MARK JUDGE: Transgenderism, Jazz Jennings and The Fly.

JOSH BLACKMAN: Higher education faces an inflection point with DEI: Stanford Law School was just the cardinal in the coal mine.

Plus: “In a future writing, I will offer some suggestions of how universities can confine the jurisdiction of DEI officers to prevent a repeat of what happened at Stanford. A preview: faculty who care about academic inquiry will have to get their hands dirty. This juice will be worth the squeeze.”

DEAL OF THE DAY: Panasonic ER430K Nose, Ear and Facial Hair Trimmer. #CommissionEarned

I IDENTIFY AS TIRED OF BULLSHIT: Queer prof realizes she also identifies as disabled.

DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERSECTION OF THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE AND WEIMAR AMERICA: West Texas A&M hit with lawsuit after blocking student drag show.

WELL, STANFORD: ‘Critical Consciousness’ certificate offered to Stanford STEM students: Stanford offers certification ‘grounded in critical theory and Black feminism’.

LIGHTNING DEAL: USB Wall Charger Surge Protector. #CommissionEarned

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: U.S. Weapons Stockpile Disaster Limiting Our Ability To Deter China In Taiwan: It’s so bad now, even the New York Times is reporting about it.

When pronouns are a higher priority than the supply stuff that wins wars.

ENDORSED:

JONATHAN S. TOBIN: Don’t believe the Jimmy Carter revisionists.

The stock of historical figures rises and falls with the changing times that follow them. That is especially true for presidents. Examples of these top leaders whose reputations have risen and fallen in succeeding generations abound. Some who exit office with low popularity ratings wind up being thought of with respect once the immediate political circumstances pass, and both historians and the public are able to judge their achievements with more dispassion.

The most outstanding example of this phenomenon is Harry Truman, who was deeply unpopular when his presidency ended due to the inconclusive and bloody Korean War, a sagging economy and the nation’s weariness with the Democrats after 20 years of their rule in Washington. But within a few decades, Truman’s reputation would soar. He would come to be appreciated for his postwar leadership against Soviet expansionism and for his plain-spoken style that at the time was judged as something of a letdown after the patrician bearing and soaring style of Franklin Roosevelt, whom he had succeeded. The most recent C-SPAN poll of historians now ranks Truman as the sixth greatest president in history—a development that few but his closest associates would have believed possible when he left the White House in 1953.

Supporters of former President Jimmy Carter are hoping that posterity will treat him in a similar treatment. And with the 39th president now in hospice at his Georgia home and the world anticipating the sad news of the end of his life, the campaign to revive his reputation is already in full swing. In the last month since the news about his terminal illness was released, articles and opinion pieces boosting the 98-year-old and attempting to depict his single term in office as both underappreciated and unfairly attacked have proliferated.

And with the help of one of the men who gave us Rathergate in 2004, the spin has already begun! Malaise Memory Loss:

“Now, as far as whether the hostages would have been released before the election, whether Jimmy Carter would have won, that is unknowable.” And as the New York Times story concedes, “Confirming [Ben] Barnes’s account is problematic,” mostly because William Casey died in 1987 and John Connally passed away in 1993.

John B. Connally III, eldest son of the former governor, told Rolling Stone he disagreed with Barnes’ account. He accompanied his father to a meeting with Reagan and said there was no mention of any message to the Iranians. The hostage deal “doesn’t sound like my dad,” Connally said. “It’s not consistent with my memory of the trip.”

The story all hinges on the word of Barnes, a former Texas lieutenant governor and vice chairman of John Kerry’s 2004 election campaign. So, as Daniel McCarthy writes, “people less sophisticated than a Times White House correspondent might classify partisanship as an obvious motive.”

With Carter, 98, entering hospice care, Barnes set out to change the narrative of the Carter presidency—a rather tall order. As Alter concedes, “there were a number of other factors in 1980, including a wretched economy,” which is true. On Carter’s watch, the “misery index” a combination of inflation and unemployment, topped out at 21.98. Instead of his own inept presidency, the Georgia Democrat blamed the people.

“The symptoms of this crisis of the American spirit are all around us,” Carter said on July 15, 1979. “For the first time in the history of our country, a majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years. Two-thirds of our people do not even vote. The productivity of American workers is actually dropping, and the willingness of Americans to save for the future has fallen below that of all other people in the Western world.”

