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She Refused a C-Section Mid-Labor, Ends Up in Court
Topic: Children and Family
Source: Propublica
ProPublica reports on Florida woman's virtual appearance before judge hours before birth A virtual court hearing from a pregnant mother’s hospital bed shows what forced medical treatment can look like. In the middle of labor, Cherise Doyley learned she wasn't just a patient—she was effectively a defendant. Amy Yurkanin of ProPublica reports that after the Jacksonville woman declined to consent to a C-section, a nursing supervisor brought in a computer tablet and informed a stunned Doyley that she was now in virtual court. During the ensuing proceeding, doctors told Judge Michael Kalil that they considered a vaginal birth too risky. Doyley responded that she understood the risk to be extremely low and that previous C-sections had left her with difficult recoveries. After a two-hour hearing, the judge did not order an emergency C-section but gave the hospital permission to perform one should an emergency arise.

As homelessness rises among NYC kids, most struggle to make it to school
Topic: Children and Family
Source: The Gothamist
Almost half of New York City’s homeless students were chronically absent from school last year, according to an analysis published Monday by the group Advocates for Children of New York. The data shows roughly 154,000 students in the city's public schools during the 2024-2025 academic year were homeless, meaning they lived in shelters or "doubled up" with other families, marking a record high in a number that's been climbing for a decade amid the city’s affordability crisis. The report found 49% of students whose families lived in temporary housing with other family members or friends missed at least one out of every 10 of their school days last year. That rate was even higher for students living in shelters, at 63%.

DOJ's Harmeet Dhillon to probe Mamdani's 'racial equity plan'
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: The Post Millennial
...prioritizing 'black and brown' New Yorkers. The Department of Justice’s Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, Harmeet Dhillon, has said that her department "will review" the racial equity plan released by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Monday. Mamdani said at a press conference, in which he also announced the release of the city’s true cost of living report, "While today's true cost of living measure confirms that the affordability crisis touches every corner of our city, we know that these effects are not applied evenly, so often it is black and brown New Yorkers who are hit the hardest. This preliminary racial equity plan is the first step in developing a whole-of-government approach to tackling that reality."

Over $1.3 BILLION in Washington childcare spending ‘unauditable’
Topic: Children and Family
Source: The Post Millennial
...as oversight failures mount. "We are a reporting agency, not an enforcement agency." Washington state’s childcare subsidy system is facing explosive new scrutiny after state auditors confirmed that more than $1.3 billion in spending over four years was effectively unauditable. This raises serious questions about how taxpayer dollars are being tracked and whether fraud could be going undetected. According to data from the Washington State Auditor’s Office (SAO), the Department of Children, Youth and Families (DCYF) failed to maintain the records necessary to audit federal childcare funds from 2021 through 2024, meaning auditors could not verify how the money was spent at the provider level.

Women who hate men
Topic: Men's Movement
Source: PsyPost
Study finds similarities in gendered hate speech on Reddit. A new study reveals that online communities dedicated to hating men share strikingly similar behaviors and language patterns with communities dedicated to hating women. The research suggests that gender driven hate speech is a broad phenomenon characteristic of toxic digital groups, regardless of the victim’s gender. These findings were published in the journal Scientific Reports.

In Iran, Iraq and the U.S., Women Speak Out Against State Repression
Topic: Violence Against Women
Source: MS
From Nasrin Sotoudeh to Shelly Kittleson, women who challenge state power are being detained, disappeared and targeted—yet continue to speak out at extraordinary personal risk. We learned Thursday that internationally acclaimed Iranian human rights attorney and women’s rights advocate (and friend of Ms.) Nasrin Sotoudeh had been arrested by the Iranian regime. Her whereabouts are currently unknown. Sotoudeh, who has been repeatedly imprisoned for her advocacy, has been outspoken in her criticism of the regime, and her daughter suspects such criticism in recent interviews may have led to her arrest. UPDATE: Kidnapped Shelly Kittleson Is Freed in Iraq .

