James Franey writes for the New York Post about a welcome shift in federal government policy.

President Trump’s top Wall Street cop moved Friday to kill a sweeping Biden-era climate rule that would force US firms to report on global warming risks and their own greenhouse gas emissions.

Paul Atkins, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, blasted the climate change disclosure regulation as growth-strangling red tape that “exceeded our authority.”

“We need to stick to our knitting. Let the Environmental Protection Agency do their job and we stick to our job,” he said in an interview with Fox Business, casting the move as part of President Trump’s deregulation agenda that he vowed would “make IPOs great again.”

The 68-year-old lawyer said SEC disclosure rules “should avoid the practical effect of dictating corporate behavior, and be imposed only when the expected benefits justify the likely costs and burdens.”

Atkins added that Joe Biden’s brand of woke capitalism placed “substantial costs on public companies and shareholders not justified by informational benefits.”

The rule, drafted under Biden’s SEC chair, Gary Gensler, never took effect after a slew of lawsuits in 2024 by the US Chamber of Commerce and 25 GOP Attorneys General put the policy on ice.

Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird was one of the loudest voices demanding that the law be scrapped, and brought several legal challenges to see the legislation axed.

“The radical climate mandate imposed by the Biden Securities and Exchange Commission was an outrageous act of overreach,” Bird said. “I am grateful the SEC is taking the important step to kill this.”

Atkins’ policy repeal, which could be formally rubber-stamped within the next year, marked a massive victory for corporate America, especially the banks, airlines, oil drillers, farmers and retailers who hated the idea of more paperwork.

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Yuval Levin responds to the pope’s major statement about the impact of artificial intelligence.

Since the beginning of his papacy a year ago, Pope Leo XIV has held out the promise of offering the world some much-needed wisdom on living well with technology. His very choice of name hearkened back to Leo XIII’s unmatched moral and intellectual leadership in framing the case for human flourishing in the face of the indignities of the industrial age. And his ambition has seemed directed to offering similar guidance, rooted in the same enduring conception of the nature of the human person, to a world coming to terms with artificial intelligence.

His first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, released to the world this past Monday, certainly reflects that ambition. But it also reflects the difficulties posed by the sheer magnitude of the moment. Comparing AI to capitalism is no flight of hyperbole. In its scope and consequences, the era of change now dawning could well be as transformative as the Industrial Revolution. And it is much too soon to hope to get our arms and heads around its implications.

This is one unavoidable conclusion from reading Magnifica Humanitas. Leo XIII did not offer his guidance at the dawn of the industrial age. He thought and wrote near the end of the nineteenth century, when the character of industrial capitalism had become readily evident, and the nature of the benefits it offered and the challenges it posed could be articulated and classified. Leo XIV does not have that advantage. He is, like the rest of us, straining to grasp the contours of the still-emerging age of AI. …

… I’m blessed and burdened with the maddening equanimity of middle age: I’m pretty sure the world did not begin yesterday and will not end tomorrow, so I think all of you should calm down.

This should all render me a very friendly reader of Magnifica Humanitas, and I left the document immensely impressed with its author. But ultimately, the encyclical strikes me as a missed opportunity, and even as a failure to grapple with the scope of what awaits us in the coming years.

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Glenn Hubbard explores how President Trump can address real economic concerns without a counterproductive tariff policy.

[F]or all the benefits that accrue to financiers and consumers, a stronger dollar makes it harder for US industry to compete globally, to the detriment of industrial employment, incomes, and communities. …

… Trump’s economic agenda recognizes the adverse effects of globalization and technological advances on certain parts of American society, in contrast to economists’ emphasis on averages and overall benefits. But Trump misses the simple insight that there are more—and better—ways to help US manufacturing and its left-behind workers than through a weaker dollar alone. He has several policy instruments at his disposal that can address these voters’ concerns and help achieve his administration’s goals while preserving support for the dollar’s reserve-currency role.

For starters, the administration can support a robust industrial sector by increasing public funding for basic research, which advances technology, and a network of applied research centers to diffuse advances in industrial processes. Streamlining regulatory approvals for construction and electricity transmission will also be crucial.

