now overt harassment of Jews at home.
Old Communism: The government takeover of housing and utilities, targeted expropriation of private property, new punitive taxes on net worth and unrealized capital gains. Wild talk of nationalizing airlines and all health care.
Statism: Massive new entitlements, free college, canceling $1.7 trillion in student loans, more federal acquisition of private lands, rent freezes.
Reparations: Compensation for victims of alleged "white privilege," institutionalization of radical identity politics, and racial, ethnic, and sexual orientation chauvinism. Third world hatred of supposed white oppressors, justifying reparatory preferences for the non-white "oppressed."
Globalism: Pledging solidarity with socialist/communist movements abroad while despising Western civilization in general and the U.S. in particular.

Once "Mayor" Zohran Mamdani took control of New York, he began promising to confiscate rental properties from landlords and to focus on "white" neighborhoods, and he no longer disguised his innate hatred of Jews.

Governor Spanberger of Virginia dropped her moderate false face and began radically ramming through hard-left executive orders to ensure more DEI, higher taxes, and anti-ICE hysterics. After being elected, Seattle Mayor Katie Willson gushed "bye-bye" to the billionaire entrepreneurs who are fleeing from Washington state's new "millionaire's tax." She mocked their departure and cared not a whit that her now-socialist city would further descend into a West Coast Detroit or Baltimore.

Socialists hide their revolutionary anger with banal pleasantries. We have become well accustomed now to the "socialist smile," emblemized by the grinning Mamdani or the faux-happy face of James Talarico. Usually, the new touchy-feely socialists chuckle loudest when a rare reporter presses them on their past lunatic harangues, which are then laughed off as hysterias from paranoid right-wing minds.

Sometimes socialists embrace the hard commissar style, like the perpetually venomous Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner, who ridicules journalists, lies flagrantly, and takes back none of his hate-filled rants.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) perpetually screams rather than talks, usually venting her monotonous hatred for the Jewish state. Her latest socialist champions are the Antifa criminals just sentenced to long prison sentences for their conspiracy to murder ICE officers.

The more Ilhan Omar is caught trafficking in antisemitic tropes, denying alleged immigration fraud schemes, or filing preposterous federal financial disclosure forms, the more defiant her shouts of "racist" become.

The newly emerging socialists, like recent congressional nominees Darializa Avila Chevalier or Analilia Mejia, can never explain why their parents left socialist paradises in Latin America to come to cutthroat capitalist America.

Nor do they explain to us why and how such a supposedly toxic, racist nation would extend such generous scholarships and DEI preferences to both. They suffer from the Joy Reid/Ilhan Omar/Rashida Tlaib/AOC socialist syndrome: parents flee socialist paradises of indigenous peoples to ensure their children might thrive in a settler/colonialist and capitalist U.S. whose magnanimity they interpret as proof of guilt that is therefore to be reciprocated not with gratitude but with ever more venom.

And once the second-generation socialists joined the privileged elite classes of America, these boutique radicals decided to tear down the very system that nurtured them, without ever expressing a wish to return to the socialist paradises of their parents' homelands.

What drives the sheer hatred of the new upscale socialists, and why are they in vogue now?

There are three constants in all these new socialists, as we have seen recently from the recent nationwide primary elections, as well as the daily street theater.

One, they hate the United States - loathe its foundation, hate its maturation, and despise the current American nation. They detest especially the middle classes, who lack both the romance of the dependent poor and the supposed "refinement" and "culture" of their own elite socialist aristocracy. And the more they demagogue "white privilege" and "white supremacy," the more they feel that the river of exemptions, set-asides, preferences, and special considerations will flow to them from a supposedly guilty nation.

The socialists' hatred of America is becoming clearer as middle America embraces the 250th anniversary of the nation, highlighted by throngs of World Cup tourists who cannot praise highly enough the decency, amicability, and prosperity of America between the coasts. So, what is a perennial socialist PhD candidate, or a failed "community organizer," or NGO flack to do when millions happily suffer from "false consciousness" and have failed to listen to their Marxist handlers?

