MARCO RUBIO:  This year’s sold-out Barbara Olson Memorial Lecture at the Federalist Society’s National Lawyers Conference will be given by Marco Rubio.  Ordinarily, I don’t like to listen to politicians give speeches.  They’re usually pretty boring.  On the other hand, as long as I don’t have to listen to them, I don’t necessarily have anything against politicians who give boring speeches.  When politicians are exciting, it’s often because they are bat-shit crazy.  But Rubio may be an exception to my ordinary view.  He knows how to give an inspiring speech with enough content to make it worth listening to.  And as far as I can tell he isn’t crazy.  So I plan to be there.

BOOK REVIEWS:  Reviews of my new book  “Why We Walk on Eggshells” are starting to come in.  Here’s one of them.  I will post others later.

A LOSS FOR THE COUNTRY:  I am sorry to see Harmeet Dhillon leave the Department of Justice.  She’s been a tough and tireless defender of civil rights.  Thank you, Harmeet!  I’m sure it wasn’t always a picnic.

Yesterday, there were a couple of posts on X accusing Harmeet, who practices the Sikh faith, of being a “demon worshipper”  and stating that there is no room in the Republican Party for such such persons. Ordinarily, I might chalk it up to some jerk in some sh*t hole country just trying to stir things up.  But these posts purported to be from the Notre Dame College Republicans and the University of Georgia College Republicans and were coming from within the United States, so I feel obligated to tell them to drop dead.

ROSENKRANZ DEBATE:  Akhil Amar and I will be the featured debaters for the Rosenkranz Debate this Thursday at the Federalist Society’s National Lawyers Convention.  If you’re interested, but were unable to snag tickets this year (that happened to a lot of people), I understand it will be live-streamed.

PURR:  Wisconsin voters approve amendment to ban preferential treatment by race or sex.  I wish they’d done this BEFORE the California Legislature voted to put another effort to gut Proposition 209 on the ballot for 2028.  Note to California Legislators:  We intend to defeat you yet again.  Game on.

FINALLY:  My new book—WHY WE WALK ON EGGSHELLS:  How Our Civil Rights Laws Stifle Our Civic Discourse–is being officially released TODAY!

Here’s the way the book is described in on the Amazon web site:

What happens when left-of-center ideas on matters of race or sex can’t be challenged in polite company? Free from criticism, they slowly grow increasingly extreme, eventually losing touch with reality. This is how we find ourselves in the Woke Era. In Why We Walk on Eggshells, Gail Heriot sketches out the practical incentives created by our civil rights law and policies that caused the woke ideology to develop and flourish. One of the most important of those incentives was the Civil Rights Act of 1991, which for the first time made employment-discrimination lawsuits–including those based on harassment–lucrative for plaintiffs. Employers understandably panicked and started requiring what came to be called diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) training to ensure that employees would never say anything, no matter how trivial or even how true, that might be considered offensive. Employees were urged to walk on eggshells. Even statements like “I believe the most qualified person should get the job” were often forbidden. Slowly workplace culture (and eventually American culture in general) evolved to resemble the culture that had taken hold on college campuses more than a decade earlier as a result of another of the many wrong turns in civil rights law–the Supreme Court’s fateful decision in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke(1978).Why We Walk on Eggshells is a masterful treatment of the legislation and judicial decisions that helped give birth to the Woke Era. It is for anyone who wants to grapple with how we arrived at our present woke crisis and discover a way out of it.

I hope you find it worthy of a read.

HUZZAH! BIG NEWS FROM THE EEOC:  “EEOC Votes to Rescind Enforcement Guidance on Arrest and Conviction Records.”  That 2012 Guidance was uncommonly crazy even for the Obama-Era.  I discussed it in my article on disparate impact liability.  I also discuss it very briefly in my new book (which will be officially released on Wednesday).  I suppose that means the book already contains a bit of outdated information.  But I’m happy anyway (and confident that my earlier work was helpful in getting to the point where the EEOC could withdraw the 2012 Guidance).  Purr.

THE LEVEL OF CORRUPTION IN TESTING ACCOMMODATIONS IS STAGGERING:  It’s another way in which George H.W. Bush allowed so-called “civil rights law” to go berserk.  I keep thinking I should write about it myself.  In the meantime, Katie Davis is writing about it.

THERE WAS MORE THAN ONE HERO AT THE OREGON SCHOOL SHOOTING:  Teacher Cassidy Schultz was wrestling with the shooter as Kalub Giamanco arrived and put an end to things.  Bless them both.

IF YOU’RE GOING TO BE IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA IN NOVEMBER:  On November 17th, the Wall Street Journal’s (and the Manhattan Institute’s) Jason Riley will be at the University of San Diego to deliver the annual Bowes Lecture. (This is the same lecture that our own Glenn Reynolds delivered last year.)

