SOUNDS A BIT FISHY:  “Mayor Thao Recall Committee Under Investigation for Campaign Law Violations.” The president of the recall committee says she’s very confident that everything has been done properly.  She says the Oakland Public Ethics Commission is asking for things it isn’t entitled to–like the names of donors who gave less than $100.  If that’s so, the Ethics Commission itself needs to be investigated.

HELP CHRIS RUFO WITH HIS INVESTIGATION OF DEI IN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT:  Are you a federal employee?  Is your spouse, best friend, or cousin a federal employee who complains about out-of-control DEI programs?  Let Chris Rufo know.

It’s you patriotic duty.

WAIT!  TAKE ME WITH YOU, ELON!:  “Musk Says SpaceX, X Moving HQs out of California over Transgender Law.”

RACE DISCRIMINATION IN FINANCIAL AID:  For a long time, many colleges and universities have been assuming they could get away with discriminating on the basis of race in allocating financial aid.  SFFA v. Harvard has drawn that into question.  It’s is hard to imagine the Supreme Court would prohibit race discrimination in admissions, but allow it in financial aid.

You should expect to see a new generation of financial aid driven lawsuits (like this one against the University of Oklahoma) in the near future.  Unlike previous lawsuits, these new class actions will likely involve big money in damages.

The University of Oklahoma case is special.  If the allegations against it are true, it won’t even have the excuse that it believed what it was doing was legal.  Oklahoma has a state constitutional provision modeled after Prop 209.  This could cost the university an extraordinary amount of money.

If other colleges and universities haven’t fallen into line yet, they’d best do so right away.  If they wait to be sued, the damages just keep growing.

THE CALIFORNIA ASSEMBLY WANTS TO REGULATE HOMEWORK:  That means they’ll regulate anything, up to and including the color of your underwear.

Assembly Member Pilar Schiavo says her bill–AB 2999–“definitely” doesn’t ban homework, but to watch her video she sure seems to believe her bill will move schools in that direction.  Evidently, homework is causing students anxiety (and evidently that’s bad).  We are doomed when these kids grow up and are in charge of our once-great civilization.

WE WON! WE WON!! WE WON!!!:  I’m sorry to have been AWOL for the last week, but as of last Thursday, we won the battle against California’s Assembly Constitutional Amendment 7 (ACA7) at least for this year and possibly for much longer.  A few weeks ago, I predicted that ACA7 would fail to pass the Cal Senate before the deadline for the November ballot, but now it’s official. Since last Thursday, I’ve been partly on the road and partly frantically trying to meet an unrelated writing deadline, so I’m only now getting around to announcing the win here.

If you’re a loyal Instapundit reader, you probably know what I’m talking about.  But if not, I can tell you that ACA7 was/is an effort to nullify the following words in the California Constitution:  “The State shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education or public contracting.”

ACA7 was/is a bit tricky.  Instead of a straight repeal of those words (which had been put in the state constitution in 1996 by Proposition 209), it purported to “merely” give the governor the power to grant EXCEPTIONS.  But the exceptions would almost certainly have swallowed the rule.  Indeed, that was the whole idea.  California progressives have been gunning for Proposition 209 since the day after Election Day 1996.  ACA7 was/is just the latest effort.

I had a certain amount of personal interest in defeating ACA7, because (1) I had co-chaired the Proposition 209 campaign in 1996; and (2) I had co-chaired the campaign to defeat the repeal effort–No on Proposition 16 in 2020–which we won overwhelmingly (57.22%) despite being outspent by more than 14 to 1.  I was therefore willing to chair the “No on ACA7” campaign.   That has meant spending what seemed like 95% of my waking hours for the last eight months trying to stop ACA7 (and preparing for a full-scale campaign in case I failed).

But I didn’t fail.  I won.  ACA7 had passed the Cal Assembly back in the autumn, but it needed to pass the Cal Senate.  The deadline for inclusion on the November ballot was June 27, and ACA7’s chief sponsor has now let it be known that the Senate was not going to pass it and that it is dead at least for this year.  Like any legislation, it can always be brought up later, but the next scheduled election isn’t till 2026, so we have a long time.

Thanks to everyone who helped kill this nasty bill—Brita, Cia, Dan, Frank, Eva, Jason, Maimon, Rachelle, Saga, Steve, Tony, Wenyuan, and many others.  Thanks also to the Wall Street Journal, the Orange County Register, the Epoch Times, the City Journal, the Federalist, the California Globe, Power Line, and the National Review.