The socialist architects of the current Jacobin takeover see no contradiction in that, like moths harkening to flames, they cannot get enough of the American good life, conspicuous consumer consumption, and merit badges of success like their Ivy League-branded kids, letters and titles after their names, and the right zip code for their first and second homes.

Every socialist buffoon reminds us almost daily of Alexis de Tocqueville's droll warning that most people would prefer everyone to be absolutely equal and worse off than all better off, but with some better off than themselves.

The socialists' hatred of America is also revealed in their envy. Unlike the poet Hesiod's notion of a "good" envy - embodied in the American tradition of emulation and admiration of those richer than themselves - they buy into the "bad" envy of wanting to destroy those who are brighter, more successful, richer, and more essential to America than themselves, whether an Elon Musk, a Larry Ellison, or a Jeff Bezos.

Second, socialists still have little current power other than their control of institutions such as K-12 education, academia, the media, foundations, the bureaucracies, the corporate boardrooms, professional sports, entertainment, and popular culture. Perhaps they wish to end up like the lifelong government employee, Bernie Sanders, who for a half-century shook his two upraised fists at America, screamed at the greed, and ended up with three homes and membership in the millionaire class.

Socialists and communists have no confidence in winning over the majority of the American people, at least outside blue-city and blue-state districts. Hence, their efforts to change balloting laws, destroy the border, import angry, poor, new constituents, stage violent street confrontations, and either celebrate or contextualize assassinations from the attempts on Trump to the killing of Charlie Kirk.

Sane Democrats would reexamine 2024 and conclude the party was far too left-wing and the antidote was a return to the winning formulas of Bill Clinton. But unhinged socialists and communists would claim that 2024 was lost because they were not far-left enough. So we are to believe that Americans scared of Harris's poorly disguised radicalism can be won over by scaring them even further? A communist in 2028 can win over America when a socialist in 2024 could not?

Third, Donald Trump has driven the Left so crazy that they have gyrated from Obama's four-mansion socialism to unapologetic hardcore Trotskyism. Why? Their pathological hatred transcends Trump's background, his appearance, his accent, his tweets, and even his appeal to the despised "clingers, irredeemables, deplorables, chumps, dregs, and garbage."

Of course, Trump is a conservative, so he suffers the same left-wing slurs of "fascist" and "Nazi" that met Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. But in his second term, Trump, quite unlike most Republican presidents, is not addressing just symptoms but also the causes and fuel of the socialist project.

Trump did not just jawbone the "fake news" but cut off subsidies to NPR and PBS, suing the media when they deliberately engaged in baseless character assassination. He did not just close the border but began deporting the criminal cohort of Biden's 10 million illegal entrants, sought to end birthright citizenship, made would-be refugees apply for entry in their home country, ended catch-and-release, and will wall off or electronically secure the entire southern border from the Pacific to the Gulf of America.

He did not just rhetorically critique DEI; he banned it from the federal bureaucracy. Unlike past Republicans, Trump did not merely critique elitist campuses; he leveraged them to behave like normal people - taxing endowments, banning racist DEI protocols, prohibiting grant surcharge scamming, and demanding they abide by the Bill of Rights. He slashed the left-wing USAID money machine rather than just whining that it subsidized America's worst critics abroad.

In other words, the socialists are enraged not just because they despise the U.S. and lack the power to turn America into Cuba or because they have not yet stabbed, poisoned, shot, decapitated, or blown up the hated Trump, as their followers, celebrities, and a few of their leaders have so often boasted.

The real rub is that Trump is their flip side - not a revolutionary but a counterrevolutionary. He seeks to overturn root and branch the entire 100-year progressive project and ensure America's insidious slouching toward socialism ends with his term - for good. The more they brag about our collective socialist tomorrow, the more Trump incessantly dismantles socialism today.

So far, they haven't stopped him yet - but their lidless eyes never close.

Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness and the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. He is an American military historian, columnist, a former classics professor, and scholar of ancient warfare.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/new-socialists-elite-ungrateful-and-toxic-ever