Second, to help workers develop new skills, the administration could channel more resources toward community colleges, while a substantially expanded Earned Income Tax Credit would increase rewards for work. Lastly, more targeted place-based aid could help those areas facing severe disruptions from globalization and technology.

By focusing on the problems associated with a stronger dollar, Trump and his economic advisers have asked an old question in a new way. Their mistake is insisting on answering it with the wrong instrument. Weakening the dollar, including by eroding policy predictability and the economic institutions underpinning its hegemony, will exacerbate the affordability pressures many Americans face and harm the country’s fiscal position. The question now is whether the administration will see the need for a policy pivot in time to affect the midterms.

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Kyle Pomerleau explores tariffs’ impact on the American economy.

Tariffs have become an important economic policy in the United States. Tariffs are a form of excise tax that applies to imported goods. They can be imposed for three, sometimes contradictory, reasons: to generate revenue, protect domestic industries, and retaliate against other countries for economic or non-economic reasons. As with other taxes, tariffs have important equity and efficiency considerations. Although they can raise revenue and protect certain domestic industries, they reduce economic output, misallocate resources in the economy, reduce the quantity and quality of goods and services available to consumers, and burden households with lower real after-tax incomes. In the current environment, tariff policy has been a source of uncertainty for businesses and households both because of the Administration announcing tariffs and then changing the rates or delaying their imposition, as well as because of legal challenges that have struck down tariffs. …

… Evidence on the latest round of tariffs suggests that the pass-through is almost 100%, that is, United States consumers are bearing the full costs of tariffs (Gopinath and Neiman 2026).  Between March 2025 and May 2026, The price of imported goods rose by 6.8 percent relative to a pre-tariff price trend between March 2025 and May 2026, as measured by  a study that tracks the online prices of over 350,000 products sold at five large U.S. retailers. The largest price increases observed were in carpets and other floor coverings (54 percent), other articles of clothing and clothing accessories (24 percent) coffee, tea, and cocoa (16 percent), and fish and seafood (16 percent). …

… When the price of an imported good rises due to a tariff (or for other reasons), domestic producers who sell goods that compete with those imports raise the price of their goods as well since they have less competitive price pressure from foreign goods.

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Jim Hoft writes for the Gateway Pundit about a positive development in the legacy media.

CBS News Editor-in-Chief continues draining the woke swamp at the long-compromised Sunday news program, 60 Minutes.

The Gateway Pundit has documented for years how ’60 Minutes’ repeatedly targeted conservatives and President Trump with one-sided hit pieces while giving Democrats and their allies soft-glove treatment.

The show’s credibility collapsed further after the disastrous Kamala Harris interview that triggered a major lawsuit and exposed its activist bent.

Bari Weiss, who famously walked away from The New York Times over its radical leftward lurch and cancel culture, is now applying the same standards at CBS.

Under the new Skydance/Paramount ownership, Weiss was brought in with a mandate for “actual viewpoint diversity.”

Weiss announced Thursday that she is replacing veteran executive producer Tanya Simon — a 30-year fixture at the program and daughter of legendary correspondent Bob Simon — with Nick Bilton, a tech journalist, former New York Times columnist, and documentary filmmaker with zero experience in traditional broadcast news.

Bilton issued the following statement:

“My responsibility is not just technological transformation. It is also our trust with the public.

“On the very first episode of 60 Minutes Mike Wallace said: ‘If this broadcast does what we hope it will do it will report reality.’ I can’t think of a better north star for 60 Minutes than that. Above all, that means a commitment to fairness—in story selection, in the edit room, and in the broadcast.

“Now, what happens next? I’m here to lead this show, not preserve it under glass. That means honoring what works and being honest about what doesn’t. I have a notebook full of ideas.”  …

… Correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega were also shown the door as part of the overhaul, along with other senior producers.

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A national report which saw big drops in teacher union membership and strength in North Carolina has raised some interesting responses from local media outlets in the Tar Heel State.

