‘THAT’ BUS AND ‘THAT’ GUY ‘THAT’ DAY: Aussie history teacher Frank Frederico grew up in a thoroughly secularized family and was a confident atheist by the time he graduated university. But then several years into a satisfying teaching career some stuff just happened to occur in a certain way and that changed everything.

WHITES NEED NOT APPLY: The Department of Veterans Affairs offers multiple training classes and workshops that are closed to Caucasian vets, reports the Washington Free Beacon’s Peter Hasson. Like the man said, some animals are more equal than others.

GOP TO GAIN FIVE SENATE SEATS IN 2024? Senate GOP campaign insiders tell The Epoch Times they are quite confident about retaking the Senate majority in November with a two-seat gain and a pickup of five is a reasonable possibility.

JEWISH VOTERS MOVING RIGHT: Republican campaign strategists see Jewish voters moving to the GOP in the biggest races of 2024.

MOST HILL AIDES BACK TERM LIMITS: Are you as shocked as I am by this?

TRUMP’S TAX CUTS MAY DECIDE 2024 ELECTION: Remember President Donald Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), the massive reduction in federal levies negotiated between him and the then-Republican Congress? The across-the-board tax cuts included in that law expire next year, but the political reverberations could be a major factor in the outcome of this November’s election.

Check out the Tax Foundation’s analysis of the state-by-state amount that individual levies will increase for all taxpayers if the TCJA is not renewed. When everybody in, for example, Texas realizes their federal taxes are going up by on average $2,919 if something isn’t done, they aren’t going to be happy. Same for a key swing state like Michigan where the hike will be more than $2,000 per taxpayer on average.

Expect Trump and his allies to be talking about this a lot in the days ahead.

A FORMER SAUL ALINSKI TRAINER EXPOSES THE PRO-PALESTINIAN ‘PROTESTS:’ Richard Pollock knew most of the luminaries leading the 1960s radicals, being a roommate of Chicago 7 defendant Rennie Davis, and an expert trainer of New Left agitators using Saul Alinski’s “Rules for Radicals.” Pollock is launching a new Substack column today that includes this observation:

“In 1971, as a member of the May Day Collective, I was asked to be the author of the ‘May Day Manual,’ an instruction book about how to close down the nation’s capital during a particularly aggressive period of anti-war protests.

“The May Day demonstrators boldly stated, ‘If the government won’t end the war, we’ll end the government.’ Protestors flooded DC’s streets in acts of civil disobedience. Interestingly, Democrats never called it an insurrection. I myself was arrested on the Capitol Building steps with about 700 other protesters.

“As Rennie was my roommate, I quickly met a ton of anti-war leaders, including Chicago 7 co-defendants Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Dave Dellinger, and the notorious radical lawyer Bill Kuntsler.

“Later, as a direct action civil disobedience instructor at the Republican National Convention in Miami, I taught demonstrators how to launch disruptive demonstrations. I was arrested and shared a prison cell with Allen Ginsberg.”

In other words, Pollock knows the Left like few others. With his new Substack column, he is analyzing the Alinski-inspired tactics and strategies underlying the Pro-Palestinian protests and violence that have erupted across the nation’s campuses this Spring. Pollock is providing an invaluable public resource with his analyses and it will be interesting to see who in official Washington pays attention.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I may be a bit biased since I’ve known and respected Pollock for years. He worked for me as a tremendously talented investigative reporter at the Washington Examiner and Daily Caller News Foundation. Among many other achievements, he was the first Right media journalist to expose the deep and malignant influence of far-Left Swiss billionaire Hans Wyss.

YOU’VE HEARD OF ATHEISM, AGNOSTICISM: But what about Apatheism? That’s when you just really don’t care one way or the other about the “God question.” Apologetics Professor Maryjo Sharp, a former Apatheist, explains on HillFaith this morning.

