VDARE.COM SHUTTING DOWN AS A RESULT OF LAWFARE. Its current homepage tells a harrowing tale of how government and corporations collaborated to wipe a website off the Internet, free speech be damned. I don’t know enough about the site to opine on its content, and I also know that doesn’t matter. We should be very angry that our institutions enable and engage in this cowardly silencing behavior–and wonder who else they’re silencing today.

LOUSY NEW TITLE IX REGS OFF TO A DESERVEDLY ROUGH START. Bad news: the regs strip students of critical free speech and due process rights, taking away the right to a live hearing and to cross-examine witnesses, and (while ED has been cagey on this) making schools punish students for “misgendering.” Good news: They’re so bad that, for now, courts have blocked them from taking effect in 26 entire states, and on many other campuses as well.

This huge mess is directly attributable to ED’s determination to use Title IX as an excuse to attack some of our most fundamental rights as Americans.

SURVEY REVEALS MAJORITY OF AMERICANS NOT BORN YESTERDAY; DID NOT RECENTLY FALL OFF TURNIP TRUCK. FIRE’s national survey also found that, by wide majorities, “Americans do not trust the government to fairly decide what speech is annoying, disturbing, harassing, indecent, intimidating, terrifying, or threatening.”

REALLY SEEMS LIKE IT WOULD BE HARD FOR THE SECRET SERVICE TO MISS THIS. He’s not sneaking, he’s just freely running around up there on the slopey roof.

Video from Donald Trump assassination attempt victim’s POV shows figure moving on roof moments before gunfire in Butler PA
https://t.co/y21Fof5GPt #FoxNews

— UnboundedLife (@unboundedlife1) July 31, 2024

‘HEALTH EQUITY’ VS. TEACHING ACTUAL MEDICINE.  Med schools in 2024: “Instead of asking, ‘How can individuals protect themselves against health problems?,’ doctors should wonder, ‘What kind of public collective action is necessary to confront health inequity across identifiable populations?’”

WHISTLEBLOWERS: HOMELAND SECURITY REFUSED TO FOLLOW LAW ON DNA TESTING ILLEGALS FOR MORE THAN A DECADE. My praise for DHS’s super-duper sincere commitment to libertarian principles is tempered by knowing there is no way it would ever be extended to the law-abiding citizens they are supposedly “securing.”

FBI DIRECTOR WRAY: MAYBE IT WAS SHRAPNEL THAT HIT TRUMP, WHO KNOWS? YOU are supposed to know. YOU are the head of the FBI. It has been nearly two weeks. If the FBI doesn’t actually know whether a bullet hit the former President, it should be shut down. If the FBI does know and its director is lying, the FBI should be shut down.

As usual, I hasten to note that am not suicidal, I do not have any blackmail-worthy compulsions, and I do not have any information that would lead to the arrest and/or conviction of Hillary Clinton.

‘KIDS ONLINE SAFETY ACT’ GIVES GOVERNMENT DANGEROUS POWERS OVER AMERICANS’ EXPRESSION. Would it even be considered if it didn’t? Government and industry pass up so many non-Orwellian ways to make kids “safer” online that there’s no reason to give them any benefit of the doubt.

DO DIVERSITY STATEMENT BANS NOT GO FAR ENOUGH? The real problem is that any regulation only works if the people being regulated aren’t going out of their way to undermine it.

BIDEN STILL IN SECLUSION, VP HARRIS ‘FILLING IN’ FOR HIM, DISCUSSING HIS ‘LEGACY’ AT WHITE HOUSE SPEECH. Biden needs to make an appearance, now, even if it’s from his sick bed. Some Biden aide posting a PDF on X is not sufficient proof that this isn’t “coup o’clock.”

SECRET SERVICE SOURCE: WOULD-BE TRUMP ASSASSIN HID RIFLE AHEAD OF DEADLY RALLY SHOOTING. “It was not immediately clear where he hid it, however.” Smart money’s gotta be on the slightly sloped roof, right?

‘HUNDREDS OF RACIST PLANT NAMES WILL CHANGE AFTER HISTORIC VOTE BY BOTANISTS.’ Seems like this could be confusing, but I guess it could be worse, right? Oh, it is. “A second change to the rules for naming plants that aimed to address problematic names, such as those recognizing people who profited from the transatlantic slave trade, also passed — albeit in a watered-down form.”

‘WITHOUT EVIDENCE,’ NBC BLASTS ‘CONSERVATIVE PUNDITS AND LAWMAKERS’ ON SECRET SERVICE DEI. More and more “news” articles are popping up with this “without evidence” line. This jarring tell simply means “we don’t want you to believe the upcoming claim.” NBC even spends the next few paragraphs discussing the very evidence cited by DEI critics (female agents in the video being a foot shorter than Trump, or seemingly out of position). Maybe the critics are wrong and the weight of the evidence is against them, but they’re not “without evidence.” Saying they are is incompetent journalism.