When we did the “NO on Proposition 16” back in 2020, we had a devil of a time raising money.  All the big-money donors thought we would lose, so they figured giving us money would be a waste. If ACA7 had been on the ballot, we’d have done much better with big donors than we did with Proposition 16.  And a couple of non-profits would have been able to conduct substantial voter education projects.  Thank you, Leonard, Mark, Michael, and Norm for being willing to provide funding.

GOOD:  “Federal Judge Blocks Biden Title IX Rule in 4 States:  “Abuse of Power.”

VICTORY IN THE SIXTH CIRCUIT:  The U.S. Court of Appeals has upheld the District Court’s preliminary injunction against the Department of Education’s June 2021 transgender policy.  This applies only to that policy and not to the more recently promulgated Title IX regulations on transgenderism.  But it’s still a win.  Pete Kirsanow, Dan Morenoff and I filed an amicus brief in this case (which in turn was based on Pete’s and my earlier comment).

THIS IS A VERY ODD PLACE:  California Senate Votes to Approve Bill that Would Prohibit Schools from Requiring Teachers to Inform Parents of Their Child’s “Transgender” Status.  It was a party line vote.  Surprise, surprise.

MORE ABUSE OF POWER:  The Biden Administration’s Assault on Grand Canyon University.  Inexcusable.

NO EXCUSES:  “Can a Return to Traditional Discipline Save Schools?”  Worth a read.

BUT NOT BIG ENOUGH, WARNS STEWART BAKER:  Stealth quotas take a big step back in Congress.

SHOULD I DECLARE VICTORY?:  I’m really tempted to.  Things look pretty good.  But they can still change.

As many of you know, for the past eight months, I have been spending gobs of time trying to discourage the California Senate from passing Assembly Constitutional Amendment 7 (“ACA7”) and preparing for a campaign in case it does.  That’s why I haven’t been posting much.  ACA7 passed the Assembly on a strict party-line vote back in the autumn.  If it somehow passes the Senate before the end of June (or by July 4 at the latest), it will go on the November ballot.  Increasingly, however, it looks like maybe, just maybe, it won’t.  The bill seems to be stalled in the Rules Committee, and it’s getting pretty late in the day to put it through two committees and have it reach the Senate floor. (Alas, the Democrats won’t tell me anything, and the Republicans don’t seem to know anything.)

Some background for those of you who are not regular readers:  ACA7 is the second attempt by the California legislature in less than four years to gut Proposition 209.  Prop 209 was an initiative back in 1996 that amended the state constitution to say:  “The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.”

I co-chaired that campaign (back when I was younger and cuter than I am now).  Not only did it pass, but it also spread to several other states. And it literally made the history books.  Paul Johnson’s A History of the American People spans from the Lost Colony of Roanoke to the end of the 20^th century, but somehow he found room for a paragraph on Prop 209.

Then came Act II.  In 2020, in the midst of the panic over George Floyd, the California Legislature floated a referendum—Prop 16—to repeal Prop 209 outright.  The old Prop 209 gang got together again—with Ward Connerly as chair and me again as co-chair.  Plus we had a lot of energetic new faces.  We were outspent more than 14 to 1, but we beat the pants off the “Yes on 16” campaign. More than 57.2% (more…)

HOT!:  The final form of my article (with Maimon Schwarzschild) about Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023) has now been published by the Southern Methodist University Law Review.  It is available here for your reading pleasure.

SEND YOUR NOMINATIONS:  Minding the Campus is accepting nominations for the 2024 Lysenko Award.  Nominate your (least) favorite academic bent on suppressing free inquiry and dissent.

AT THE TIME, IT WAS SORT OF EMBARRASSING, BUT NOW IT MAKES FOR A FOND MEMORY:  At the age of 11 or so, I was “Miss Poppy” of Northern Virginia.  It meant that I dressed in a white dress decorated with crepe paper poppies (actually my Confirmation dress re-tooled for Memorial Day and other patriotic holidays).  My job was to go to American Legion Posts in the area where I would recite John McCrae’s “In Flanders Fields.”  I could also recite “America’s Answer.”

