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Russia Urges HIV Testing for One-Third of Population as Cases Rise
Topic: Porn, Prostitution, and Sexual Freedom
Source: Moscow times
Even so, World Health Organization data show Russia’s HIV prevalence at 890 cases per 100,000 people. That is comparable to several African countries such as Guinea (874), Liberia (944), Chad (771) and Ethiopia (601), and is markedly higher than in European countries including France (358), Britain (191) and Sweden (171). The total number of people living with HIV in Russia rose by 35,000 in 2025 to reach 1.25 million, according to Vadim Pokrovsky, head of the Federal Scientific and Methodological Center for AIDS Prevention and Control.

School districts pay more than $200k
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: Just the News
District fired counselor for confirming secret gender transitions to journalist who already had evidence, while another blocked mom for protesting "Progress Pride" flag. SCOTUS-rebuked district accused of violating new precedent. The Alliance Defending Freedom said Indiana's South Madison Community School Corporation paid $195,000 in damages, attorney's fees and costs to resolve its three-year-old lawsuit on behalf of Kathy McCord, allegedly fired for confirming to a journalist the district was surreptitiously hiding students' identification as the opposite sex from their parents. The Hoosier State banned gender secrecy policies in schools shortly before McCord sued, though Superintendent Mark Hall implied in an email to a parent that the new law didn't apply to its "gender support plans," which McCord internally opposed because "she felt like she was lying to parents" by not telling them about their children's in-school gender identity.

From Epstein files to ousting colleagues, women in Congress flex their power
Topic: Porn, Prostitution, and Sexual Freedom
Source: USA Today
The pair of congresswomen who helped force out two male lawmakers accused of sexual misconduct and extramarital affairs told USA TODAY that ethics should be a bipartisan issue. When two of their colleagues faced mounting accusations of sexual assault and misconduct last week, the two most powerful leaders in the House of Representatives – both men – refused to demand their resignations. Women in Congress weren't having it. In a matter of days, rank-and-file female lawmakers banded together across party lines to oust Eric Swalwell and Tony Gonzales. Rather than face being removed from office after embarrassing votes of their peers, the California Democrat and Texas Republican resigned within an hour of each other.

Obama meets Mamdani in New York City before reading to preschoolers
Topic: Children and Family
Source: Washington Times
[Ed: this would bankrupt NYC, if the free grocery stores don't do it first.] Former President Barack Obama met with New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani for the first time on Saturday at a child care center where they read to preschoolers and led a singalong. The meeting comes as Mamdani, a democratic socialist who marked his 100th day in office just over a week ago, is also trying to build a working relationship with Republican President Donald Trump. Obama and Mamdani did not take questions after reading the book “Alone and Together” to the children and leading a singalong of “The Wheels on the Bus.”

For family of medical providers, Idaho criminal trans bathroom ban was last straw
Topic: Gay/Lesbian Issues
Source: Idaho Capital Sun
This year, Idaho Legislature approved trans bathroom ban, forcing teachers to out trans kids to parents, and re-banning LGBTQ+ pride flag displays by government. Michael and Dr. Angie Devitt, both medical professionals, watched their trans daughter, Eve, testify against a bill years ago that outlawed gender-affirming care for minors. But this year’s criminal transgender bathroom ban — described by advocates as the most extreme in the nation for extending to private businesses — was the couple’s last straw. So early this month, Michael Devitt notified patients that his practice, Focus Physical Therapy, would shut down at the end of August as his family prepared to move out of Idaho. “Obviously, this law is a disaster for families like ours,” he wrote in a letter. “We can no longer take a road trip across our beloved state, or even enjoy a family night out at a restaurant, or a movie, without running the risk of Eve being charged and sent to a prison merely for using the facilities.” [Ed: I have not reviewed the Idaho law, and I think this may be a biased take. But FYI.}

India Parliament blocks Modi's bid to redraw voting boundaries
Topic: Affirmative Action
Source: Washington times
... alongside seat quota for women A bill to reserve a third of seats for women lawmakers failed to pass in the lower house of India’s Parliament on Friday, along with a separate, linked proposal to expand the national legislature by redrawing voting boundaries. The measure was seen as one of the most significant changes to India’s political system since independence from British colonial rule in 1947, but fell short after two days of debate involving both government and opposition lawmakers. It sought to mandate implementation of 33% representation for women in Parliament and state legislatures, a move aimed at increasing female participation in a system where women remain underrepresented.