The report, commissioned by the Fordham Institute of Ohio, found membership among teachers in NCAE declined from 49 percent of educators in 2008 to 21 percent of educators in 2021. The decline is the second largest nationally.  Second only to Wisconsin which passed sweeping reforms in 2010 that significantly weakened unions. 

Local Raleigh outlet WRAL.com ran an article on the report earlier this week and said researchers “are surprised” at the drop in membership. When asked what caused the significant drop in North Carolina’s union membership, Melissa Arnold Lyon, one of the researchers, told WRAL she isn’t quite sure.

North Carolina was more of a surprise,” Lyon said. Teachers could be joining other groups that aren’t employee associations, or it could be that new teachers aren’t joining and replacing retiring teachers who were members, Lyon theorized, adding that she really didn’t know. But the drop coincides with the state’s declining rankings in average teacher pay.

If younger teachers are coming into the profession with lower pay and no collective bargaining rights, Lyon said, “then it wouldn’t be a huge surprise to expect that those newer teachers wouldn’t see the benefit of joining a union.”

A day later, the News and Observer (N&O), told us what it thought of the report when it ran a Reality Check on the report. The N&O article took issue with the report claims. For example, in response to the claim that “teacher unions are weaker than they were a decade ago.”  The N&O asked NCAE president, Tamika Walker Kelly to respond. Walker Kelly said the organization is growing in strength and has added 1,000 new members since its march in Downtown Raleigh. 

North Carolina’s ranking of 48^th (out of 51 places) in perceived influence was also brought up. Researchers had asked education leaders and education policy advocates in every state to identity who was the major player in education policies in their state. According to the report, North Carolina was ranked 48^th in the area of perceived influence for teachers’ unions. 

Melissa Arnold Lyon, one of the authors of the report told the News and Observer that NCAE is still an important factor in state education politics. But from the perspective of many actors, NCAE is not the primary actor, but one of many actors driving education policy in the state. 

Again, the News and Observer asked Walker-Kelly to respond. She said NCAE is one of the fastest growing unions in the country and pointed to the huge turnout for the teacher protest rally in Raleigh on May 1^st. 

Honestly, I’m a little surprised by these stories.

Being mystified by a decades-long trend only says you’re not looking close enough at the problem. There are answers.

Talking to the head of a teacher’s union may be the best way to get an idea of what the teachers union thinks. I don’t know how it helps to validate facts.

Walker-Kelly says NCAE membership is up 1,000 members since the May 1 teacher rally in Raleigh. If that’s the case, wouldn’t the organization be willing to substantiate the claim by opening its books to validate new members?

 It’s true that the organization turned out thousands for the May rally, but does how does that fact translate into influence? If so, why did no member of the Democratic leadership address the crowd in Raleigh?  Why was there no movement on teacher salaries for months?   

I’m not surprised by the Fordham report findings. NCAE membership and influence has been on the decline for years.  It’s a theme I’ve written about frequently. See here and here .

Yes, there may very well have been a modest uptick in membership in recent years.

In 2023, the North Carolina Association of Educators reported having a membership of almost 26,000. In 2024, that number climbed to almost 27,000 members. However, that number included more than just teachers.  Teachers as a percentage of total membership continues to decline.

The problem is that exact numbers are difficult to come by.  The State Auditor collects information on employee associations. NCAE, however, is not a public organization and is not required to divulge membership numbers.  Again, if membership is growing, wouldn’t NCAE leadership want to be the first to share the news?

Even if the uptick happens, what’s undeniable is the uptick happened against a backdrop of years of steady decline in NCAE members.

Researchers and local media may be hesitant to offer reasons for the decline, I am not. In my view three factors account for much of the decline.

First, many teachers joined NCAE initially because the organization offered teachers legal liability insurance and represented teachers during salary negotiations.  Now teachers can buy liability insurance through the state or other organizations, often at a lower rate.  It’s no longer a practical necessity to join NCAE.