And so on.

Ezra Klein, formerly of The American Prospect and now with the New York Times, began the Carter rehabilitation tour way back in 2009 by trying to explain how, ackchyually, his “Malaise Speech” really wasn’t such a bad moment after all.

HMM: Functional Neurological Disorder Emerges After COVID Infection, Vaccines. “Patients with functional neurologic disorder (FND) after SARS-CoV-2 infection had different symptoms than people with FND after COVID vaccines, retrospective data showed.”

FASTER, PLEASE: The Tide Is Turning Against Big Trans.

American progressives have a tradition of citing liberal Europe as a guiding beacon of liberty and tolerance. But they’re out of luck this time. Countries with long, continuous ties to old-world faiths and traditions are more resistant to a postmodern reality reset than we are. World Athletics, after all, was founded in Sweden and is currently based in Monaco. World Aquatics, which last year banned athletes who experienced male puberty from competing with females, is headquartered in Budapest. And it based its policy in part on a joint statement by the International Federation of Sports Medicine and the European Federation of Sports Medicine Associations, which said, “high testosterone concentrations…confer a baseline advantage for athletes in certain sports.”

When it comes to so-called gender-affirming care for children, Europe has also begun to wise up. Last year, England’s National Health Service closed down Tavistock, its sole child gender-identity clinic, after a review determined that its “unquestioning affirmative approach” to transitioning kids was potentially more harmful than beneficial. This approach, which the review notes “originated in the USA,” involves prescribing puberty-blockers, hormones, and other medical treatments that can cause lifelong sexual dysfunction and raise the risk of certain cancers. That’s to say nothing of the many tragic outcomes of gender-reassignment surgery. In the past few years, Sweden and Finland have also imposed greater restrictions on “gender-affirming” care for children.

If you’re an American who can still recall the contours of pre–Caitlyn Jenner reality, it may seem is if the country has gone too far off the deep end to come back. Research commissioned by Reuters found that some “121,882 children ages 6 to 17 were diagnosed with gender dysphoria in the five years to the end of 2021,” and “more than 42,000 of those children were diagnosed just last year, up 70% from 2020.” In the same period, 17,683 children started puberty-blockers or hormones. And this is undercounting as these tallies “don’t include children whose records did not specify a gender dysphoria diagnosis or whose treatment wasn’t covered by insurance.”

But, as with other causes that seem to seize the national conscience overnight, a public reckoning follows. Like defunding the police, “gender-affirming” the children is now unpopular. This month, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 61 percent of Americans, and 66 percent of political independents, “prefer a [presidential] candidate who opposes allowing medical treatment for minors related to gender identity.”

Related: Mark Judge explores “Transgenderism, Jazz Jennings and The Fly.”

Watching The Fly, it was remarkable how many parallels there were to the transgender cult. After his “transformation” in the teleportation pod, Seth Brundle has a period of euphoria and off-the-chart confidence. His libido is boundless, he can work out for hours, picks up women easily and defeats men who seem much stronger. He “loves who he is.” When someone asks if he’s a body builder, he says yes: “I build bodies then I tear them apart.”

It’s not enough for Seth to have done the experiment; everyone else has to affirm it — and even do it themselves. Seth’s mania, his pushiness that will not tolerate dissent, is a precursor to the angry, shouting, modern trans activists.

Then, reality sets in. Something is wrong with Seth’s body. He’s growing sharp hairs on his back, an ear falls off, his skin takes on ridges and teeth randomly pop out. It echoes the nightmarish medical consultations that happen after Jennings’ grotesque surgeries.

At her talk at the Heritage Foundation I attended, Chloe Cole said she sometimes saw herself as “a monster.” Jazz says something similar: “Sometimes my mind is just a monster.” Then a friend of Jazz’s puts it more bluntly: “I know some people that after they did their transition just went crazy.” But these people aren’t the monsters in this story. Save that term for their parents, their doctors, and our callous Dr. Frankenstein elites.

Still though, good money can be found in the performative arts: Dylan Mulvaney is now doing speaking engagements for $30K–$60K a pop.

CHANGE: Conservative Rising Star Mark Robinson to Announce Run for Governor of North Carolina: “Should he run and win, Robinson will become the first black governor in the state’s history.”