Federal prosecutor in DC wants to interview alleged Swalwell victims
Topic: Porn, Prostitution, and Sexual Freedom
Source: Just the News
... may pierce secret settlements. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, the chief federal prosecutor in the nation's capital, says she is seeking to interview any female victims who alleged to have been assaulted by Rep. Eric Swalwell in Washington D.C. and may seek to obtain any secret agreements Congress paid to keep accusers quiet. "You're darn right," Pirro told the John Solomon Reports podcast on Wednesday when asked if she was willing to pierce those settlements to reexamine material evidence.

California LGBTQ+ organization seeks $25M from state f
Topic: Gay/Lesbian Issues
Source: Just the News
In a letter signed by 87 organizations in Calif. sent to Gov. Newsom and legislative leaders in February, LGBTQ+ advocates urged the state’s leaders to allocate the money. In December, The Center Square reported that federally-funded health care programs would be kept from paying for gender-affirming care for transgender children. Children who identify as transgender who are on Medicare and those under 19 years old on the federally funded Children’s Health Insurance Program would not be able to use federal money to pay for gender-affirming care under the new rules. Opponents to gender-affirming care see that as a good thing. “I just can’t even believe we live in the most beautiful nation in the world and the most beautiful state, arguably, in our nation, and here we are, cutting healthy body parts and asking taxpayers to fund it,” Sonja Shaw, a Republican candidate for California superintendent of public instruction, told The Center Square on Friday afternoon.

Yale Admits Self-Censorship and Political Bias Are Eroding Trust in Higher Education
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: Reason
The Ivy League school released a self-critical report this week. Last year, Yale University President Maurie McInnis formed a committee of Yale faculty members to "undertake a project of thorough self-examination." She wanted to know: Why is the public losing trust in higher education institutions like Yale? This week, after a year of gathering input from students, faculty, journalists, and critics of higher education, the committee released its findings: The culprits for this erosion of trust, as The New York Times summarized, are "Schools like Yale."

Study Undercuts Claim That More School Spending Helps Student Achievement
Topic: Children and Family
Source: Just Facts Daily
In a 2020 statement about public school budgets, “over 500 of the top education experts in the U.S.” declared: 'Research is abundantly clear that money matters for student achievement and other important life outcomes, and this is especially the case for low-income students." Recent research from the Brookings Institution bulldozes that assertion. Conducted by PhD economist Sarah Reber and predoctoral fellow Gabriela Goodman, the research examined the latest data before the steep declines in student achievement since the Covid-19 school closures and found that: “substantial increases in per-pupil spending over time have often been met with stagnant academic achievement.”

Boston Mayor Wu Demonstrates How Political Sausage Is Made
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: Victory Girls Blog
Boston’s woke Mayor Michelle Wu is funding a new program that gives “queer and trans” migrants up to $500 for massages, yoga classes and creative healing — despite the city being crushed by a nearly $50 million deficit. The so-called “wellness allowances” are being handed out by a nonprofit called OUTnewcomers and is backed by the Mayor’s Office for Immigrant Advancement, the group revealed Wednesday. “We’re offering $250–$500 wellness allowances for LGBTQ+ migrants in Boston to support their mental health and well-being through non-clinical care including yoga, meditation, creative healing, peer support, hair salon/ acupuncture & massages appointments and gym memberships etc.,” an advertisement blasted out by the group reads.

Critics of Education Department changes
Topic: Children and Family
Source: The Hill
...see difficult path to restore agency after program closures. Another office at the Department of Education is on the chopping block after a year of efforts to dismantle the federal agency, pushing the hope of restoration for certain programs further out of reach for opponents. The Office of English Language Acquisition (OELA), used to support English language learners, is the latest of dozens of programs that have been broken up or moved by the Education Department to fulfill President Trump’s campaign promise to shut down the agency.

Chicago Public Schools Will Hold Official 'Civic Day of Action’ on May 1
Topic: Children and Family
Source: Twitchy
So Students Can Protest. Late in the 19th century, May 1 came to be known as International Workers' Day or just plain May Day. As you know, it's turned into a day of protest for communists and their Marxist allies in groups like Antifa, the pro-Hamas movement, and the Chicago Teachers' Union. That's the same union that famously tweeted in 2020 during the COVID pandemic, “The push to reopen schools is rooted in sexism, racism, and misogyny.” The teachers' union, along with Mayor Brandon Johnson, fought to close the schools that day so that teachers and students would be available for anti-capitalist, anti-Trump marches. They lost, and school will be in session in Chicago Public Schools on May 1. However, they're calling it an "official civic day of action" during which students will be able to go on "field trips" to massive communist demonstrations.

