Author Archive: Ed Driscoll

June 7, 2026

21st CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: HelloFresh Crosses Line With Repulsive Pride Month Ad. It’s Sickening.

Meal-kit delivery giant HelloFresh is facing backlash after publishing a Pride Month advertisement that many critics described as vulgar and unnecessarily sexual.

The company, which delivers pre-portioned ingredients, recipes, and cooking instructions directly to customers, posted the ad on social media Thursday as part of its Pride Month marketing campaign.

“We know that eating isn’t always a top priority this month,” the company wrote. “We respect that. But for those of you who are … prepping … we have an extensive lineup of high-fiber recipes available. Happy Pride.”

The post is a reference to anal sex and preparation for sexual activity. The company further amplified the “joke” by using a suggestive promotional code from a commenter. “Use code BOTTOMSUP for a Pride Month discount,” the company wrote.

Exit quote: “The advertisement drew sharp criticism on X, where users questioned why a food company was making explicit sexual jokes as part of its Pride Month promotion.”

50 years ago, Saturday Night Live had a ‘Weekend Update’ joke that went, “Brought to you by Hershey Highway: the candy that’s turned America’s taste around for fifty years.” Today, Hello Fresh is basically using that as an actual slogan. Welcome to Weimar America.

Posted at 2:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 7th, 2026

SCOTT PELLEY BREAKS DOWN, COMPARES 60 MINUTES FIRINGS TO ‘FAMILY’ BEING MURDERED IN LUDICROUS NEW INTERVIEW:

Jobless news veteran Scott Pelley broke down in tears as he claimed the hysterical tirade that got him fired from “60 Minutes” was a response to the “murders” of his “family” in a “Black Thursday massacre” at the show.

Pelley, 68, broke down several times during an interview with the New York Times as he discussed for the first time being axed from CBS News after nearly four decades at the network.

He conceded that he had been hyperbolic to accuse new network boss Bari Weiss of murdering “60 Minutes” — just to go even further, claiming it was the staff themselves that she murdered.

“It’s like your spouse being murdered,” he said at one point of the rejigging of staff with newcomers in to take charge at the show.

“No one saw the Black Thursday massacre coming,” Pelley told the paper of the network laying off senior staff, including executive producer Tanya Simon.

“The night before, Tanya and I were at the Emmy Awards, and we won two Emmys. Within hours, all of those people have been wiped out, and one-third of our correspondents have been fired,” he said.

“My colleagues and I have worked together 10, 20, 30 years. We travel together. We dine together. We go into literal combat together,” Pelley continued.

“So, these bonds are pretty tight, and when somebody wipes out, murders, a large number of your family members, people are desperate for some explanation, and as you and I sit here today, there still has been none,” he said.

Here you go, Scott: Bye-Bye Scott! The Worst of CBS 60 Minutes Correspondent Pelley.

Pelley on Iranian Dictator: “Genuinely Humble” “No Fancy Clothes, Fancy Cars” “Absolutely Incorruptible” 

“He [Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad] is genuinely religious, genuinely humble, there are no fancy clothes, fancy cars, he lives with his wife and his three children. They live in an apartment in Tehran. He is a very modest man and said to be absolutely incorruptible as well, he’s a fascinating character.”
— Scott Pelley discussing his interview with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on CBS’s Early Show, September 24, 2007. 

Republicans Just Like Timothy McVeigh

“In April, terrorists tried to kill them. Today, politicians stopped their paychecks. In Oklahoma City’s Social Security office, they’re being ordered to work for nothing.”
— Correspondent Scott Pelley reporting on the government shutdown on CBS Evening News, January 2, 1996. 

 Meanwhile, here’s Pelley himself. Biased? CBS News? What on earth are you talking about?

As Glenn wrote in his latest Substack: Scott Pelley Is Out. So What? “Pelley was a big shot in the media world when he sat atop a big CBS operation. But even then he mattered a lot less in the real world than he thought. He will no longer be such a big shot anywhere after he’s gone. Just ask Keith Olbermann. If you can find him.”

