I’M STILL CURIOUS: I’m not usually accused on believing in conspiracy theories.  I’m more likely to be the one chastising my friends for believing them.  And yet … for years, I’ve wondered why suddenly the disability rights groups were knocking themselves out to fight special minimum wage laws applicable to severely disabled persons.  Who was bankrolling all this?  My guess at the time was the SEIU.  I’d still like to know … but I suppose there’s a good chance I never will.

Under very limited circumstances, Section 14(c) of the Fair Labor Standard Act permits individuals with severe disabilities (think Down Syndrome) to accept employment from certain specially licensed and regulated businesses that are allowed to pay less than the minimum wage.  The program is strictly optional.  If an individual with Down Syndrome can find an employer willing to pay bigger bucks, then more power to him.

The program is very popular with the parents and family members of severely disabled individuals.  When the Commission on Civil Rights did a report on this issue in 2020, we received about 9,700 comments from the parents and other family members.  That was a record number for us.  Almost all of them argued strongly in favor of Section 14(c).  The Commission nevertheless sided with the disability rights folks and called for the program’s elimination.

I dissented, figuring the parents and other family members knew more about what was good for their loved ones than the disability rights folks.  The family members certainly knew that without 14(c) there would be no jobs at all for most Down Syndrome sufferers.  Not too many Down Syndrome sufferers get jobs as engineers at Google, Apple, or Tesla.  The disability rights advocates who testified before the Commission brought along a young man with Down Syndrome who testified that he wanted a more challenging job and would prefer a job where he could carry a briefcase to the office like his father.  We were evidently supposed to nod and pretend that this man’s hope was a realistic option for Down Syndrome sufferers generally.

Nevertheless, the disability rights advocates were pulling out all stops to get rid of the law.  They were lobbying state legislatures around the country to override it with a state provision that requires minimum wage.  And they were succeeding in getting the programs phased out.

As part of the report, we interviewed the Commissioner at the Vermont Department of Disabilities, Aging, and Independent Living, where 14(c) workshops were being done away with.  She admitted that the jobs had disappeared.  Instead, the state (with taxpayer money) was providing “minders” to keep these now-jobless individuals entertained.

I got the feeling that creating state-funded jobs for the “minders”—who might then join a union like the SEIU—was the central feature not a bug in this plan.  Chris Rufo and Kenneth Scrupp have been writing about this kind of cycle:  At the union’s behest, left-wing politicians fund programs that employ large numbers of low-skilled employees, who in turn join the union, which in turn donates big bucks to the left-wing politicians.   Government gets bigger and bigger.  Maybe the controversy over the Section 14(c) is another example of this.

JOHN SAILOR:  “How the Mellon Foundation Funds Trans Ideology.”  Sorry about that Mr. Mellon.  Your children put your money into a foundation and then died, leaving the foundation in the hands of a series of administrators who become weirder and weirder as time went by.

Dear 21st century titans:  Don’t let this happen to you.  If you establish a charitable foundation, make sure it spends itself down in one generation.  Make sure your money is spent by somebody who knew you, respected you, and in whom you have great trust.

JOSH BLACKMAN:  “The Transgender Tide Has Turned at the Supreme Court.”

SERIOUSLY:  Why are conservatives so much happier (and less neurotic) than liberals?

ON BRAND FOR MINNEAPOLIS:  “Minneapolis considers legalizing adult bathhouses and venues that allow sexual activity.”

ONE HUNDRED QUATLOOS ON THE NEWCOMERS:  “Polymart Pulls Iran Rescue Bet after Political Firestorm.”

NOBODY LOVES CHICAGO MORE THAN I DO, BUT ….:  “Bailing Out Chicago Would Send a Dangerous Message.”  Mismanaged cities need to learn the hard way.  (And for those of you who think I shouldn’t love Chicago, I can’t help it.  It’s hard not to love the city where you first became an independent adult.)

THIS IS INTERESTING EVEN IF YOU PROBABLY COULD HAVE ANSWERED THE QUESTION CORRECTLY WITHOUT READING IT:  “Is ‘White Supremacy’ Causing an ‘Epidemic’ of Transgender Murders?“

GAINFUL EMPLOYMENT:  Purr.  I have a new job.

CITY JOURNAL:  “The DSA Is Following the Soros Playbook” by focusing on state and local elections.

CITY JOURNAL: “Gavin Newsom’s Empire of Fraud.”

NOT EXACTLY THE LAND OF THE RISING SUN:  Japanese universities abandon merit.

THE GREAT AMERICAN MELTING POT:   For reasons that make sense once you think about them, the melting pot tended to work best in the Mountain West and the South where there were fewer immigrants.

BILL McGURN IN THE WSJ:  “California’s Never-Ending Race Preferences.”  (Why does this column feel like it’s my life story from circa 1995 (when I started working on Prop 209) to today?)

GOLDEN STATE FOLLIES:  “Inside San Francisco’s Racialist Slush Fund.“

YOU CAN HAVE CONFIDENCE IN ME:  I am starting a new (part-time) job in a couple of weeks.   My new employer did a background check on me (which may have been required by some state law).  I can now state authoritatively that I am not a sex offender.