I like what I’ve seen of this guy.

JAMES TARANTO: Brian Kemp, Georgia’s Affable Culture Warrior.

In April 2020, businesses in Georgia were shuttered by government decree as in most of the rest of the country. Mr. Kemp was hearing from desperate entrepreneurs: “ ‘Look man, we’re losing everything we’ve got. We can’t keep doing this.’ And I really felt like there was a lot of people fixin’ to revolt against the government.”

The Trump administration “had that damn graph or matrix or whatever that you had to fit into to be able to do certain things,” Mr. Kemp recalls. “Your cases had to be going down and whatever. Well, we felt like we met the matrix, and so I decided to move forward and open up.” He alerted Vice President Mike Pence, who headed the White House’s coronavirus task force, before publicly announcing his intentions on April 20.

That afternoon Mr. Trump called Mr. Kemp, “and he was furious.” Mr. Kemp recounts the conversation as follows:

“Look, the national media’s all over me about letting you do this,” Mr. Trump said. “And they’re saying you don’t meet whatever.”

Mr. Kemp replied: “Well, Mr. President, we sent your team everything, and they knew what we were doing. You’ve been saying the whole pandemic you trust the governors because we’re closest to the people. Just tell them you may not like what I’m doing, but you’re trusting me because I’m the governor of Georgia and leave it at that. I’ll take the heat.”

“Well, see what you can do,” the president said. “Hair salons aren’t essential and bowling alleys, tattoo parlors aren’t essential.”

“With all due respect, those are our people,” Mr. Kemp said. “They’re the people that elected us. They’re the people that are wondering who’s fighting for them. We’re fixin’ to lose them over this, because they’re about to lose everything. They are not going to sit in their basement and lose everything they got over a virus.”

Mr. Trump publicly attacked Mr. Kemp: “He went on the news at 5 o’clock and just absolutely trashed me. . . . Then the local media’s all over me—it was brutal.” The president was still holding daily press briefings on Covid. “After running over me with the bus on Monday, he backed over me on Tuesday,” Mr. Kemp says. “I could either back down and look weak and lose all respect with the legislators and get hammered in the media, or I could just say, ‘You know what? Screw it, we’re holding the line. We’re going to do what’s right.’ ” He chose the latter course. “Then on Wednesday, him and [Anthony] Fauci did it again, but at that point it didn’t really matter. The damage had already been done there, for me anyway.”

The damage healed quickly once businesses began reopening on Friday, April 24. Mr. Kemp quotes a state lawmaker who said in a phone call: “I went and got my hair cut, and the lady that cuts my hair wanted me to tell you—and she started crying when she told me this story—she said, ‘You tell the governor I appreciate him reopening, to allow me to make a choice, because . . . if I’d have stayed closed, I had a 95% chance of losing everything I’ve ever worked for. But if I open, I only had a 5% chance of getting Covid. And so I decided to open, and the governor gave me that choice.’ ”

At that point, Florida was still shut down. Mr. DeSantis issued his first reopening order on April 29, nine days after Mr. Kemp’s. On April 28, the Florida governor had visited the White House, where, as CNN reported, “he made sure to compliment the President and his handling of the crisis, praise Trump returned in spades.”

Three years later, here’s the thanks Mr. DeSantis gets: This Wednesday Mr. Trump issued a statement excoriating “Ron DeSanctimonious” as “a big Lockdown Governor on the China Virus.” As Mr. Trump now tells the tale, “other Republican Governors did MUCH BETTER than Ron and, because I allowed them this ‘freedom,’ never closed their States. Remember, I left that decision up to the Governors!”

Exit quote: “Like Mr. DeSantis, Mr. Kemp, 59, was elected narrowly in 2018 and re-elected handily in 2022.”

SCIENCE: Leslie Eastman: Narrative Science Squanders Talent and Resources Away from Real, Earth-Saving Science.

BREAKING: FAA Nominee Phil Washington Withdraws His Nomination.

JOHN HINDERAKER: Beware of liberals bearing bugs. “When I tell people that liberals are working on substituting insects for meat, they often think I am imagining things. But it is true. The beachhead is “flour.” You can dry insects, turn them into powder, and put the powder into foods. This is actually starting to become common.”