UPDATE:

Tweet concludes, “To act as if this claim about bias is controversial, let alone inaccurate, shows that he’s either a liar, an imbecile, or so deeply incurious and tunnel-visioned that you don’t belong anywhere near any job involving information discernment. But he’s got that familiar anchor voice, so we’re supposed to act like he’s not being a complete clown. Give me a break. You people are a mess.”

Posted at 1:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 7th, 2026

SUSAN COLLINS: HISTORY’S GREATEST MONSTER!

Posted at 12:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 7th, 2026

THURSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM: ‘How Is This Real?’ Scott Pelley’s Post-Firing Instagram Pic Sparks More Than a Few Eye Rolls.

UPDATE:

Flashback: CBS’s Scott Pelley Loses a Fight Rigged in his Favor.

Mike Cernovich: [Hillary] had a seizure and froze up walking into her motorcade that day caught by a citizen journalist.

Scott Pelley: Did you, well, she had pneumonia. I mean –

Mike Cernovich: How do you know?

Scott Pelley: Well, because that’s what was reported.

Mike Cernovich: By whom? Who told you that?

Scott Pelley: Well, the campaign told us that.

Mike Cernovich: Why would you trust a campaign?

Evergreen:

 

Posted at 11:30 am by Ed Driscoll on Jun 7th, 2026

50 YEARS AFTER THE BATTLE OF YAVIN, THE TURBO-LASERS FALL SILENT: Welcoming the death of Star Wars. 

Some of us cinephiles are breathing a sigh of relief. “Finally,” we think, “we may be free of this thing.” We know that, in the end, Star Wars was a blight on American cinema, a 50-year disease that killed the last golden age of movies and polluted the art form for what seemed to be forever.

I do not say this with any happiness. Like most children of my generation—the tail end of Generation X—I adored Star Wars as a child, and when I watch the original film, I still feel some of the youthful joy I first experienced at the age of three.

But when I became a man, or simply a teenager, I put away childish things. I realized Star Wars was, in the end, a fairly shallow children’s film, and there were works infinitely greater to discover, from The Godfather to The 400 Blows to Citizen Kane to DW Griffith’s Intolerance and Buster Keaton’s masterpieces. There was all the vast history of the art form, yet for so many, its richness had been buried by Star Wars and the empty blockbuster industry it founded.

This was no better illustrated than by the fate of the era from which Star Wars emerged: the great and fleeting moment of the 1970s New Hollywood. Kicked off by Bonnie and Clyde and Easy Rider, this era moved us through The Godfather, Chinatown, Taxi Driver, and numerous other masterpieces before its brutal last gasp with Martin Scorsese’s transcendent Raging Bull. In that era, movies were daring, ferocious, and above all, better than anything that had come out of Hollywood since its previous Golden Age of the 1930s and ‘40s.

Though they sowed the seeds of their own destruction, as James Lileks wrote 20 years ago:

And what an ending, eh? Han Solo — Harrison Ford in his first great relaxed performance, and his last — conquers his selfishness and redeems himself. Luke uses the Force — which is sort of like magnetism, plus ethics — and blows up Peter Cushing and his Death Star, along with untold engineers, support staff, kitchen workers, etc. The movie could have ended there, but no: It concluded with an awards ceremony. At the shank end of the post-Vietnam, post-Watergate, Carter-era malaise and ennui, Lucas filmed a movie that ended with a princess giving medals to heroes.

After a generation of movies with tortured antiheroes who couldn’t order a sandwich without making A Statement, it seemed remarkably fresh.

It saved science fiction. You could argue that “Star Wars” saved “Star Trek” as well; the success of the movie had everyone greenlighting space operas now, and the first Trek movie — a long, serious film by the director of “West Side Story” — was released a while later, leading to three more decades of Trek.

Fast-forward to 2026. As Will Jordan, aka the Critical Drinker, told an interviewer from GBNews recently, “I don’t know where [Disney goes] from here. ultimately they might be better off just trying to sell off the [Star Wars] IP to someone else because they’re not turning a profit from it.”