My favorite lines from the latter are:

Fear not that ye have died for naught;
The torch ye threw to us we caught,
Ten million hands will hold it high,
And freedom’s light shall never die!
We’ve learned the lesson that ye taught
In Flanders’ fields.

I don’t think I was the world’s best (or even Northern Virginia’s best) poetry reciter at the time.  But the dress and the little green shoes and hat were cute.

I LOVE HERO STORIES:  All honor to John Stickovich, who risked his own life to pull a baby from a burning building.

RED ALERT:  Stewart Baker writes at the Volokh Conspiracy:  “Congress is Preparing to Restore Quotas in College Admissions … and Everywhere Else–as a Very Quiet Part of the Bipartisan ‘Privacy’ Bill.”  I haven’t had a chance to review the bill yet.  But the conservative civil rights lawyers who have had that opportunity all agree that this “bipartisan” bill will, if passed, be a disaster.  I assume the GOP staffers involved simply didn’t understand the ramifications of the “disparate impact” provisions in the bill.  But I’ll know more once I’ve read the bill myself.  In the meantime:  Dear Congress:  Please don’t pass this bill.

(Yes, I noticed Glenn posted this last evening, but it’s important enough to post again.)

WHY DID THEY HAVE TO CALL IT “OPERATION MINCEMEAT”?:  On this day in 1943, a British submarine surfaced off the coast of Spain.  As the captain read the 39^th Psalm, the body of a Welsh homeless man, dressed up to appear to be a military courier, was gently cast adrift.

It was all part of an audacious plan.  Attached to the body was a briefcase containing documents—false ones—that suggested that the Allies would soon be invading Greece and Sardinia and that the upcoming attack on Sicily was merely a diversion.  In fact, the real Allied invasion was going to be Sicily.

The hope was that the body would wash ashore and that the Spanish authorities would assume that the man had been the victim of an air crash.  With luck, they would deliver the documents to German intelligence, and the Germans would be fooled into shifting reinforcements to Greece and Sardinia. Sicily would be left relatively undefended.

The British worked hard to make the whole thing seem believable.  The body was given the name Captain (Acting Major) William Martin.  He carried a wallet with a photograph of a fictitious girlfriend “Pam”.  Also in the wallet were two love letters from “Pam,” a receipt for the purchase of a diamond engagement ring, and a notice of overdraft from a bank.  The overdraft notice was a nice touch.

The scheme worked.  The Germans did indeed beef up their positions in Greece and Sardinia at the expense of Sicily.  The Allied attack on Sicily was no picnic, but in the absence of Operation Mincemeat, it would have been a lot worse.

And, of course, they made a movie out of it.  How could they not?  The 1956 thriller starred Clifton Webb and was given a wonderful title–The Man Who Never Was. (This had also been the title of the book written about the operation by Ewen Montagu, who had played a leading role in the scheme.)  I just love that title.

Here’s the part I can’t understand.  In 2021, Warner Bros. did a new movie about Operation Mincemeat, which they named … Operation Mincemeat.  What?  Shouldn’t they have come up with a better title?

A few years back, the BBC did a documentary about the operation, which is available on YouTube.  Some of the players are interviewed in it—including “Pam” (or rather the woman in the picture).  I recommend it.

TRUTH ISN’T A DEFENSE:  A judge on the Superior Court in San Diego has been disqualified from hearing cases under the Racial Justice Act on the ground of bias.  In part he is accused of having said:   “There is absolutely no evidence that … the proportion of persons in an ethnicity committing a crime must be the same as the proportion in the population.”  The problem, of course, is that statement is plainly true.

JOHN LOTT:  “The Media Say Crime Is Going Down.  Don’t Believe It.”

THE GOLDEN STATE’S SLOW SUICIDE CONTINUES:  Wall Street Journal:  “Slavery Reparations in California?”  Various committees of the California Legislature have now approved various recommendations of the Task Force on Reparations.  They. Just. Can’t. Stop.

OFF THE RAILS:  In 2020, during the “Time of Anxiety” over George Floyd’s death, the California Legislature created a Task Force on Reparations.  In doing so, it appeared to me that the legislators were violating a fundamental rule of governance:  Never create a commission to “study” a controversial problem unless you are relatively certain that you’re going to want to follow its recommendations.

Reparations for African Americans in California are an unusually bad idea.  To begin with, this was never a slave state.  And if the reparations are not for slavery, but rather for racial discrimination over the course of California’s history, then the problem is that other racial and ethnic  groups have suffered from mistreatment at least as much (and in the case of the Chinese more).  Yet, from the start, the Task Force appeared to be stacked in favor of reparations.