Second, NCAE leadership and its national leadership skew overwhelmingly Democratic. Surveys of the teacher profession show it to be ideologically divided with more teachers identifying as Republicans and Independents than often realized by NCAE or NEA leadership.  Those decisions have consequences.

Third, the policy stances of the NEA and NCAE are often at odds with those of rank and file teachers. For example NEA and NCAE fiercely oppose school choice,embrace identify politics in the classroom and regularly pass resolutions on controversial issues like race, gender and sexual identity.  Moderate and conservative educators frequently argue that such issues alienate large numbers of teachers and pull them away from their core responsibilities of academic instruction and student improvement.

Why is NCAE in decline? I think most of us know why. Why others refuse to recognize those reasons is a question that begs to be answered.

The post It’s time to tell the truth about NCAE appeared first on John Locke Foundation.

This is the second of a two-part series on proposed election rules changes. Part one covered proposed rules for recounts and voter ID.

The North Carolina State Board of Elections (SBE) has proposed a set of election rules changes. Two of the proposals address absentee voting and voting sites. This post will include summaries of those proposals and provide information on how you can provide a public comment on them.

Absentee Voting Rules

This would add a new subchapter to the chapter on rules for absentee ballots for ballots with deficiencies. The addition is long overdue, as county election officials rely on informal guidance in numbered memos from the State Board of Elections (SBE). While numbered memos are supposed to reflect election laws and rules, they do not undergo the formal vetting process that rules do. The SBE ran into trouble over numbered memo shenanigans in 2020, including having its numbered memo guidance overturned by a federal court.

The rules fall into four categories.

I. Curable deficiencies. Problems that can be corrected by election officials contacting the voter. Some of those deficiencies include:

• The voter did not sign the absentee ballot application or signed it in the wrong place.
• The required photocopy of the voter’s ID is either missing, unreadable, or not of the acceptable type.
• The name on the ID is not the same as or “substantially equivalent” to that on the voter file. Maiden names are considered substantially equivalent (see 08 NCAC 17 .0101(a)(3)(D))

Something missing here is a procedure for confirming that an illegally transmitted ballot is really from the voter.

II. Non-curable deficiencies. Problems that cannot be corrected by contacting the voter include:

• The ballot envelope is not sealed or appears to have been opened and resealed.
• The voter is requesting a replacement ballot (not really a deficiency, but the voter will get a new ballot if there is enough time left before election day).
• The name of a witness or an assistant is not printed on the application or is not legible, unless officials can determine the name of the witness or assistant from the signature.
• A witness or notary did not sign the absentee ballot application.

For non-curable deficiencies, election officials will send the voter a replacement ballot if it is at least 4 days before election day. If it is three days or less before election day, they will attempt to contact the voter to encourage them to vote in person.

III. Irregularities that do not require further action from the voter. If the ballot arrives inside a sealed ballot envelope, but the outer envelope is not sealed, or if it is hand-delivered in an unsealed envelope that is later sealed in front of officials, officials will note the issue but accept the ballot.

IV. Irregularities that require further action. Some situations require officials to contact the voter for further information before they can determine if a ballot is curable or not:

• The ballot envelope is not sealed or appears to have been opened and resealed, but the outer envelope is sealed.
• The ballot returned to officials is not the same as the ballot sent to the voter (this could happen to a couple who accidentally send their ballot in their spouse’s envelope).

Here is a link to the proposed absentee ballot rules. Here is how you can provide the SBE with your public comment (Deadline: Tuesday, July 14):

• Online on the Public Comment Portal: Absentee Voting Rules
• Email: rulemaking.sboe@ncsbe.gov (Specify that you are commenting on the absentee voting rules.)
• In-Person Public Hearing: 10 a.m. June 22, in the Board Room at the State Board of Elections, Dobbs Building, 430 N. Salisbury St., Raleigh, NC 27603. 
• Mail: Attn: Rulemaking Coordinator, P.O. Box 27255, Raleigh, NC 27611-7255 (Specify that you are commenting on the absentee voting rules.)

Voting Site Rules

The proposal would add a subchapter to Chapter 10 of the state election regulations. That chapter is listed as “Ballot Rotation Rules For Primary Election Ballots,” but the actual chapter title is “Election Day Matters.”

