News and Views: January 25, 2025

 

Vice-President JD Vance at Friday's March for Life rally 

in Washington D.C.

Trump pardons 23 pro-life activists convicted of FACE Act violations  On the eve of the national March for Life rally in Washington, President Donald Trump announced Jan. 23 he was issuing pardons for 23 protesters arrested for violating the federal Freedom of Access to Clinics (FACE) Act.

   Trump signed the pardons in the Oval Office.

   “They should not have been prosecuted. Many of them are elderly people,” he told reporters. “This is a great honor to sign this.”

 

Trump Inaugurates a New Era 

Breathtaking: There's no other word for the sheer ambition and scope of Donald Trump's second inaugural address.

   President Trump is back with all the confidence of a man delivered from death for a purpose.

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Senate Confirms Pete Hegseth As America’s Next Defense Secretary 

Following a months-long media smear campaign aimed at tanking his nomination, the Senate voted to confirm Pete Hegseth as America’s next defense secretary Friday night. The final vote was 51-50, with Vice President J.D. Vance casting the tie-breaking vote after GOP Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky joined Democrats in opposition.

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These Mayors Understand How to Run a City...Armed with common sense policies, three urban leaders are fighting a patient battle against chaos    Urban leaders have greeted the return of Donald Trump with about as much enthusiasm as they would have for a reprise of the bubonic plague. The National Urban League imagines an “extreme right-wing” administration that will ban abortion, threaten the civil service, and end both immigration and racial quotas. Trump has even proposed building new planned cities—so-called freedom cities—that could compete with the existing urban landscape. Some urban leaders fear Trump’s actions will force them to “go it alone”—to grapple with their cities’ problems without the benefit of federal funding. But perhaps this is less of a problem than it seems. After all, cities have declined over the past four years with a Democrat in the White House. Weaning cities from federal assistance may be just what’s needed to spur change.

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Mercy – Does The Bishop Even Understand It? 

Big fail for Budde. Mercy is not sternly lecturing. Mercy is not hectoring like a bitter hag. And it certainly isn’t poisoning children with hormones and hacking off their body parts. It certainly isn’t treating illegal immigrants like chattel slaves.

Episcopalian bishop defiles president, voters, and the Washington National Cathedral   Budde took it upon herself to attack a duly elected president, from the altar, during the inauguration service, thereby also attacking the majority of the American people.

   The radical woke penetration of mainline Western religions has led to their flocks fleeing, and, ironically, a resultant increase in secularism, agnosticism, and atheism, which, in turn, allows ‘wokeism’ to flourish. A ‘doom loop’ if ever there was one.

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Trans-Identifying Male Actor Nominated For 'Best Actress' Academy Award   Yes, a biological male is nominated for Best Actress, an award that is exclusively for women.

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K-12 education is mediocre because teaching colleges set mediocre standards   New Jersey’s recent announcement that it will eliminate basic reading, writing, and mathematics proficiency exams for aspiring teachers is a symptom of a much broader problem. The real crisis is the failure of our education colleges to maintain high standards. Many of these institutions have steadily lowered standards, rather than equip aspiring teachers with the knowledge and tools they need to succeed in the classroom. This failure has created a vicious cycle from kindergarten through college in which underqualified educators produce mediocre graduates. Many of these graduates will become teachers themselves, and so the decline continues.

Study Finds Math Classes Cause 'Intellectual Trauma' to Minorities  “When Black female students are repeatedly disciplined for being social, loud, or goofy in the mathematics classroom, they experience mathematical violence,” claim the authors of Designing Mathematics Curricula That Center Students’ Brilliance.

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The Week in Pictures: 100 Hours That Shook the World