Thanks to the late Joan Bowes, a fiery redhead,  we’ve been able to host a distinguished conservative speaker every year for the last 20 years or so.  Thanks, Joan!

IT’S REALLY LONG:  I’ve been reading through the Report of the California Task Force to Study and Develop Reparations Proposals for African Americans.  It’s well over 1000 pages long (and printed in a way that makes it more like 2000 pages of an ordinary book).  I probably won’t be able to read every single line of it, but I will try to read as much as I can.  Somebody has to, and it’s up my alley, so I should be the one.

The report is already three years old.  I skimmed it when it came out, but at that point I didn’t have enough time to do more.  I was hoping that it wouldn’t be acted on and that I would never have to go back to it.  Alas, that has not been the case, so now that my own book is finished and a few other projects are under control, I’m trying to make the time to read and to some degree respond to the report.

I’ll be very surprised if the proposals for direct cash payments to the descendants of slaves get anywhere, but there are other aspects of the report that have already been enacted.  (And I’m often surprised at what the California Legislature does, so don’t assume I’m right that direct cash payments were dead on arrival.)

So far, the most notable success of the Task Force occurred in 2025 when Gavin Newsom approved a law creating a Bureau of Descendants of American Slavery.  Once a bureaucracy is established, it is nearly impossible to stop it from advancing its purposes in some way.  At the same time, Newsom also  signed a bill that allocated $6 Million to Cal State University to research methods for determining who is a descendant of an American slave and who isn’t. So things are moving ahead.

But he also vetoed several bills—including one that would have authorized the University of California to discriminate in favor of the descendants of slaves—in part because he understood that Prop 209 is a potential obstacle to such a scheme. Alas, that may explain why this year’s big push from reparations supporters was to authorize  another referendum to gut Proposition 209.  The new referendum will go on the ballot in 2028.

Meanwhile, another reparations success happened a couple days ago.  Newsom signed a bill that requires corporations to disclose past profits from slavery.  It’s obvious where that is intended to go.

Our Golden State legislators just can’t seem to stop themselves.  This stuff will never end.

I hope to report back a little on the reparations report when I get a further in.  But I already find myself occasionally taking a break to look for homes for sale in other, less crazy, states, so it may take a while.

MY NEW BOOK IS AVAILABLE ON AMAZON FOR PRE-ORDER:

Here’s one of the blurbs from the book:

“Why We Walk on Eggshells is an incisive look at the wrong turns judges, legislators, and other officials have taken in shaping American civil rights law and policy, and how those choices have led the country in disastrous directions. It is essential reading for anyone interested in restoring the nation’s commitment to equal opportunity for all and moving beyond failed policies of preferential treatment based on race, ethnicity, or sex.”

—Heather Mac Donald, Thomas W. Smith Fellow, Manhattan Institute

It will be released on November 3.

ANTI-COMMUNISM FILM FESTIVAL IN DC:  Sounds like fun. (And “The Lives of Others” is a great movie.)

BAD NEWS:  A few weeks ago, the California Legislature voted to put a new referendum aimed at gutting Proposition 209 on the ballot.  I am obviously going to have to fight these blasted things for the rest of my life.  The only good thing is that it won’t be on the ballot until November of 2028.  Read about it in my Daily Wire essay.

I’ll write more about it here soon.  Right now I have to finish up another project–a lawsuit–that I hope will be better news.

Plus my book is coming out soon … more on that later too.

I’M PRETTY SURE THE ANSWER WILL ONLY GET ME UPSET : “Why Are AP Scores Rising?  The College Board’s Answers Don’t Add Up.”

THIS KEEPS HAPPENING TO ME:  You can file this under the category of unsolicited advice.  I bring it up because it keeps happening to me.  If there’s somebody on the older side out there that you know only slightly or perhaps you don’t know at all, but you’ve always wanted to sit down with him or her and talk, try to do it sooner rather than later.  Much sooner if possible.  You never know when they will be gone for good.

I won’t mention any names–but let me give two examples (out of a half dozen so).  A few years ago, I kept telling myself that I needed to drive up to Los Angeles and have coffee with a friendly acquaintance of mine who had lived an interesting life.  LA isn’t that far from here.  It would have been easy.  As a young man, this friendly acquaintance of mine had been a pro-Castro communist.  Somehow by old age he’d become a remarkably thoughtful conservative.  I really liked him and wanted to know just how the transformation had occurred.  On the rare occasions that we had been together at conferences there just hadn’t been time to talk about that sort of thing.  Then suddenly it was too late.

Today something similar happened. For the last fifteen years or so, I’ve been wondering whether I could locate a certain lawyer who had been working at the Department of Justice during the period when Congress was working on the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  He had worked with Hubert Humphrey on how to word the Act.  Then he’d been in the General Counsel’s office at the EEOC during the early years and had clashed with the most aggressively leftist attorney there on how to interpret Title VII.  I’ve cited his work many times in the past, and when I do I’ve always wondered if he is still alive and if there was any part of his experience that he would feel comfortable telling me about.  But because his name is somewhat common, I worried it might be hard to find him.

