LAST YEAR’S CONSPIRACY THEORIES ARE THIS YEAR’S HEADLINES: Washington Post: A Chinese lab identified COVID in December 2019 but the government kept it quiet. “Wuhan was finally locked down on Jan. 23. So nearly a full month had passed between the time researchers first alerted people a SARS-like virus had been identified and any real attempt to manage it or warn people about it. And as we all know, by that point it was too late. The virus had already spread to other parts of the world, including the US. You can’t help but wonder how things might have turned out if China had acted swiftly instead of secretly early on.”

AND YET BILL GATES IS TELLING US WHAT TO DO ABOUT OUR HEALTH: Elon Musk likens Bill Gates’ belly to controversial pregnant-man emoji. “Musk, the world’s richest person and chief executive of the American company, posted a follow-up image in response to the Friday post of six hooded figured captioned ‘shadow ban council reviewing Tweet.’ The lowbrow joke could further infuriate woke Twitter staffers angered by Musk’s ongoing bid to buy the firm after saying he’d take a hardline stance supporting free speech.”

Both Bill Gates and the Twitter scaff deserve to be targeted by a lot of lowbrow jokes.

BASED: Today’s Photo Mystery. “Yup—that is indeed Thomas Sowell’s Basic Economics. This is either an elaborate troll, or perhaps [Mike] Tyson is getting ready to run for office as a Republican somewhere.

I’VE SEEN THE LOCKDOWNS AND THE DAMAGE DONE: Routine childhood vaccination rates fell during pandemic.

HMM: “The Ukrainian military claimed on Saturday that it destroyed a Russian command post in the southern region of Kherson, which has been largely under Russian control since the early days of the war. . . . In a separate statement, Oleksiy Arestovych, a former Ukrainian military intelligence officer who is now an adviser to the Ukrainian president’s office, said that about 50 senior Russian officers were in the command center at the time of the attack.”

Fog of war and all that, but these Ukrainian claims usually pan out.

JOHN RINGO: Principles Are A Grand Thing. “The PRINCIPLES! PRINCIPLES! PRINCIPLES! crowd has been a Conservative Surrender Chorus for as long as I can remember.”

SNOWFALLS ARE NOW JUST A THING OF THE PAST: After 53 Earth Days, Society Still Hasn’t Collapsed.

(Classical reference in headline.)

JONATHAN HAIDT: Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid.

The Democrats have also been hit hard by structural stupidity, though in a different way. In the Democratic Party, the struggle between the progressive wing and the more moderate factions is open and ongoing, and often the moderates win. The problem is that the left controls the commanding heights of the culture: universities, news organizations, Hollywood, art museums, advertising, much of Silicon Valley, and the teachers’ unions and teaching colleges that shape K–12 education. And in many of those institutions, dissent has been stifled: When everyone was issued a dart gun in the early 2010s, many left-leaning institutions began shooting themselves in the brain. And unfortunately, those were the brains that inform, instruct, and entertain most of the country.

Liberals in the late 20th century shared a belief that the sociologist Christian Smith called the “liberal progress” narrative, in which America used to be horrifically unjust and repressive, but, thanks to the struggles of activists and heroes, has made (and continues to make) progress toward realizing the noble promise of its founding. This story easily supports liberal patriotism, and it was the animating narrative of Barack Obama’s presidency. It is also the view of the “traditional liberals” in the “Hidden Tribes” study (11 percent of the population), who have strong humanitarian values, are older than average, and are largely the people leading America’s cultural and intellectual institutions.

But when the newly viralized social-media platforms gave everyone a dart gun, it was younger progressive activists who did the most shooting, and they aimed a disproportionate number of their darts at these older liberal leaders. Confused and fearful, the leaders rarely challenged the activists or their nonliberal narrative in which life at every institution is an eternal battle among identity groups over a zero-sum pie, and the people on top got there by oppressing the people on the bottom. This new narrative is rigidly egalitarian––focused on equality of outcomes, not of rights or opportunities. It is unconcerned with individual rights.

The universal charge against people who disagree with this narrative is not “traitor”; it is “racist,” “transphobe,” “Karen,” or some related scarlet letter marking the perpetrator as one who hates or harms a marginalized group. The punishment that feels right for such crimes is not execution; it is public shaming and social death.

At times, with the full weight of the DNC-MSM behind it: Taylor Lorenz is simply following the new rules of journalism.

READER’S FAVORITE: Pain Free (Revised and Updated Second Edition): A Revolutionary Method for Stopping Chronic Pain. #CommissionEarned

THE POWER LINE WEEK IN PICTURES: Maskless* Edition.

