When I was 11, I began identifying as transgender. I had gone down a rabbit hole of websites and niche online forums. There I met a friend"an artist who was 14"whom I admired and looked up to. We both felt different, out of place in society. Born 10 years earlier, we would have been called tomboys. Instead, we writhed under the pressure of the "female role." The internet told us the logical conclusion of that struggle was to identify as boys. I come from a broken home. While my mother and stepfather always loved me, my stepfather became severely disabled when I was 3, leaving me feeling as though I had to raise myself. I eventually reached out to my biological father around a decade later. When he and my stepmother saw my distress"and were told by a psychiatrist that this distress was related to my transgender identity"they began to consider the benefits of affirming me in my transition.
Most people believed that the Supreme Court's 2023 decision to end affirmative action in higher education admissions would cause a big drop in Black and Hispanic enrollment at the nation's top colleges. What happened is more complicated. Overall, more Black and Hispanic students enrolled in four-year universities in fall 2024 than in fall 2023. But in nearly all highly selective private and public colleges"the 85 that accept 25 percent or fewer applicants"Black enrollment declined or remained flat; the same was true of Hispanic enrollment at more than half of those institutions. Public flagships, typically the most selective public universities in their state, experienced a 6 percent increase in the enrollment of Black and Hispanic first-year students. Yet at 20 of the 50 flagships, Black student enrollment fell or flatlined, and Hispanic student enrollment fell or essentially stayed the same at 16.
Californicated: Super Bowl-winning Seattle Seahawks quarterback Sam Darnold won $188,000 in prize money for the game. His tax bill from Democrat-run California will be $202,000.
If you needed an example of the disconnect between legacy media and the country at large, look no further than "Melania." The new documentary on Melania Trump follows the first lady in the 20 days leading up to the 2025 presidential inauguration " and her second stint calling the White House home. The critics HATE it, giving it a lousy score of just 10%, according to Rotten Tomatoes (compare that with the 93% score critics gave the 2020 documentary "Becoming" about former first lady Michelle Obama). Yet, the Americans heading to the theater to watch "Melania" have a vastly different takeaway. They've given it a score of 99%. This discrepancy has broken the film rating site's 27-year record.
The psychological concepts of projection and reaction formation explain a lot about today's politics. People loudly insist they're determined to protect liberal democracy while advocating policies that would trample it. So it is with the European Union's Digital Services Act. The U.S. House Judiciary Committee last week released the EU's previously secret full decision to issue the first fine under the DSA to X (formerly Twitter) in December. It confirms what critics have warned: This law threatens everyone's basic liberties. Yes, everyone's"even those far from Europe. The sprawling 2022 law pushes social-media platforms to enforce European speech laws worldwide
Interesting stuff. Although the article does touch on a salient point at the very end - it's hard to draw too many conclusions with only 1 year of data.