On the other hand, there’s one more cash grab left for Disney, and I’m eagerly looking forward to contributing to their coffers: “Disney has announced that it will be releasing the original theatrical version of the original Star Wars in theaters once again on February 19.”

Posted at 8:45 am by Ed Driscoll on Jun 7th, 2026

ROGER KIMBALL: O Brave New World.

Has Kathy Hochul, the Governor of New York, finally caught up with Aldous Huxley? We’ll find out very soon. A bill passed by the New York House and Senate just made it to the governor’s desk. She has ten days to sign it into law. The bill would require proceedings in state family court, child custody cases, and other domestic concerns scrap the words “mother” with the phrase “gestating parent” and “father” with “non-gestating parent.”

This little piece of linguistic insanity is a sop to the pathetic coven of woke sexual exotics who place biology high up on their list of impermissible intrusions into their narcissistic claims of unfettered autonomy. The whole machinery of reproduction, with its tiresome “binaries” and static gender roles, is something they regard with a mixture of resentment and horror.

Huxley predicted some such rebellion in his novel Brave New World.

Read the whole thing.

Flashback to 2022, when Van Jones was a rare voice of sanity amongst his fellow leftists: ‘I’ve Never Met A LatinX:’ CNN’s Van Jones Tears Into Left-Wing Rhetoric.

He said the elites use strange rhetoric that does not appeal to working class voters.

“Those people talk funny,” he continued. “I’ve never met a LatinX, I’ve never met a BIPOC … There’s this weird stuff that all these highly educated people say. It’s bizarre, nobody talks that way at the barbershop, the nail salon, the grocery store, the community center. But that’s how we talk now, so that’s weird.”

He added that Democrats are “overpromising” the lower class on economic issues, such as on reparations.

CNN’s John Berman asked about the reaction from national Democrats to Van Jones’ points. He said Democrats need to focus on issues that appeal to black and Hispanic church goers that primarily relate to family and economics.

“I think there is a penalty to pay if you don’t go along with the normal narrative,” Van Jones replied. “The normal narrative has been [that] all black and brown people hate racists, all Republicans are racist, so all black and brown voters are going to vote for Democrats. All of that doesn’t make sense in the real world. All Republicans are not racist and Republican appeals are not just racial, some of them are economic, some of them cultural, and all black and brown folks are not liberals.”

All the left have to do is not be crazy, and as we’re seeing between their Orwellian language choices, Communist rhetoric, and Nazi tats, they can’t even do that.

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll on Jun 7th, 2026

QUESTION ASKED: How bad will white rage get?

Is this the week that white identity in Britain has emerged as a significant political force?

The conviction of Henry Nowak’s killer and the release of police bodycam footage showing the 18-year-old student’s final moments in police custody have sparked outrage from politicians and the public.

The tragic loss of Nowak’s life was dramatically compounded by the injustice that led to it. Here was an innocent young man who died as a result of an aggressor using false allegations of a racist attack – and of the police swallowing those lies, and acting on them to the extent that they ignored Nowak’s desperate cries that he had been stabbed and couldn’t breathe.

For many, the officers’ decision to immediately accept Vickrum Digwa’s version of events was grim evidence of the “two-tier” justice system that has evolved, thanks to a state obsession with diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) above all else.

Nigel Farage went as far as to say that Nowak had been “killed by DEI”, his murder acting as a “watershed moment” to confront “a two-tier culture where some groups receive greater protection than others”. “Henry’s family have responded to this in just the most extraordinarily dignified way,” Farage added. “But I suggest the rest of us respond to this with pure, cold rage.”

Farage predicted that “the division will get far worse”, saying that violent protests in Southampton were “the beginning. If we get large numbers of young white males who think the police are prejudiced against them, goodness knows where we go. This has to end”.

From the Left-wing point of view, this is tantamount to instigating a race war. Sir Keir Starmer accused Farage of “exploiting this tragedy to create grievance and division”.

Keir knows quite a lot about exploiting a tragedy to create grievance and division: George Floyd death: Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer takes a knee in support of Black Lives Matter movement.