* Offer void in Los Angeles.

HOW THE OTHER .00001 PERCENT LIVE: Onboard Octopus: Interior of Paul Allen’s legendary 126m superyacht unveiled.

REFUSING WHAT WE ARE: THE EVIL OF CHILDREN’S TRANSGENDERISM. It’s difficult for us to acknowledge the enormity of the crime committed against our children because it’s hard for us to acknowledge how deeply we have failed.

Sometimes there is a flash of light so bright that you are compelled to look away. Sometimes a crime is so profound that it is difficult even to name it; to grasp the enormity of it. The recent explosion of transgenderism in children, an affliction currently affecting the lives of more than 1-in-50 young adults and children in Gen Z, is one such instance.

Groomers.

It’s the word of the month, which the Right is applying increasingly to our leftist political establishment.

Perhaps the best response to the groomer debate came from Helena Kirschner, a woman who detransitioned (that is, she spent years as “transgender man” before later accepting her birth sex) and has become an influential voice speaking up against transgender ideology:

“There’s a place for precise terminology,” she tweeted. “There’s also a place for memetic terms that convey a difficult to articulate concept in a way many people can intuitively understand. ‘Groomer’ applied to teachers & other adults who manipulate kids into gender confusion accomplishes this.”

And that is exactly right. It’s difficult for us to acknowledge the enormity of the crime that has been committed against our children because it’s hard for us to acknowledge how deeply we have failed. And it’s hard for us to accept that this crime is taking place with the full support of the leadership of one of America’s major political parties and most of the medical establishment. Indeed, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) banned a group of those skeptical of pediatric transgenderism from even setting up a booth at the latest AAP conference. To acknowledge the depth of the transgender transgression against our children is to stare deep into the void of a society in chaos and moral decay.

Read the whole thing.

Related: New York Times Admits: Experimenting On Trans Kids Has Horrifying, Irreversible Consequences.

I REMEMBER WHEN HIGHER EDUCATION WAS DEFENDED AS FOSTERING FREE THOUGHT: Tulane students form ‘human wall’ to block anti-censorship event.

JIM TREACHER: CNN+ Gets Subtracted.

I propose using CNN+ as a unit of measure. Instead of saying things like, “I’ll be gone for about a month,” you can say, “I’ll be gone for a CNN+.”

“Wow, why is Becky being so crabby?”
“Oh, it’s just her time of the CNN+.”

It’s vulgar and uncharitable to gloat over the failure of an enemy, but hey, I didn’t make CNN blow $300 million on this debacle. I didn’t spend years lying to CNN’s viewers and ruining their brand. I didn’t poach Chris Wallace from Fox News and hire a bunch of other people to work on a project that nobody with half a brain would’ve ever tried.

All those wealthy, powerful people actually convinced themselves anybody wanted this. What an incredible mass self-delusion. What hubris. I can’t wait for the inevitable Hulu miniseries about this humiliating trainwreck.

If it’s anything like HBO’s 1996 film, The Late Shift (on the battle between Jay Leno, David Letterman, and NBC to replace Johnny Carson), I would definitely watch that.

PJ MEDIA VIP ROUNDUP: Don’t forget that VODKAPUNDIT promo code if you’ve been thinking of joining us.

Matt Margolis: Never-Trump Conservatives Keep Proving Their Irrelevancy. “It seems that anti-Trumpism has made Never-Trumpers true pawns of the radical left, making them utterly incapable of producing anything resembling legitimate political analysis. The latest example comes from CNN’s S.E. Cupp, during a recent episode of Unfiltered on CNN.”

Megan Fox: Solving the Groomer School Problem Is Easy. Keep Calm and Sue Everyone! “This is a cult. This is a religion, and it is violating the rights of every student who is not a part of the 🌈 cult. PJ Media reached out to the school for comment and did not hear back in time for publishing. Smart parents have recourse against assaults on reality like this and don’t need laws to make this grooming stop.”

And Of Course: Florida Man Friday: Mike Tyson Says Knock You Out.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: SUNY Prof defends ‘adult-child sex,’ saying ‘I don’t think it’s blanket wrong at any age.’

I remember when Milo Yiannopoulos was un-personed for simply saying that he’d had sex with adults as a teen and didn’t think it had hurt him.

NEXT, THE NAZIS REBRAND AS FRIENDS OF BIG BUSINESS: Communist Party rebrands itself for the ‘future of leftism and communalism.’