Today, I was citing him again in connection with a lawsuit I’m working on. (If all goes well, I’ll tell you about my new lawsuit soon.  I hope will be a big deal.)  I decided to put a little effort into finding him.  I figured the chance that he was alive 62 years later wasn’t all that great, and I turned out to be right about that.  But here’s the kicker:  He died only a few weeks ago.  If he was of sound mind at any point over the last decade or so, I missed my chance.

Don’t miss yours.

Yes, it goes without saying that the same applies to the older people you do know well.

HOW INDEED:  “How Did This Nigerian Chief Make Million From Medicaid?“

ANOTHER SIDE OF GLORIA STEINEM:  I only recently learned that she was big on promoting the panic over “Satanic Ritual Abuse of Children.”  Sigh.

Whenever I start thinking that the world has gone bonkers, I remind myself that it has always been bonkers.  In the 1980s and ’90s, people really thought that day care centers run by grandmothers were full of kinky weirdos who were sexually molesting toddlers in some weird Satanic ritual–sometimes with a little cannibalism thrown in for extra spice.

NO SURPRISE, BUT KUDOS TO HARMEET DHILLON FOR BEING ON IT:  “Justice Department Finds Duke Law School Discriminate Based on Race in Admissions.”

MORE FROM THE INDISPENSABLE CITY JOURNAL: “Students Need Consequences, Not “Restorative Justice.” And when one student is allowed to disrupt class, the other students can’t learn either.

For decades, federal bureaucrats have been telling school districts that “disparate impact” in school discipline is a violation of the regulations promulgated under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  Translation:  Even though low-income African American students disrupt class at greater rates than low-income Asian or white students, these bureaucrats insist that their regulations prohibit schools from suspending them from class at that greater rate.  The “solution” has been a general relaxation of discipline and more chaotic classrooms (along with a bit of punishing Asian and white students for behavior that would not be punished for African American students).

The Trump Administration is making some progress toward getting the federal government off the backs of the local districts on this issue of school discipline.  But more progress is necessary.  As Alison Somin and I have argued, Department of Education bureaucrats are interpreting those regulations incorrectly.  Moreover,  if one assumes that they are right about the interpretation,  that only means the regulations go far beyond the Title VI rule making power given to executive branch by Congress.  Repealing or amending those rules is necessary to prevent future left-of-center Presidents from re-starting the pressure on school districts.

And, of course, once we get the federal government off the backs of school districts, then the hard work continues:  The school districts themselves need to understand that their approach to discipline has only made things worse for students of all races and ethnicities.

CITY JOURNAL:  “A California-Funded Homeless Shelter Gave Us Meth Pipes.”  Sigh.

CALIFORNIA’S FINAL SOLUTION:  Urban Democrats in the California Legislature have figured out a way to get rid of some of the state’s rural Republican voters:  Reintroduce the grizzly bear into some of the state’s low population areas and allow the apex predator to snack on the locals.

NYC HAS ITS OWN “STATE DEPARTMENT”?:  “A Top Mamdani Official Tried to Meet With Iran.”

HOPING FOR 250 MORE: For the past few years, I’ve been busy and missed decorating my house for the holidays too many times. But not this time:  I got my flags, banners, bunting and Uncle Sam doll out in time for the 4th of July.  It wasn’t the best job I’ve ever done, but it was pretty good. If I’m around for the 300th (an extremely unlikely proposition), I promise to do much better.  For one thing, my long banners need to be anchored in some way so they don’t blow around and get caught in the awnings.

Over at City Journal, Joshua Katz remembers the Bicentennial and Tall Ships in 1976.

STILL WAITING:  The Supreme Court will soon be deciding a couple of cases involving whether a state can exclude “transgender women” from women’s sports teams. You won’t be shocked to know that I think they can.

I’ll be interested to see whether any of the Justices agree with Pete Kirsanow’s and my interpretation of Title IX (which focused on bathrooms, locker rooms and showers).  Dan Morenoff and Joe Bingham at the American Civil Rights Project later adapted our argument to the athletic context and submitted it to the Court in the pending cases as an amicus brief.  Our argument is different from the Trump Administration’s.  It starts from the assumption that Bostock was correctly decided and is designed to appeal to Justice Gorsuch’s approach to transgender questions.  (FWIW, regardless of whether Bostock was decided correctly, I believe ours is the correct interpretation of Title IX on this point. It’s basically a logic puzzle.)

Quite apart from my little argument, this is one of those cases I’m willing to get up early in the morning for if there’s a decent chance the decision will come down that day.  We’re getting late enough in the Court’s calendar that it will need to come down soon.  I’m going to start getting up at 5:30 am Pacific on “opinion days” so I can have coffee and be ready in case the decision is announced.