Fast-forward to 2026, and naturally of course, Starmer’s deputy prime minister punts when asked: ‘Would You Take the Knee for Henry Nowak?’

Curiously though, everyday British people aren’t taking his advice:

Earlier: How America’s Racial Politics Poisoned Britain.

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll on Jun 7th, 2026

June 6, 2026

JENNIFER LOPEZ: “You have to be born in New York to be a New Yorker!”

“So what’s your take?”

That’s Kareem Rahma’s signature question on his buzzy video series SubwayTakes, and he lobbed the question in Jennifer Lopez’s direction on a brand new episode. The veteran superstar, who is in the middle of promoting her new Netflix romantic comedy Office Romance opposite Brett Goldstein, shot back a take that went viral in short order.

“You have to be born in New York to be a New Yorker,” said the “Jenny From the Block” singer who hit the block after being born in the Bronx to Puerto Rican parents. “Everybody wants to claim our city, but you have to be born in New York. You have to be born in one of the five boroughs to be a New Yorker.”

Exit question:

Posted at 5:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 6th, 2026

JONATHAN TURLEY: Eight years after Kavanaugh, Democrats have stopped believing all women.

Long after the Senate confirmed Kavanaugh, the left continued to claim that his presence on the Supreme Court “rests on a mountain of misogyny.” In Ms. Magazine, actress Kathleen Turner reminded people that not believing women was furthering misogyny: “Survivors who come forward break the rules of silence a sexist society demands, and society expects them to pay a price.”

If you recall, the lack of evidence led to the Senate Judiciary Committee combing through Kavanaugh’s personal calendars. Denials that such a thing had ever happened, coming from childhood friends, were treated as still more evidence of sexism.

There was Sen. Shelton Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who grilled Kavanaugh about using the term “boofing” (apparently referring to passing gas) with a high school friend as if it were a confession to a rape. His inquisitorial barrage was something straight out of the McCarthy period.

Whitehouse expressed disgust that some would not take Ford’s word for it, declaring, “Today I stand with women who are brave enough to come forward with their stories of abuse and mistreatment. They deserve to be heard and credible allegations must be investigated. We must believe survivors, not bully them.”

Whitehouse is now a major donor and supporter of Graham Platner, the leading Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate from Maine. He dismisses the New York Times accounts from women of Platner’s physically and mentally abusive behavior. Instead of believing these women, he reportedly attacked Lyndsey Fifield, who “bravely” came forward publicly with her story at the request of Times reporters.

Whitehouse is quoted as saying that he was “unimpressed” by the allegations and the multiple women coming forward “seems like a lot of nothing.” He suggested that he is not prepared to believe a woman if she is a conservative. “I mean, the only one who had anything to say that seemed ‘unsettling’ was a woman who works for right-wing political operations,” he said.

To be fair, I’m not surprised that someone who was accused of belonging to an all-white beach club likes the cut of the jib the Oystergruppenführer.

Related: As Norman Podhoretz wrote in 2007, “Do you realize that every young person in this room is a tragedy to some family or other?”

 

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 6th, 2026

THE WAY THE WORLD WORKS:

(Classical reference in headline.)

Posted at 4:44 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 6th, 2026

THE IRONY OF GRAHAM PLATNER’S CAMPAIGN:

Most people don’t know this, but the rise of Graham Platner wasn’t remotely organic, and there is almost nothing real about his origin story or his campaign.

Jim Geraghty did a superb job explaining the process by which a wealthy, mentally unstable guy who was kicked out of an exclusive private school and who bragged about how he went off to war because he wanted to kill people was transformed into a working-class everyman oyster farmer.

Platner was handpicked, groomed, artificially constructed, promoted through a sophisticated public relations campaign, and elevated to superstar status.