WELL, JOHN KERRY: John Kerry called a coward for hiding public records; AG Garland has ‘no comment.’

John Kerry is being called out for his display of “cowardice” for ducking questions about his blatant lack of transparency — while U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland had “no comment” on the matter.

The climate czar and featured guest at an MIT symposium on global warming rushed into an elevator surrounded by bodyguards to avoid the Herald’s questions Thursday. He didn’t address why he still refuses to list details of his office staff.

On Earth Day Friday, one energy advocacy group snapped back.

“Alaska’s families are hurting under Joe Biden’s and John Kerry’s energy failures so … Kerry may be able to duck into elevators behind armed bodyguards to avoid questions, but he can’t avoid the truth,” Rick Whitbeck, Alaska State Director of Power The Future, said in a statement sent to the Herald.

“For Kerry to brazenly kill American job opportunities, then duck FOIA demands, shows his cowardice and negligence toward being responsible to the American public,” Whitbeck added.

Alaska has been hit hard by the move away from fossil fuels. Power The Future bills itself as countering too hard a pivot away from oil.

Kerry said at MIT the private sector needs to help solve climate change.

His office is the first of its kind — but who Kerry employs, their titles, pay and other details sought by the Herald in a Freedom of Information Act request won’t be handed over until October of 2024. His FOIA office said that’s an estimate.

That delay, according to Garland’s own memo to Biden administration bosses and a video he posted on the Department of Justice site, is in clear violation of the sprint of the FOIA law. But his office said they would not wade into the matter Friday.

Garland knows his job is to be a fixer and torpedo for the Democrats. Hence, no wading.

As I’ve said before, not only has Garland’s career as AG shown him unfit for the Supreme Court, it’s also shown him unfit to be Attorney General.

HE DOESN’T QUIT: DeSantis Strikes Twice: Signed Bill Could Prohibit ‘Reimagine Tomorrow’ at Disney World.

ABOUT TIME: Durham’s Investigation Is Finally Getting Interesting: Reading the Clinton tea leaves in the Sussmann prosecution.

Durham and his staff are preparing to try heavyweight Democratic lawyer Michael Sussmann in about three weeks. Plainly, their focus is broader than just the one alleged false statement to the FBI on which Sussmann has been indicted. Durham’s charging documents and court submissions strongly intimate that the Hillary campaign is the fons et origo of the Trump/Russia “collusion” farce that dizzied the country and hamstrung a presidency for two years.

The theory is straightforward: The Clinton campaign, working through its lawyers at Perkins Coie and its “oppo” gourmands at Fusion GPS, ginned up a smear that the Republican presidential nominee and his campaign were Vladimir Putin’s own little KGB cell attempting to take control of the United States government. The Clinton campaign not only peddled this narrative to the media-Democrat complex, which dutifully hyped it; Team Clinton also had operatives, such as Sussmann (a former Justice Department cybersecurity specialist and man-about-Washington), exploit their deep government ties to project the collusion story onto the radar of national-security agencies. This enabled the campaign to claim that concerns about Trump’s nefarious Russia relationship had blossomed into a criminal investigation.

When people are doing something sneaky and potentially illegal — and we should note that defrauding the government is a felony — they often take pains to conceal their connection to it. In miniature, that is what the Sussmann prosecution is about. His alleged lie was the claim that he was bringing derogatory Trump/Russia information to the government not on behalf of any client — just as a good, patriotic citizen and former U.S. national-security official who was trying to help the FBI protect Americans. In reality, Durham alleges, Sussmann was working for the Clinton campaign and Rodney Joffe, a pro-Clinton tech executive who was hoping to score a cybersecurity gig in the anticipated Hillary administration.

But let’s widen the aperture, beyond Sussmann. The interesting question here is not whether Sussmann fibbed to the bureau. It is: Why did the Clinton campaign and Joffe think it necessary to conceal their roles in the scheme?

What does that have to do with the Clintons’ sense of humor?

Well, as is standard before a criminal trial, the parties are now arguing about what evidence the jury will be permitted to hear. On that score, Durham has subpoenaed lots of information from the Clinton campaign, but it has declined to produce it, citing — all together now! — the attorney–client privilege. That’s an amusing touch in a case where the central allegation is Sussmann’s insistence that he was not acting as an attorney for the Clinton campaign.

While Team Clinton’s gambit is at Durham’s expense, the prosecutor is trying to make sure the joke is on Sussmann. For purposes of the trial, Durham has told the court, he may not need the underlying information he has subpoenaed; he just wants to show the jury that Sussmann’s collaborators have tried to withhold it based on the exact attorney–client relationship that Sussmann told the FBI he didn’t have with them.