Iowa Law Requiring Parental Notification
Topic: Children and Family
Source: The Volokh Conspiracy
...as to Accommodations "Intended to Affirm [Public School] Student's Gender Identity" Upheld. From Iowa Safe Schools v. Reynolds, decided today by Eighth Circuit Judge Ralph Erickson, joined by Judges Lavenski Smith and Jonathan Kobes: "Iowa Code § 279.78(3) provides: "If a student enrolled in a school district requests an accommodation that is intended to affirm the student's gender identity from a licensed practitioner employed by the school district, including a request that the licensed practitioner address the student using a name or pronoun that is different than the name or pronoun assigned to the student in the school district's registration forms or records, the licensed practitioner shall report the student's request to the administrator employed by the school district, and the administrator shall report the student's request to the student's parent or guardian." …

Ed Dept rescinds 6 OCR settlements with school districts supporting trans students
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: Just the News
The changes impact six settlements that the Obama and Biden administrations reached with school districts in Delaware, Pennsylvania and Washington state, and two school districts and a community college in California. The Department of Education announced Monday that its Civil Rights division is rescinding portions of resolution agreements that were made by previous administrations regarding transgender students. The department argued that the settlements had no "legal basis" and were driven by an ideological interpretation of Title IX by protecting students on the basis of "gender identity" rather than biological sex.

Univs plan private grad ceremonies for illegal alien students w/ restricted access
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: Campus Reform
These five California universities are hosting 'UndocuGraduation' ceremonies for illegal alien students that are closed to the public and separate from traditional commencement ceremonies. This spring, universities are hosting “UndocuGraduation” ceremonies for illegal alien students that are closed to the public and separate from traditional commencement ceremonies. Schools describe the ceremonies as “private” or “intimate,” likely out of deportation fears, requiring advance registration and only revealing the location to confirmed attendees. Many of these events are hosted by university resource centers for illegal alien students, which provide instructional guidance on how to handle interactions with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers to best avoid arrest and deportation. These centers also often provide taxpayer-funded legal services for illegal alien students. Here are five universities hosting “UndocuGraduation” ceremonies this spring:

Deadly Childhood Disease Rebounding as Vaccine Rates Drop
Topic: Children and Family
Source: NBC News
Doctors report new Hib meningitis cases as pediatric vaccinations decline. A once-dreaded deadly childhood infection that many doctors have never actually seen is starting to edge back into view, NBC News reports. Haemophilus influenzae type b, or Hib, was a leading cause of meningitis and other life-threatening infections in young children before a vaccine arrived in 1987. Before that, about 20,000 kids in the US fell seriously ill from the bacterial ailment each year and roughly 1,000 died. Widespread vaccination cut annual cases to under 50, effectively erasing Hib from most doctors' day-to-day reality.

The woman who thinks civil rights went too far
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: Politico
Harmeet Dhillon has spent a year trying to turn the Justice Department in the opposite direction. Now the online right wants to see her as attorney general. When Harmeet Dhillon cites the “woke ideology” she wants to put in the U.S. Justice Department’s sights, she does so from a personal familiarity perhaps unrivaled in the conservative movement. Dhillon — a figure likely to emerge with new power from President Donald Trump’s shakeup of the department’s leadership — built her legal career and political identity in San Francisco, where she was a Republican activist vastly outnumbered by Democrats and led a legal revolt against California’s progressive policies in state and federal courts.

Conservative Rival to SAT Continues to Gain Ground
Topic: Children and Family
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Classic Learning Test draws praise, along with scrutiny over reliability. A third entrant is muscling into the college-testing game—and it's bringing Plato along. The Classic Learning Test, launched in 2015 as a conservative-backed alternative to the SAT and ACT, has won recent approval from the Pentagon for military service academies, and from Indiana's public universities and the University of North Carolina system, reports the Washington Post. The exam leans heavily on Western canon texts—think Dante, St. Augustine, and Shakespeare—bans calculators, and can be taken at home, a setup that has made it particularly popular with Christian schools and home-schoolers. For years, in fact, the test was "relatively niche," notes a previous story at Inside Higher Ed. But acceptance by the military in particular is seen as a big victory for the exam, even as questions linger about how well it works.

Students ditch loan debt by moving overseas
Topic: Children and Family
Source: The Post Millennial
...even when payments are as little as $60 per month. One borrower cited in the report had payments exceeding $600 per month on roughly $80,000 in debt before eventually moving to Southeast Asia. A report from The New York Times breaks down a growing trend of student loan borrowers leaving the United States and abandoning repayment altogether, as delinquency and default rates climb to levels not before seen. According to the report, more than 40 million Americans hold federal student loan debt, with roughly 7.7 million now in default. While most borrowers remain in the system, some are opting for a more drastic solution by relocating overseas, putting distance between themselves and American collectors.