The proposed subchapter has three substantive sections.

I. Voting Sites Buffer Zones. This section builds on § 163‑166.4, the state law limiting activities in and near voting places. It requires county boards of elections to pass resolutions establishing buffer zones around each voting site (early voting sites and election-day precincts) in which electioneering activities are banned. It reasonably extrapolates from the law that voting places with multiple entrances should have a buffer zone around each entrance; the law refers to “the door of entrance.” Election officials must clearly mark the buffer zones before voting begins. State law requires the buffer zone to be 25-50 feet (50 feet where possible) from the entrance to the voting area.

The rules also establish a buffer zone of 6 to 15 feet from curbside voting places and require that curbside voting areas be large enough to accommodate two vehicles at a time.

II. Voting Site Electioneering Zone. This section establishes procedures for election officials to create and mark zones adjacent to the buffer zones for people to conduct electioneering activities and for additional non-adjacent electioneering zones, if the county board determines that the physical layout of the voting site will result in an insufficient amount of space for electioneers to engage in the election-related activity.” Presumably, that means that there is an intervening area that is not part of the property housing the voting site. The purpose of the electioneering zone is to assure that there is an area next to the buffer zone for electioneering activities, to to limit electioneering to that zone and nowhere else.

III. Restrictions of conduct at or near voting sites. This section states that election officials “shall ensure peace and good order at the voting site.” The responsibility includes enforcing the prohibition of “election-related activities” within the voting area and buffer zone.

It also includes preventing any “noise and sound that is disruptive to the voting site” from outside. What is considered disruptive is not left to interpretation. It is “any noise at a volume that is audible to the chief judge or a judge when that official is in the voting enclosure.” If you are outside and election officials can hear your shouting or other noise from inside the voting area, you are being disruptive. They will then require you to quiet down until you are “longer audible in the voting enclosure.” The rule also bans the use of a “sound amplification device,” such as a megaphone near a voting site. Again, if they can hear you from inside, you are being disruptive.

The State Board of Elections claims the authority to set these rules, in part on § 163‑48 of state law, which tasks election officials with enforcing “peace and good order in and about the place of registration and voting.” The US Supreme Court upheld states restricting speech in voting buffer zones in Burson v. Freeman (1992), stating “a government has such a compelling interest in securing the right to vote freely and effectively.”

Here is a link to the proposed voting site rules. Here is how you can provide the SBE with your public comment (Deadline: Tuesday, July 14):

• Online: Public Comment Portal: Voting Site Rules
• Email: rulemaking.sboe@ncsbe.gov (Specify that you are commenting on the voting site rules.)
• In-Person Public Hearing: 10 a.m. June 29, in the Board Room at the State Board of Elections, Dobbs Building, 430 N. Salisbury St., Raleigh, NC 27603. 
• Mail: Attn: Rulemaking Coordinator, P.O. Box 27255, Raleigh, NC 27611-7255 (Specify that you are commenting on the voting site rules.)

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Steven Richards writes for JustTheNews.com about an interesting revelation involving the American government’s space program.

A House investigation has identified hundreds of scientific publications in which NASA-funded U.S. researchers appear to have conducted joint work with Chinese institutions, potential violations of a federal law that has barred such collaboration for more than a decade.

The report, released on Wednesday by the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, also found that, in several instances, some of that research involved collaboration between National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) scientists and institutions that are part of “China’s defense research and industrial base.”

The findings have serious relevance at the current moment, the committee’s chairman, John Moolenaar, R-Mich., said, because the United States is currently engaged in a new space race with the Chinese Communist Party. 

NASA’s successful Artemis II mission last month demonstrated the space agency’s capability to return Americans to lunar orbit, with the goal of reaching the lunar surface by 2028, for the first time since the end of the Apollo missions. China is also planning its own expedition to the moon, hoping to land its own astronauts, called “taikonauts,” on the moon by 2030. 

