American History

States are on the front lines in pushing back against federal efforts to normalize transgender procedures for minors On Saturday, Chief Judge Jeffrey Sutton of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit issued a preliminary injunction that allows Tennessee’s law to prohibit health care providers from performing or administering cross-sex procedures on minors to take place, a week...

U.S. National Archives and Records Administration U.S. House Chamber In the sweltering heat of Philadelphia, during the fateful days of July 5 and 6, 1787, an extraordinary event took place, but one that is hardly mentioned anymore by anyone. As I’ve written in an earlier article in this series, even before the echo from the gavel had subsided, divisions had...

John Whitehead Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.—Harry S. Truman How many Americans have actually...

Defense ministers and other officials from all 31 nations in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) gather between July 11–12 in Vilnius, Lithuania, for a meeting that could define the 75-year-old alliance’s next century. On tap is NATO’s first updated battle plan since the fall of the Soviet Union, a discussion about membership funding levels, Sweden’s proposed entry, and clarifications...

delihayat/iStock/Getty Images Plus A federal judge on Tuesday prohibited numerous federal agencies and high-ranking officials of the Biden administration from working with social media companies by ruling that the government “used its power to silence the opposition” during the Covid-19 pandemic.   U.S. District Court Judge Terry Doughty issued the preliminary injunction stating that the administration violated the First Amendment...

YouTube Proof that the Great American Revival is here — and has been for some time — continues to pour in. Over the Independence Day weekend, nearly 7,000 souls accepted Jesus Christ as their savior at Pastor Greg Laurie’s two-day Harvest Crusade at the Honda Center in Anaheim, California. Laurie celebrated on Twitter: The 2023 Harvest Crusade Welcomed Over 32,000...

An Oregon law that forbids recording in public without consent runs afoul of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment, a U.S. court has ruled. Oregon law 165.540, first enacted in 1955 and subsequently broadened to bar secret recording of conversations, is unconstitutional, Judge Sandra Ikuta, a George W. Bush appointee writing for the majority in the 2–1 ruling, said. Exceptions to the...

President Joe Biden has announced plans to nominate Virginia Solicitor General Andrew Ferguson and Utah Solicitor General Melissa Holyoak to serve as Republican commissioners of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The White House announced the GOP nominations—part of a longstanding practice to include bipartisan membership—in a July 3 press release. Senate lawmakers will need to vote to confirm Biden’s nominees for the FTC...

Commentary Canada’s federal government has cheerfully proclaimed June to September to be Pride Season. Beyond the commonplace vulgarity in pride parades, one reasonably perceives a push to include new identities. And generous Canadians are inclusive. But a push for inclusion is a push for power, and that makes inclusion a complex political beast. For starters, unless every person is included, any...

Commentary It seems that Chinese leader Xi Jinping is particularly sensitive to being described as a “dictator.” When U.S. President Joe Biden used the description, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was outraged, with its mouthpiece, the Global Times calling it a vicious attack. If Biden had said that Xi was the “leader of a dictatorship,” perhaps he would not have...

Commentary The United States Supreme Court has rendered an important decision on race-based admissions to colleges and universities which, at least indirectly, is relevant to Australia’s debate on the proposed entrenchment of The Voice in the Constitution and necessitates a reflection on Australia’s university admission policies. On June 29, the Supreme Court decisively banned race-based admission processes. It decided that...

Commentary Australia is a federation, although for decades now it has been hard to notice. But COVID-19 may have changed everything. In a functioning federation, like the United States, states revel in competition and distinguishing themselves from each other. While California appears to be going woke and broke at the moment, Florida is where “woke goes to die” and where...

AP Images Lorie Smith of 303 Creative The Supreme Court’s ruling yesterday in 303 Creative v. Elenis continues the dismantling of the “wall of separation” atheists have used successfully to remove the Christian faith from the culture. At issue is Lorie Smith’s First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech, rendered through her talent and ability for creative graphic design. She...

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, has vetoed a bill that was meant to protect children from transgender gender-change surgeries and other procedures like giving kids cross-sex hormones. House Bill 648, known as the “Stop Harming Our Kids Act,” was passed by the Republican-controlled state legislature along party lines in early June. The bill sought to prohibit hormone treatments...

wynnter/iStock/Getty Images Plus From July 2 to July 5, 1787, the delegates attending the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia approved a resolution that would sufficiently satisfy the demands of delegates from small states for equality of representation, as well as those from the larger states who insisted that fairness demanded representation on the basis of population. Most historians consider it the...

Hypocrisy as TikTok secretly uses U.S. courts against free speech Commentary As is well known, TikTok is a national security threat because communist China has laws that give it access to the data of its almost 1.7 billion global users. Yet naive teenagers around the world download the app on their smartphones, thirsty for the latest kid craze trend. TikTok’s...

AP Images In an interview with MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace on Thursday, just hours after the Supreme Court of the United States’ (SCOTUS) decision on affirmative action, President Joe Biden held firm to his stance against expanding the Court.   During the interview, Wallace asked Biden if he worried “that without court reform, this conservative majority, is too young, and too...

rarrarorro/iStock/Getty Images Plus Beijing has a powerful ally in its effort to purchase large swaths of American land: The United States Department of Justice. The DOJ contends in a court filing this week that Florida legislation, signed into law by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis last month, is “unconstitutional” for banning Chinese land ownership near U.S. military facilities and key infrastructure....

“I oppose affirmative action. But I also oppose legacy admissions, I oppose any kind of process or system that tries to degrade us from the principle of merit that our country was built upon. We’re founded upon excellence. That’s what the American dream is….That is a universal Maxim with which we should be striving to.” In this episode of ATL:NOW,...

President Joe Biden on Thursday responded to the Supreme Court’s decision to effectively end affirmative action in college admissions, criticizing the court for breaking with decades of precedent. “I strongly disagree with the court’s decision because affirmative action is so misunderstood,” Biden said at the White House before departing for New York. “Many people wrongly believe that affirmative action allows...