"You're Not Really Blaming Islam On Whitey, Are You?"
Topic: Violence Against Women
Source: Zero Hedge
Bill Maher asks Ana Kasparian which Middle Eastern country she would feel comfortable wearing “that dress” and then this happened.
MAHER: “If you had to live in the Middle East. Any city. Where would you live where you’d be comfortable in that dress?”
ANA: “I’m sure I would not be comfortable in this dress in any of the various Middle Eastern countries that have been destabilized by—”
MAHER INTERRUPTS: “Really? You’re not really blaming it on whitey, are you? You’re blaming Islam on whitey?”
ANA: “I’m not blaming Islam on whitey.”
MAHER: “But what you’re saying is we destabilize? That’s why you can’t wear that dress?”

Left-wing Outlet: Migrant Sexual Assault “Price Worth Paying to End Racism”
Topic: Violence Against Women
Source: The New American
You perhaps didn’t think you’d see the day when diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) would be applied to sexual assault. But here we are, courtesy of “Black-led and Black-owned startup” (its own description) AFRU. If a migrant rapes you says AFRU, well, boohoo. Those are just the broken eggs for the omelet. Or as the site puts it in its subhead: "Quasi-consensual encounters between refugees and white Western women may help with assimilation. Increasingly they result in a shared apartment and a new surname."

Colleges should cover the cost when student borrowers default
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: Human Events
There's lots of Americans who decide not to go to college or take advanced degrees because they don't want to be in hock. They shouldn't be forced to cover the cost of irresponsible, regretful borrowers. President Joe Biden really wanted to eradicate student loan debt by allowing students who borrowed money from the federal government for their studies to be entirely forgiven, leaving the burden of their debt on the American taxpayers. He wasn't able to get it through—turns out he didn't have the power to just wipe out some $2 TRILLION in debt for 44 million borrowers. No worries for the students though, who have decided to clear out that debt themselves, and in their own way. Despite all the income-based repayment programs, many borrowers decided to just quit paying it all by themselves. And The New York Times ran a puff piece about them over the Easter weekend. The Times reported that "a record number of student loan borrowers are in delinquency and default. Some are making the drastic decision to leave the country and abandon their loans."

Sex Educators Say They're Being Harmed by Age Verification Laws
Topic: Porn, Prostitution, and Sexual Freedom
Source: Reason
"Oh, so you want kids to look at pornography?" That's the absurd accusation often thrown at people who oppose age verification mandates for online adult content. Opponents of these laws counter that actually this is about adult free speech: Grown-ups should be able to create, publish, and view constitutionally protected erotic content without undue burden or infringement on their privacy. And indeed, that's the message Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers put forth recently when vetoing an age verification law in his state. But there's another important—if less prevalent—argument against the age verification laws sweeping so many states: They may ensnare way more than just pornography. Enacted as regulations of any content "harmful to minors," these could be used against sex educators, sexual health organizations, reproductive freedom groups, sex worker rights advocates, transgender rights advocates, and queer creators of all sorts.

“What Cheer, Netop”
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: Jonathan Turley
Providence Destroys Mural to Murder Victim as too “Divisive” and Triggering Liberals in that city, including the mayor Brett Smiley, demanded the removal of a mural in the memory of Iryna Zarutska, a young woman murdered on a train. Unlike memorials to figures like George Floyd or others, a memorial to the young white woman was deemed triggering and “divisive.” On Aug.22, Zarutska was stabbed to death in a random and unprovoked attack on a light rail train in Charlotte, North Carolina. Shocking surveillance video of the incident showed suspect Decarlos Brown Jr. allegedly stabbing Zarutska in the neck before walking away. Brown has a long record in the criminal justice system with more than 14 arrests and prison stints of five years. {Ed: Netop is New England slang for "friend".]

Democrats Trying to Gaslight Voters On Their Trans Advocacy
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: Victory Grils Blog
Democrat candidates, like Gov. Hairgel Newsom, who have spent the better part of the last decade championing so-called “trans rights” (and kicking women and girls to the curb) are now trying to present a ‘moderate’ position to voters while trying to mollify Trans activists. "California Gov. Gavin Newsom, has recently come under fire for his moderation on transgender policy, despite having positioned himself as a staunch LGBTQ+ ally throughout his tenure and signing dozens of bills aimed at increasing protections for LGBTQ+, and specifically, trans Californians."