That’s a relief.

ARE YOU IN SACRAMENTO OR ITS ENVIRONS?:  Please come to this ACA7 event (sponsored by America’s Future) if you are!  ACA7 (the latest effort to gut Prop 209) just barely made it through the Assembly.  I feel confident that we will stop it in the Senate if we can just force the members of the California Senate to focus for 5 minutes on how stupid this bill is.  Events like this one are intended to attract Senate staffers (and sometimes senators themselves), but we need as many people in attendance as we can get.  If you can make it, you can RSVP here.

Yes, I will be there.  It’s going to be fun.

KENIN SPIVAK:  “California Dreamin’ Isn’t What It Used To Be.”  Gosh, you can say that again.  Spivak writes about ACA7, which is what’s been taking up my time lately.

RED STATE/BLUE STATE:  While California legislators continue to try to overturn Prop 209 with their ACA7 bill, Iowa legislators are moving in the opposite direction.  The lower house there recently passed a bill that would repeal various affirmative action policies, some of which were adopted in the wake of the death of George Floyd.

JOHN FUND IN THE NATIONAL REVIEW:  Passing ACA7–the latest attempt to overturn California’s Proposition 209–would probably not be a smart move on the part of the Calif0rnia Senate. (More background on ACA7, which has now passed the Assembly on a party-line vote here.)

PETER WOOD REVIEWS SCOTT GERBER’S NOVEL:  “A Cancelled Professor Wrote a Thriller.”

BUT I’M HUNGRY:  “The Progressive War on Cheap Eats.”

THEY’RE BAAAACK!! AND NOW THEY WANT TO DISCRIMINATE BY RACE IN STUDENT FINANCIAL AID!!:  Legislators in the California Assembly are at it again—trying to gut Proposition 209, the history-making ballot initiative that amended the state constitution in 1996 to ban state-sponsored preferential treatment on the basis of race, sex, or ethnicity.  And I literally mean “history-making.”  Paul Johnson’s History of the American People tells the story of America from the late 15th century to the end of the 20^th.  Somehow (bless him) he found a wee bit of room to discuss Prop 209. (As the co-chair of that 1996 campaign, I’m darn proud of that.)

This is the third time in six years that the Cal Legislature has moved to gut Prop 209’s ban on affirmative-action preferences.  In 2020, the Legislature put a referendum on the ballot to repeal Prop 209 entirely.  But it was THUMPINGLY defeated—over 57% of voters said NO—even though YES Campaign spent 14 times more than we did.  (I’m proud of having co-chaired that campaign too.)  In 2024, the Assembly approved a trickier version that would have empowered the governor to make an unlimited number of EXCEPTIONS to Prop 209.  But that version never made it past the Senate. Cooler heads prevailed there—largely because we descended on their offices, held rallies, and buried them in letters, emails, and tweets.

But they just can’t stop.  The newest effort would exempt public education from Prop 209’s coverage.  Given the Supreme Court’s 2003 decision in the Harvard case, this bill does not try to exempt admissions in higher education.  But it exempts everything else.  The big-ticket items would be (1) discrimination in admission to programs for gifted and talented students at the Kindergarten-12^th grade level; and (2) discrimination in financial aid in higher education.

For years, universities all over the country—at least those not subject to Proposition 209 or one of its clones—have been giving African American students much sweeter financial aid packages than equally needy Asian American or white students.  The evidence of this has only recently come to light in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College (2003).

Typically, the discrimination takes the form of giving outright GRANTS to African American students, while white or Asian American students get saddled with LOANS.  I have a hard time imagining that voters would approve of this.  But the Assembly bill has nevertheless made it through committee on a strict party-line vote.  It is expected to come to the Assembly floor soon.  And right now there’s not much standing in its way.

If this goes on the ballot, I think we’ll defeat it.  But it will cost millions.  If by some miracle, it passes, we should be able to defeat in court any policies adopted as a result.  But that, too, will cost millions and will take years of work by public interest attorneys.

I could use a little grassroots help on this.  I don’t need money.  Opposing legislation of this type is cheap; it’s when it goes on the ballot or ends up in litigation that it gets expensive.   I need emails and tweets directed at senators.  We only need to get four Democratic senators to see that this is a stupid waste of their time and money.  I’ll post how you can help (on the cheap!) soon.

PURR:  I sent my book manuscript–Why We Walk on Eggshells:  How Our Civil Rights Law Helped Bring About the Woke Era–And the Trump Era, Too–to the publisher on Friday.  I’m finished … except for the part about the editing process, which will certainly take up some time.  I hope to be able to post more on Instapundit.  My first thought was that I would be able to spend the day cleaning out my closets and then maybe get a manicure.  Dammit, I’m a girl, and girls ought to be allowed to do girl things now and then.  Alas, the California Legislature is again trying to gut Proposition 209, so that is likely to be my full-time job for a while.  With luck, we’ll be able to kill the bill (as we did in 2023-24 with help from Instapundit readers).  I’ll be posting about that soon.

The closets will have to wait … maybe until 2027.  But I am going to have a Dr. Pepper float to celebrate the book manuscript.