“The successful Artemis II mission made all Americans proud of the incredible work happening at NASA. We are the world leader in space exploration, and we want to make sure the taxpayer-funded research that keeps America ahead is protected from adversaries including China,” Moolenaar said in a statement.

“NASA worked cooperatively with the Committee throughout this review, acknowledged areas where improvements were needed, and demonstrated it is taking these issues seriously through concrete steps to improve its research security and compliance processes moving forward,” he added. 

“I appreciate the rigorous review that the House Select Committee on China and Chairman Moolenaar as well as the Senate Judiciary Committee and Chairman Grassley have undertaken, which has brought needed visibility to gaps in NASA’s past compliance practices,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman told Just the News in a statement. 

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Casey Chalk writes for the Federalist about the impact of artificial intelligence on our lives.

As impressive as artificial intelligence has already become across a variety of disciplines, from computer science to medicine to architectural design, for anyone who has sought to incorporate AI into their workflow or solve some problem around the house, it can still be, well, less than intelligent. It gets the answer wrong and hallucinates, often disastrously so (in part because, as they say about data, “garbage in, garbage out,” and the internet has a lot of garbage). As much as The Terminator, Blade Runner, and The Matrix series provoke endless nightmares of a future sentient robot apocalypse, the fact of the matter is that whatever real threats AI poses to human flourishing, it cannot and will not ever be human. …

… First things first, we need to appreciate what makes the way we think particularly human. As Paul O’Hara and Steven Umbrello argue in their new book, Can AI Ever Be Human? Consciousness Explored, human knowledge begins with what philosophers call “empirical consciousness,” which involves becoming aware of objects through our senses, as well as becoming aware of ourselves as thinkers, something that is visible even in the first few years of human development. As we get older, we develop an internal awareness that involves “self-presence and mastery,” which enables us to reflect on our thoughts and feelings. We then leverage those thoughts and feelings to interpret sensory data around us. …

… AI’s processing of enormous amounts of data and identification of patterns is by definition deterministic, operating within predefined parameters. AI is merely executing programmed responses that are “transcribed into binary code, transmitted as binary code, and ends with binary code,” note O’Hara and Umbrello. Or, as Dave Gershgorn explains: “There is no understanding; it’s just matched patterns.” The simple word “yes,” for example, which in human communication has complex textures and meanings based on context, in the ASCII encoding scheme is the sequence 01111001 01000101 01010011.

For AI, there is no spontaneity, creativity, or reflection as there is in human decision-making.

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Adam Kredo writes for the Washington Free Beacon about disturbing revelations involving a United Nations group.

The federal investigation into staff at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency—the U.N. Gaza relief organization that’s been closely linked to Hamas—will soon encompass at least 1,500 UNRWA-linked individuals suspected of terror ties. This unprecedented dragnet—reported here for the first time by the Washington Free Beacon—exposes an aid group brimming with Hamas operatives, and is generating momentum in Congress and the Trump administration for harsher sanctions on the embattled aid group, according to congressional staffers briefed on the matter.

The punitive measures up for consideration include stripping UNRWA of its diplomatic immunity under U.S. law, which would open it up to legal action from terror victims, and fully designating the aid organization as a foreign terrorist organization, according to three Trump administration officials and other sources tracking the matter in Congress.

These discussions have accelerated since the Free Beacon first reported in April that UNRWA and other U.N. agencies are stonewalling a federal probe into their ties to Hamas. The U.S. Agency for International Development inspector general’s office, a law enforcement agency separate from the largely defunct USAID, has spent months independently unearthing evidence that multiple UNRWA employees participated in Hamas’s Oct. 7 terror attack. The probe will soon expand to at least 1,500 suspected militants with UNRWA ties.

UNRWA, an official organ of the notoriously anti-Israel United Nations, is the only aid group with a large operation in Gaza, with as many as 13,000 Gazan employees and a large distribution network. U.N. officials have insisted for years that it is the only viable option for getting relief to Gazans. But Israel and its supporters have long claimed that UNRWA is fully infiltrated by Hamas and has cemented the terror group’s control over aid distribution.

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