When the Task Force’s report came out in June of last year, it did indeed back extensive reparations. There were some awkward moments, but it looked to me that Governor Newsom realized all this had been a mistake and was going to sweep the report under the rug.

I’m starting to think that maybe I was wrong about sweeping this under the rug.  Or rather I was right in the first place:  It’s very hard for a legislature to turn away from the recommendations of a task force it created.

Recently, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to create a “Freedmen’s Agency.”  Shades of Nuremberg:  The Agency will be required to have a “Genealogy Office,” which will be charged with the task of tracing the pedigree of those who apply for reparations to ensure their eligibility.  If the bill passes the Senate and Assembly and it is signed by the governor, the new agency will violate another fundamental rule of governance:  Never create a bureaucracy unless you want it to have the power to carry out its mission.

I have a hard time imagining that this will end well.

In any event, here are some tweets that I could use some “likes” and “retweets” on.  If you have a Twitter/X account and have a minute, please help out.

Much to my surprise, the CA Senate Judiciary Committee is moving forward on the recommendations of the Reparations Task Force. This seems politically unwise of the Dems. Calif was never a slave state, and many groups, not just African Americans, have suffered discrimination here. https://t.co/tELkNLdXyl

— Gail Heriot (@GailHeriot) April 22, 2024

@SenatorUmberg has gone off the rails. He just voted to create a cabinet-level “Freedmen’s Agency” to administer reparations. Shades of Nuremberg: The Agency will be required to have a Genealogy Office to confirm one’s eligibility for reparations. pic.twitter.com/Z8QlYIuVYc

— No on ACA-7 (@NoACA7) April 22, 2024

@BenAllenCA has gone off the rails. He just voted to create a cabinet-level “Freedmen’s Agency” to administer reparations. Shades of Nuremberg: The Agency will be required to have a Genealogy Office to confirm one’s eligibility for reparations. pic.twitter.com/fJ3Gsl22DS

— No on ACA-7 (@NoACA7) April 22, 2024

With luck, we’ll have some other (non-Twitter) ways to send a message to these senators soon.  Right now there’s an immediate need to get their attention any way we can.

IF ONLY IT REALLY WERE NEWS:  The internet is treating this as news:  The EEOC is suing Sheetz convenience stores, because Sheetz conducts criminal background checks on its job applicants and then declines to hire the ones who are criminals.  The EEOC concedes that Sheetz is not motivated by a desire to exclude African American men, but argues that because a higher percentage of African American men than of white, Hispanic, or Asian men, or of women have criminal records, Sheetz is “discriminating” against African American men within the meaning of Title VII.

In other words, Sheetz is REQUIRED to hire felons even if it doesn’t want to.

Welcome to the world we live in.  The EEOC has been doing this for a long time.  It’s crazy.  But that’s only because disparate impact liability is crazy.  Read about it here (including a long discussion of liability for declining to hire convicted felons).

Martin Luther King looked forward to the day that his children could be judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin.  Alas, the content of our character (as revealed by our criminal record) is off limits in hiring.  But hiring by the color of our skin is considered virtuous.  Weren’t we supposed to have made a lot more progress on this by now?

I am so tired of lily-livered Members of Congress who get that deer in the headlights look when you point out how that they could actually stop this nonsense.  They don’t even try.

P.S.  If you are concerned that felons need jobs or else they will wind up in prison again, I agree that’s a problem.  It’s just not a Title VII problem.  Members of the 88th Congress would have choked on their lunch if they knew how the EEOC would mistreat employers who just want to avoid hiring felons.  The federal government actually has a program under which employers get a tax break for hiring ex-cons.  Such a program makes much more sense than the EEOC’s approach, because it is voluntary.  Some jobs present fewer temptations than others.  Some ex-cons are better bets than others.  A tax subsidy allows employers who are in a good position to hire ex-cons to self-select.

TODAY IN HISTORY:  It’s Hitler’s birthday today.  May he rot in hell along with his fellow gangster dictators.  ¡No Pasarán! shares excerpts from Paul Johnson’s Modern Times to show that the notion that Hitler was on the “right” while Marx, Lenin and Stalin were on the “left” makes no sense.  They were cut from the same mold.