It’s a tight spot for Sussmann: Unless the court finds some reason to rule in his favor, his only way around this evidence would be to stipulate that he was working for the Clinton campaign when he told the FBI he wasn’t working for the Clinton campaign. That would make for an awfully quick false-statements trial.

The more intriguing thing is the continuing effort by the Clinton camp to conceal relevant communications — hundreds of which, Durham reports, do not even involve a lawyer, much less pertain to confidential legal advice or preparation for litigation. Why the secrecy?

If they really believed Trump was Putin’s puppet, you’d think they’d be anxious for people to see those discussions. They could then say they were just trying to help the FBI with the Alfa Bank story and the Steele dossier — you know, like Sussmann was just trying to help the FBI.

A last thing to think about. Sussmann’s defense counsel say they would like to call Joffe as a witness. But Joffe won’t testify unless he has immunity, and Durham has represented to the court that he will not immunize Joffe because Joffe remains the subject of a criminal investigation.

I have some ideas about what’s going on here.

THE OBLIGATORY “MADISON CAWTHORN LINGERIE PHOTOS SURFACE” POST: “The photos do seem more ‘game on a vacation cruise’ than ‘getting in touch with a softer side of my personality.’ Exit question: Who would have photos of him on a cruise years before he ran for Congress, though? Were they posted on a friend’s Facebook account years ago and discovered by an opponent’s oppo research team? Or are his friends turning on him now too and digging through their archives for stuff to feed to the media?”

UPDATE: When the press says that things “surface,” what it means is that someone dug them up. They use to passive voice to obscure what’s actually going on.

AFTER THE COUNTERREVOLUTION, THE AMNESTY: Delta, United to ‘restore flight privileges’ to no-fly list members who broke mask rules.

WHAT PEOPLE SAY WHEN THEY’RE BREAKING THE LAW: Fauci Says CDC Mandates ‘Should Not Be a Court Issue.’

PROBABLY JUST BECAUSE NO ONE HAS ANY CONFIDENCE IN HIM: Why is Biden polling so poorly on Ukraine?

IS THE NEW YORK TIMES A LIBERAL NEWSPAPER? OF COURSE IT IS. Don McNeil: Dean Baquet, Joe Kahn, Racist Slurs, Twitter and Mao: on Passing the Torch at The New York Times.

The Times has done everything short of admitting it erred. It still occasionally uses the very word that got me ousted, a word it was using in the same month in 2019 I uttered it in Peru. It didn’t punish Bret Stephens for his leaked column calling its decision hypocritical. It canceled the student trips program. It hired John McWhorter as a columnist even though he had trashed the decision to oust me and called it “contemptible.”

The Times has not publicly disputed even one of the 20,000 words I published March 1, 2021, describing what really happened in Peru and during the internal investigations.

Why? Because it knows they’re true. And because of corporate cowardice. The company instantly corrects its reporters’ errors, but it takes decades to admit blunders by its owners (such as ignoring the Holocaust.)

When I started in 1976, The Times was run by a former Marine who cared more about the mission — journalism — than about policing the personalities of his troops. Now it’s run by his grandson, a Brown graduate who believes in safe spaces and race-based capitalization. It once dealt calmly with criticism. Now it panics — even over a tabloid piece based on anonymous quotes from very naive teenagers. It hunts for someone to flog into the street, or uses threats to extract apologies it can issue with a groveling press release. (See below.)

To my mind, that shift began during the Jayson Blair/Judy Miller/Rick Bragg fiascos. The company became addicted to self-mortification. A weekly public editor column meant someone had to be hung out to dry every week, guilty or not.

The company has also hired more and more young elitists who sneer at average Americans. And who get their way by running to the teacher and weeping “I feel unsafe!” I found that tactic baffling when it was used against James Bennet in 2020. Who chooses journalism with an expectation of safety? It’s an incredibly exciting life; it’s not always a safe one — you may be sent to cover wars. I loved it.

Read the whole thing to learn how the sausage is made, but note McNeil’s line that “The company has also hired more and more young elitists who sneer at average Americans.” You’ll be shocked to discover that there are also older elitists who sneer at average Americans” as well at the Times. Including this former employee: Donald McNeil described Americans as ‘selfish pigs’ in email to Fauci. The then-New York Times science writer compared us unfavorably to the average Chinese who ‘behaved incredibly heroically.’

(Classical reference in headline.)