UNC ASHEVILLE CUTTING WHOLE PROGRAMS IN FACE OF 25% ENROLLMENT DROP. Asheville is in one of the prettiest parts of the country, and the town is considered liberal and cool. How are they still losing students? This is how: “UNCA added sciences to its mission in July 2022. It now offers majors in New Media, Atmospheric Studies, and Environmental Studies.” Sure, who would not want to pay tuition for that?

FIRE TO COLORADO: BACK OFF CENSORSHIP OF PRO-LIFE SHIRTS AT CAPITOL OR WE SUE. Plus, “[j]ust weeks before Hunt was forced to leave the gallery, sergeants-at-arms allowed a group of students to sit in the gallery wearing pro-gun-control shirts,” because of course they did. Deadline is July 30.

WHY A TENNESSEE JUDGE WAS WRONG TO USE ‘COPYRIGHT’ TO BLOCK RELEASE OF THE NASHVILLE TRANS SHOOTER’S MANIFESTO. It also seems weird to me that the parents of the shooter transferred the copyright to the victims’ families. Is that a customary thing of which I was just ignorant?

HOW DO YOU FORCE A UNIVERSITY TO REFLECT THE DIVERSITY OF THE STATE? There are no good options if that’s your goal. I wonder, though: if major state universities just set objective GPA and SAT goals and put all applicants who met them into a lottery, would they actually be any worse off?

GOFUNDME FOR THE RALLY-GOER VICTIMS OF THE TRUMP ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT. I’m donating.

EXTREMELY GRAPHIC LEAKED PHOTO OF ALLEGED SHOOTER. It’s here. (Assuming it’s real and not AI or something.) I recoiled from it when my wife sent me the link, so you have been warned. He’s… not in good enough shape for ID by anyone who doesn’t know him, I think, so you’re not missing anything by not clicking. But it’s certainly newsworthy.

(LIKELY) GUNSHOTS AT TRUMP RALLY IN BUTLER, PA – TRUMP ALIVE BUT RUSHED OFFSTAGE WITH BLOOD ON HIS FACE.

UPDATE: Seems to have been grazed in the right ear. After a series of “pops,” he grabbed his right ear and then dove for the stage. At one point you hear someone yell “shooter down.” Here’s a jackleg stream of Fox News.

On the way out:

ANOTHER UPDATE: Ok, take this with an ENORMOUS grain of salt, but Wall Street Silver on X claims to have the name of the would-be assassin, and talks of a YouTube video of him saying “justice is coming.” Again, could be TOTALLY WRONG. Fox just reported that AP says the shooter is dead right after I hit “post,” so who knows. <– This tweet has been taken down, so I am guessing it was a fake or wrong.

MORE: Supposed video of the alleged shooter, lying dead(?) on top of some kind of structure at the rally.

7:42 PM ET: Horribly, Fox is now reporting that a rally-goer is dead and another is in critical condition.

STILL MORE (FROM GLENN): A former student sends the pic above and adds: “And the people who think they matter want us to believe this selfish rich man doesn’t love America??”

IT WAS A SUPER SHORT TRIP FROM RENAMING FT. BRAGG TO LABELING PRO-LIFERS TERRORISTS. You look at the slide and think, “maybe it’s just random pro-life clipart?” Nope, it’s in the text. Along with “Row [sighs in lawyer] v. Wade.”

MAKE POLITICS FUN AGAIN! Trump challenges Biden to $1 million charity golf tournament.

Say what you will about Trump, he tries to make it so things aren’t so boring and serious all the time. I mean, this is a guy who not only believes in “NO TAX ON TIPS!” (and don’t we all? Can we please give the Chili’s waiter a break already?) but has it in his official agenda. In all caps.

UPDATE: Biden said no in the most anti-fun way possible. (Maybe he shouldn’t have issued the original challenge?)

“TEACHING SOCIOLOGY” JOURNAL IS AN IDEOLOGICAL NIGHTMARE. No surprise, sadly, but it’s “good” to have confirmation. Representative example: On climate change, “‘horrific … scenarios’ must be privileged even if they cause ‘students … [to] fall into despair,’ because ‘climate change is, in fact, an intractable existential crisis.'” Wow, thanks, “science.”

FIVE BIG FREE SPEECH TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS TERM’S SUPREME COURT CASES. With eight First Amendment cases, it was a blockbuster term for freedom of speech.

RAPPER ON PROBATION MUST RUN ALL LYRICS BY U.S. GOVERNMENT IN ADVANCE. Not a rap fan myself, but replace “rapper” with “Trump” and “lyrics” with “speeches” and you may begin to see the potential issue here.