RFK’S FOUR ‘EXISTENTIAL ISSUES:’ Robert Kennedy Jr. sits down with Epoch TV’s Jan Jekielek to discuss the four “existential issues” facing America that Kennedy claims both Biden and Trump are ignoring. Issue one, for instance, is the national debt:

According to RFK Jr., “our country is facing a series of existential issues and neither of them even has an opinion on them, and neither of them can do anything about them.

One of those is the debt. We have a $34 trillion debt. We’ve added a trillion dollars in the last hundred days and it’s growing exponentially.

“The cost of servicing that debt now exceeds our defense budget. Within five years, the cost of servicing this debt will be 50 cents out of every dollar that the federal government collects in taxes.

“Within 10 years, it will be 100 percent, so this is existential for our country. It means defaulting on the debt or taking some other radical course that will be devastating to the middle class, to private ownership, and to everything that we believe in.

“Yet, President Trump and President Biden have no capacity to deal with this issue. Why is that, and why do they never discuss it? Because those presidents ran up a bigger portion of that debt than any other presidents in history.”

I don’t agree with everything RFK Jr. says, but there are more than a few folks who think he’s absolutely right that the debt issue can no longer be ignored, it must be addressed and the American people have a right to know how anybody who claims to be qualified for the Oval Office will deal with it.

IT’S NOT ‘PUBLIC’ HOUSING: It’s “Social Housing,” according to a growing number of Lefty advocates, according to Issues & Insights and Pacific Research Institute. We live in an age in which the meaning of words is as pliable as the value of an unborn life.

CAN YOU BLAME THEM? Half a dozen mainstream Jewish advocacy groups took early leave of a digital meeting with two senior Biden administration officials when they learned of the inclusion of anti-semitic Left-wing advocacy outfits, including one linked to anti-Israel activists, according to Jewish Insider.

NO, SEVERE WEATHER IS NOT INCREASING: It’s not every day that a conservative think tank like Canada’s Fraser Institute and the National Geographic Society agree on a major issue in the climate change debate. Plus, have a look at my latest PJMedia column to learn more about what growing up in Tornado Alley in the 1950s and 1960s was like.

LAWFARE WORKS BOTH WAYS: Adam Kredo of the Washington Free Beacon reports on the filing of a lawsuit by victims of Hamas’ October 7 Massacre in Israel against two of the radical Pro-Palestine “student” groups fomenting chaos on U.S. campuses.

“The suit marks the first time terror victims are taking aim at campus anti-Israel groups for their alleged role in bolstering Hamas propaganda on campus and driving a series of increasingly violent protests that have endangered Jewish college students across the country,” according to Kredo.

Every contributed dollar these radical groups get from George Soros that is diverted to legal defense is one less dollar to pay for the agitators, equipment, printing, transportation, etc. etc. required to stage the kind of coordinated madness seen on dozens of campuses for the past two weeks.

LINCOLN’S PRAYER FOR AMERICA: Today is the National Day of Prayer among millions of Evangelical Christians, Catholics, conservatives and anybody else who wants to send up appeals for divine intervention to save this country. Lincoln’s prayer in 1863 on the first National Day of Prayer seems especially relevant these many years later.

CALIFORNIA KILLING FAST FOODS: That $20-per-hour minimum wage for fast-food outlets in California is rapidly wreaking havoc on an industry already suffering due to inflation, over-regulation and social disintegration, according to Issues & Insights:

“The $20-an-hour wage floor foisted on California’s fast-food restaurants, dubbed with the innocent-sounding moniker Assembly Bill 257, was signed into law last fall. It didn’t take long to become a disaster…

“Those who are losing their jobs in this new higher-wage environment are those most easily replaced, with the lowest productivity — which usually means minority youths with minimal education and little or no work skills. In short, the most vulnerable among us…

“Because of escalating costs, many restaurants are also adding ‘ordering kiosks,’ basically firing workers and replacing them with user-friendly computer terminals. And, to repeat, this was even before the law went into effect. In the coming weeks and months, expect more job devastation, business closures and sharply higher prices paid by consumers.”