Read the whole thing; incidentally, AI image creation is getting increasingly sophisticated. For a split-second, I thought this was a real photo, although “Bernie’s” face looks more like it should be in Madame Tussauds:

Bernie going all-in on Platner recalls Kevin Williamson’s 2015 NRO piece: Bernie’s Strange Brew of Nationalism and Socialism.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN):

Posted at 4:32 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 6th, 2026

QUESTION ASKED:

Posted at 12:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 6th, 2026

WELL, THAT’S ONE WAY TO ELOPE: Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce to marry at NYC’s iconic Madison Square Garden.

Here comes the bride … in Midtown!

Multiple sources tell Page Six that Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s wedding will take place at Madison Square Garden, home of the Knicks, Rangers and numerous concerts, including Swift’s.

“Everyone’s been sworn to secrecy,” said one source.

A rep for MSG did not respond to request for comment.

Page Six previously exclusively reported that the pop superstar and Kansas City Chiefs tight end, both 36, are planning to tie the knot in New York over July 3 weekend.

A source tells us that when it came to picking a place for the high-profile occasion “privacy was of number one importance to them both.

The source added that the potential plan would involve guests being transported to the venue on blacked-out buses and taking advantage of MSG’s multiple entrances and highly secure infrastructure.

While it seems an odd choice for a ceremony, a source tells us “If you have billions you can transform the space into a wedding venue.”

Prior to Sydney Sweeney being their designated Bund Deutscher Mädel fraulein du jour, the DNC-MSM would have had lots of fun with this story during Trump’s first term:

Posted at 10:45 am by Ed Driscoll on Jun 6th, 2026

BYE CHICAGO! Bears announce major step toward Indiana stadium.

The Chicago Bears took another step toward a potential move across state lines.

The Bears’ board of directors voted on June 4 to move forward with a potential stadium in Hammond, Indiana, at a site still to be determined, the team announced on June 5.

“We believe a world-class stadium project in Hammond will transform the region, connecting Northwest Indiana to the South Side of Chicago through the Loop and across neighborhoods and suburbs stretching north of the city,” Bears chairman George H. McCaskey and team president and CEO Kevin Warren said in a statement. “It will bring Chicagoland together and deliver new opportunities to its residents and businesses.”

Related: Old and Busted: Seize the Means of Production.

The New Commie-ness? Sieze the Means of the Play-Action Pass!

 

 

Posted at 8:15 am by Ed Driscoll on Jun 6th, 2026

CHRISTIAN TOTO: MeToo Starlets Silent on Chilling Graham Platner Accusations.

Senatorial hopeful Graham Platner may be the most flawed candidate in modern memory.

  • Nazi tattoo? Check
  • Misleading voters about the nature of said tattoo? Check
  • Gross comments about his fellow soldiers? Check
  • Damning dating profile on a sickening platform? Check
  • Sexting other women while married? Check
  • Forcing his wife to defend him on video? Check

That’s a partial list. And it just expanded to include physical assault allegations, according to the far-Left New York Times.

Exit questions: “So where are the comments? The Tweets? The Instagram Posts? The press conference comments decrying Platner’s alleged actions?”

And the answer:

As Jim Treacher wrote on Thursday: Dems Finally Admit They’re Nazis.

Posted at 7:44 am by Ed Driscoll on Jun 6th, 2026

ABE GREENWALD: The AI-to-AI Economy.

A friend of mine recently got laid off from his job at a large firm. Wasting no time, he immediately started hunting down and applying for available positions. The thing was, almost all his initial application letters were swiftly rejected. “I realized I was dealing with AI, not humans,” he told me. The vast majority of big corporations screen job applications with AI platforms trained to search for specific phrases that indicate a candidate’s desirability or undesirability. It’s up to the AI to put you through to the next phase or give you the thumbs down.

So my friend changed his approach, and he started getting interviews. “What did you do differently?” I asked. The answer: “Every application is now written by AI on my end before I send it.”

I was chilled by the notion of my highly capable friend having to employ one lifeless machine to speak to another on his behalf in hopes of getting a foot in the door. I then learned that everyone does it that way now.

Dystopias, real and imagined, aren’t just cold, nightmarish places. And they’re not shaped merely by evil ideas. The most overlooked aspect of dystopian worlds is the dumbness that settles at their core, the incredible stupidity of the schemes that people are roped into.

