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.

PURR:  Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at USDA Devon Westhill very kindly credits my friend Roger Clegg and me for providing the “intellectual foundation” for the new Title VI regulations that make it clear that disparate impact liability is NOT THE LAW.  Thanks go to Devon and his colleagues for making the new regs happen. If you want to read about how disparate impact liability was used to imposed utterly deranged school discipline policies on teachers, read my 2018 article (with Alison Somin).

I wish I had good news like that about how things are going here in California, but right now they aren’t looking too good. My best guess now is that another effort to gut Proposition 209 will go on the ballot in 2028. I hope I’m wrong. These California legislators are loons, loons, loons.

JOHN FUND IN THE CALIFORNIA POST:  LA County Voting Snafus.

YES, TITLE VII DISPARATE IMPACT LIABILITY IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL:  The Office of Legal Counsel’s 25-page opinion is important. It’s a breakthrough on an issue I’ve been working on for a long time. But … uh … what’s really important is that it cites me seven times.  Purr.  Josh Blackman has a short summary here.  And my very, very long version (which is not as up-to-date as the OLC version, but has lots of background) is here.

ATTENTION LOYAL INSTAPUNDIT READERS:  If you have a X/Twitter account, please help me out by liking and retweeting this post.  It’s my last chance to convince the California state senators on the committee considering the bill that would gut Proposition 209 that the public will be against it.

The CA Legislature tried to strike these words from the state constitution in 2020 (put there by Prop 209 in 1996). The voters smacked them down when 57.23% said NO—despite the YES campaign outspending the NO team by more than 14 to 1. Now they’re trying again—calling it a… pic.twitter.com/ecBbwDX2rl

— Gail Heriot (@GailHeriot) June 8, 2026

We are fighting an uphill battle at this point.  But hope springs eternal.  The only upside is that I managed to convince the senators that putting this referendum on the 2026 ballot would be ill-advised, because we’ll only be halfway through the Trump Administration and the Trump Administration could respond with a thorough Title VI compliance investigation.  As a result, they amended the bill to put the referendum on the 2028 ballot instead.  That at least will give me the opportunity to take care of the various things wrong with house before diving back into this.

I am resigned to the reality that I will be fighting to preserve California’s Prop 209 and its various clones in other states for the rest of my life.

THE UK MAY BE BEYOND HELP:  UK doctors are told that they are putting too many psychotic black people in detention. As a result, psychotic black man goes free and murders three.

MORE OF THIS PLEASE: “HHS Probes Complaint of Racial Preferences in Biden-Era Health Training Grants.“

PURR.  THIS IS A FINE IDEA:  John Fund reports that Mark Judge has a plan to hold an Anti-Communist Film Festival in October.  Both the Victims of Communism Museum and the Moving Picture Institute are official sponsors. Among the many films that will be shown is “The Lives of Others,” certainly one of the best movies I’ve ever seen. It’s truly great. (Fund also links to a GoFundMe page intended to make it happen.)

CAN UTAH SAVE THE GREAT SALT LAKE?: They’re trying to do it Utah-style.  Soviet-style didn’t work for the Aral Sea.

FIAT LUX:  If you’re a faculty member, tell FacultyLeaks.com your story.  Or read other people’s stories.  The truth is out there.  Let’s shed some light on it.

UPDATE ON ACA7:  “Will the California Legislature Ever Stop Trying to Overturn Proposition 209?” (I think we will probably win this round, but maybe I’m just an incurable optimist.)

OF COURSE IT WILL:  “California’s Wealth Tax Will Backfire.”  It looks like it already has.