SO MUCH FOR ‘STUDENT’ UNREST: Joshua Arnold at The Washington Stand reports more than 1,600 individuals have been arrested thus far at 33 campuses in 23 states in the coordinated and planned Pro-Palestinians campus protests. In at least 11 instances, more of those arrested were non-students than students.

AN AGE LIMIT ON SOCIAL MEDIA? Legislation with bipartisan support is moving through Congress to bar youngsters under the age of 13 from using social media sites like Facebook and TikTok. Check out my Epoch Times story this morning that makes clear the Senate conservatives are deeply divided on this proposal.

GOOD QUESTION: Hey, if Secretary Mayorkas got away with ignoring/flouting/selectively enforcing the law, what’s to keep more presidential appointees from doing the same? Check out my news report on a disturbing Capitol Hill panel hosted by the Center for Immigration Studies.

UNSUNG HERO: If the day ever comes that the story of the recovery of American liberty is written, one of the most prominent names will surely be that of Columbia University Law Professor Philip Hamburger, founder of the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA).

I first came into contact with the good professor during my years at the Washington Examiner investigating abuses by trial lawyers, one of the groups that has most benefitted from the growth of the Administrative State.

Today on the Epoch Times, Kevin Stocklin tells the story of the successes achieved in a short six years by the NCLA and Hamburger’s troops. This is a must-read both because it clarifies so precisely the heart of the evil of the Administrative State and in doing so moves America one huge step closer to the restoration.

WHAT ABOUT? The problem of evil. How can evil — like, just to cite one obvious example, the October 7 Massacre of 1,200 Israelis — happen if an all-powerful, all-good God exists? Cold-case detective J. Warner Wallace takes on that challenge this morning on HillFaith.

YOU ARE FUNDING CAMPUS HATE: Well, if you pay your federal taxes, that is. Open the Books dug into the federal spending database and found that, for example, Columbia University got $5.7 billion from the feds between 2018 and 2022. Harvard, Yale and pretty every other school that has allowed anti-semitic demonstrations in recent weeks also got in on the beaucoup bucks. Check out my latest column on PJMedia.

JACK SMITH MAY HAVE A HUGE PROBLEM: Former Attorneys General Ed Meese and Michael Mukasey point out in an Amicus Brief that Special Counsel Jack Smith lacks credible authority to bring a case against former President Donald Trump:

“Those actions can be taken only by persons properly appointed as federal officers to properly created federal offices. Smith wields tremendous power, and effectively answers to no one,” Meese and Mukasey told the Supreme Court in their brief.

“However, neither Smith nor the position of special counsel under which he purportedly acts meets those criteria. And that is a serious problem for the rule of law, whatever one may think of the conduct at issue in Smith’s prosecution.”

The Epoch Times’ Naveen Athrappully notes that Justice Clarence Thomas raised the issue during the High Court’s hearing on the immunity of the President. One wonders if the forthcoming ruling on the immunity issue might prove to be more damaging to the Biden administration’s case against Trump than anybody expects.

DOD FUNDING CHINA’S BIOWARFARE RESEARCH: Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) says the Pentagon and other federal agencies are sending billions of U.S. tax dollars to China, including the infamous Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) that gave us COVID-19, for research on militarizing pathogens capable of causing national and worldwide pandemics.

Question: Wouldn’t it be cheaper for everybody involved for our elites to just hand them the keys to the joint?

ABOUT THAT UKRAINE AID PACKAGE: There is only one Member of the House of Representatives who was born in Ukraine, Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.). She voted against that $95 billion foreign aid package approved by the lower chamber over the weekend. Ben Johnson at the Washington Stand has more.

FISH STORY, PART 2: Meet “Indomitable,” the Pacific Salmon found one day in 1964 swimming in the same pond in the Prairie Creek Fish Hatchery near Orick, California, where he’d been born two years prior. He made it back despite facing multiple Frostian splits in the “road,” an abundance of natural and man-made obstacles, plus hordes of extremely hungry brown bears.

That such fish have this drive to return to their breeding ground is amazing enough, but this post today on HillFaith describes the incredible obstacles Indomitable overcame. If you missed Part 1 back in January, here’s the link.