Still though, could be worse: PJTV alum James Poulos on “The Doomer Delusion:”

The celebrity atheist Richard Dawkins, author of “The God Delusion,” recently caused a stir on social media by confessing a sort of love for the Claude model he interacts with, which he calls Claudia. “If my friend Claudia is not conscious,” he enthused, “then what the hell is consciousness for?”

The cringe-inducing spectacle of a credentialed scientific authority acting like the nerd version of a hormonal teenager — “when I am talking to these astonishing creatures, I totally forget that they are machines,” he gushed — quickly triggered an ongoing wave of predictable mockery. “The king of the Reddit atheists has been duped by the magic midwit machine,” one poster groaned. “Incredible.”

Yet far be it from me to pile on. Rhapsodies to consciousness like Dawkins’ aren’t funny so much as sad. The enchanting attribute is so notoriously hard to define that even super-smart consciousness lovers like Dawkins are prone to define consciousness tautologically (and dangerously) as being whatever smart-enough conscious people such as themselves act like it is.

Comedian Jimmy Carr told Joe Rogan last year:

CARR: My hot take on AI is we were not made in God’s image, but we so wanted there to be a God, we made one in our image. So if you think about the attributes of AI, it’s all-knowing, all-powerful, can perform miracles, it lives in a cloud. Sorry, is that God or AI?

ROGAN Wow. Yeah, it’s interesting. Especially emerging, it’s an emerging God.  It’s not even done growing yet.

CARR: At the moment, it’s the Oracle of Delphi.

ROGAN: It’s like a 10-year-old right now though. It’s not even an adult.

CARR: Yeah and then where’s it going to? So the idea of like the interesting thing about AI is it’s the the gap between me and who’s the smartest guy we know, Eric Weinstein. Mm-hmm. Used to be enormous and the gap is getting smaller because AI can just I can ask it.

ROGAN Yeah bitch, I got all the answers right here!

CARR: It’s weird what’s going on you know I had a gag about it about it, a bit about [how] in our universities you know the students are using AI to write their essays and then the tutors are using AI to mark the essays and then after three years AI gets the job. It actually seems very fair.

ROGAN: Yeah it’s probably what’s going to happen. What you’re saying is very funny. It’s like, it is accurate though. It does seem to resemble a god. Well, I wonder… Do you know who Marshall McLuhan is?

CARR: Of course, the Canadian [philosopher.]

ROGAN: He had one of the great lines of all time. “…human beings are the sex organs of the machine world.”

Dawkins may be taking that notion just a bit too literally.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): You could write a book on this.

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll on Jun 6th, 2026

June 5, 2026

CAMPAIGN AUTOPSY? James Carville gave Democrats the only one they needed.

The ongoing furor about the Democratic National Committee’s deeply flawed and incomplete autopsy of the 2024 presidential election has been misplaced. Democrats already had an autopsy report — one delivered in pithy if brutal fashion not long after the election.

That autopsy was provided by the crusty Democrat strategist, James Carville, who in late January 2025 likened the candidacy of Vice President Kamala Harris to a “seventh-string quarterback” playing in the Super Bowl.

“Now that’s what happened, okay?” Carville declared in an appearance on PBS “Firing Line.” “You can’t address a problem unless you’re honest about a problem.”

Of course, Carville neglected to mention that he had predicted a Harris victory. In fact, he  said in August 2024 that it was more likely Harris would win by 5 points than that Trump would win by 1.5 points. The latter is what actually what ended up happening, and of course, Trump carried the Electoral College, 312 to 226.

Even so, Carville’s “seventh-string quarterback” post-mortem, unsparing as it was, possesses considerable explanatory power. It was a moment of analytical clarity, a metaphor for the many mistakes and clumsiness that hobbled Harris’s campaign. It also stands as a relevant lesson for Democrats in choosing a presidential candidate in 2028 — a race in which Harris, according to some recent polls, is the frontrunner.