A literary revolution is sweeping South Korea - and being led by women
Topic: Individualist Feminism
Source: BBC News
The Old Woman With the Knife is Gu Byeong-mo's story about Hornclaw, a legendary assassin in her 60s contemplating retirement while navigating loneliness. In Kim Cho-yeop's sci-fi anthology - If We Cannot Go at the Speed of Light - a once-famous scientist stranded on a defunct space station dedicates her life to reuniting with her family located light years away. After her sister's suicide, author and singer Lang Lee unpacks the trauma, from the Korean war to domestic violence, that haunts the women in her family in her new memoir. There is a touch of the smash hit K-pop Demon Hunters in Esther Park's The Legend of Lady Byeoksa - a tale of a cross-dressing female demon-slayer's doomed love in the Joseon era.

Medicine, Moral Formation, and the Recovery of Discourse
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: James G. Martin Center
The Hippocratic Society aims to sustain clinicians in the practice of good medicine. In recent years, it has become something of a commonplace to say that American institutions are losing their sense of purpose. Universities, once understood as places for the disciplined pursuit of truth, now struggle to sustain genuine intellectual diversity. Professions that once carried an internal sense of vocation increasingly operate under external pressures—economic, bureaucratic, and ideological—that compete with their traditional ends. Medicine is no exception. By many measures, modern medicine is more powerful than ever, yet both patients and practitioners sense something amiss. Patients often feel managed rather than cared for. Clinicians, for their part, report rising rates of burnout and moral distress. The language of “providers” and “delivery systems” has displaced older notions of the physician as healer. Within academic medicine, serious disagreement about foundational questions (What is medicine for? What does a good physician owe a patient?) is often muted rather than explored.

Addressing the Academic Skew
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: Quillette
Higher education needs intellectual—not political—conservatives. Anyone following the discourse around today’s higher-education wars may notice a curious paradox. Critics who accuse academia of being politicised point to heavily skewed liberal-to-conservative ratios among the professoriate, estimated at about 4:1 among the professoriate overall. These ratios are even more pronounced at elite schools (Harvard, 14:1) and in the humanities and social sciences (sociology, 50:1) where they matter most. A naïve observer might look at these reports and ask why the universities don’t simply hire more conservatives. But this suggestion is typically dismissed out of hand. Why? Because that would be politicising academia.

Where Are They Now?
Topic: Porn, Prostitution, and Sexual Freedom
Source: Twitchy
NY Post Catches Up With Porn Star Stormy Daniels and Ex-Attorney Michael Avenatti. The last few years have not been kind to former Democrat Party darlings Stormy Daniels and Michael Avenatti. The New York Post recently caught up with the Trump-hating duo, posting pictures showing how far from the spotlight the two have drifted. Porn star Daniels, looking rough and sporting several tattoos, was photographed while on her way to a theater to perform a night of storytelling and comedy. Meanwhile, former lawyer Avenatti was spotted at a halfway house mopping floors while wearing sandals. Avenatti has been serving time for stealing millions from his clients, including Daniels. He was convicted on felony charges that included tax fraud and a failed extortion attempt of Nike.

The EU's Digital Gulag Is (Apparently) Ready To Roll
Topic: Children and Family
Source: Naked Capitalism
“It is for parents to raise their children, and not the platforms...” Those were the words of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Wednesday as she announced the readiness of the EU’s online age verification, ahem, platform. As we’ve been warning since November 2024, these platforms are ultimately a Trojan Horse for digital identity systems, which are in turn intended to serve as the cornerstone for the digital gulags being quickly assembled around the world. [Ed: how about it is for parents, not for the government?]

What Other States Can Learn from Florida’s School Choice Success
Topic: Children and Family
Source: City-Journal
The Sunshine State’s innovative school-choice programs are setting the standard nationally. School choice is still coming into its own. Only five states—Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, New Hampshire, and West Virginia—currently provide universal programs that give residents unrestricted use of public funds for any educational option. The biggest state on that list, Florida, also leads in school-choice investment. The Sunshine State allocates 11.2 percent of its total education budget to these programs. Its experience provides valuable insight into how real choice shapes families’ educational decision-making and provides lessons for other states to follow.