But probably not for long. Just ask former Presidents Howard Dean and Rudy Giuliani.

Posted at 5:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 5th, 2026

LOCAL MAN ENJOYS AIRLINE AMENITIES:

Posted at 5:15 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 5th, 2026

BETTER DEAD THAN RUDE: “I Was Sacked From Police for Questioning Islam.”

A Christian police support officer was sacked after he asked questions about Islam in a diversity training session. The Telegraph has the story.

Luke Salmons lost his job as a police community support officer (PCSO) with the North Yorkshire force and was barred from policing after a conversation about Gaza with a Muslim officer.

He later won an appeal against his dismissal but has never received an apology from the force where he said a “culture of fear” existed among officers who were terrified of being fired for saying the wrong thing.

Salmons, 46, told the Telegraph that a training day on race, religion and culture turned into an “indoctrination” session as trainers chanted “Islam is a religion of peace” and discussed white privilege.

Having been encouraged to ask questions in what staff were told was a safe space, he asked a Muslim officer about his views on terrorist attacks by Islamist groups including Hamas. The officer happily discussed the issue with him and invited him to chat further over coffee after the session.

But within two days he had been suspended for gross misconduct by an inspector who told him: “I don’t like your beliefs.”

Salmons told the Telegraph: “I loved my job and I was good at it. I was well respected as a PCSO and my colleagues said they loved working with me and couldn’t understand what was happening.

“But an overzealous inspector took against me and that was the end of my career, even though I had done nothing wrong.”

On Thursday, the Telegraph reported how police officers in the force that failed Henry Nowak felt “controlled and pressured” during diversity training.

Related: JD Vance goes out on a limb: Vance blames Nowak murder on ‘migrant invasion.’

(Classical reference in headline.)

Posted at 4:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 5th, 2026

21st CENTURY HEADLINES: How to Raise ‘AI-Native’ Kids.

Across the country, we’re living through a moment of intense skepticism toward tech-forward childhoods. When it comes to phones, the received wisdom is that they’re bad for kids: Just last month, Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced a surgeon general’s advisory against screen time; at least 35 states have now banned cell phone use in school. At home, many parents are embracing analog devices to shelter their children from the tyranny of app addiction at an early age.

“I’m decent at AI, and my 12-year-old is just passing me rapidly,” Scharf said.

And now, the age of the AI revolution is sparking fresh suspicions. Some parents are petitioning schools to remove it entirely. Jonathan Haidt, who’s changed the face of American childhood by campaigning to limit kids’ exposure to smartphones and social media, has warned that “AI chatbots and companions are the next uncontrolled mass experiment that Silicon Valley wants to perform on the world’s children.”

But when it comes to raising children, some parents have a different view. Just as the kids of Gen Z were expected to be “digital natives” if they wanted to get ahead, these parents think kids of the 2020s should be “AI-native” if they want to succeed in life. Sure, a lucky few kids might get a chance at a formal AI education, from a place like Alpha School in San Francisco—but the parents I talked to aren’t waiting for teachers to catch up; they’re taking matters into their own hands.

I spoke to one father, Tarun Sachdeva—a start-up founder from Toronto—who has become “creative partners” with his twin 7-year-old daughters, helping them build an animated universe around a character they generated and vibe coding a KPop Demon Hunters game with them on weekends. A Colorado father, Blake Scholl—founder of the aeronautics start-up Boom Technology—often spends Saturdays side by side with his 12-year-old son, building things like a cell phone, with ChatGPT coaching them through it. When their LLM helps them solve a new problem, he says, his son’s reaction is priceless. “He’s grinning ear to ear,” Scholl said.

Almost all of the parents raising AI-native kids expressed the same simple idea: The future is coming, and it’s inescapable; it’s a parent’s job to fortify their kids for the world ahead.

Kids whose parents scold them for using AI, Scharf said, “have an arm tied behind their back.” The upside of using it, he added, is clear: “It really ends up giving them superpowers.”

Related: Toy Story 5 to set stage for debate over AI in children’s toys.

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 5th, 2026
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