The Plight of the Progressive Teacher

She will stick with her vision, and if her classes get smaller, well, so be it. True believers do not weigh their truth by popularity.

by Mark Bauerlein for American Greatness

If you’re a teacher in a public school who’s seen students withdraw in recent years and go elsewhere, you don’t understand it; especially those students who head for a school with an old-fashioned classical curriculum. It doesn’t make sense, though the trend is clear. New York City schools will have 30,000 fewer students this year than last year, a departure that follows a national exit from public schools. One beneficiary of the exodus is classical education, where enrollments are jumping. 

But why? Our teacher can’t say. She has a progressive model of schooling—ed school trained her well—and she knows that all the learning ideals are in her favor. Creativity, individuality, relevance, and social betterment—they’re the hallmarks of child-centered classrooms attuned to current realities. Diversity, equity, and inclusion guide the readings and homework she assigns. She wants students to become critical thinkers and social change agents. Her benevolence is obvious to parents.

So why the departures for a system so different from her own? Why do Great Hearts Academies in Phoenix alone have a waiting list of 8,000 kids? Classical education shouldn’t be that popular; it loses on every progressive scorecard. So much is happening in America today, so many woke advents, and classical schools are stuck on Plato. They force kids to memorize things, too, even as it blocks a student’s creative impulses. They like assessments such as the Classic Learning Test, which includes hard-core Christian fathers such as Origen in its author bank. 

Our progressive teacher is not impressed. Religious texts don’t belong on standardized tests. And the sight of 25 kids reciting the Preamble to the Constitution as one voice is dismaying—uniformity is oppressive. Also, she asks, where’s the relevance? What does an 18th-century novel offer our 21st-century junior with five social media accounts and worries over climate change, racism, and gun violence? Life presses upon them hard, and we must “meet the students where they are.” Robinson Crusoe doesn’t cut it. The syllabus must be more contemporary and political. Show a 10th-grader The Scarlet Letter and a book about hip-hop, and we know which one he’ll choose—and who are we to judge?

Classical educators also worship the past, and that’s a problem. The past itself is a problem. That’s why progressives are progressives. Too much injustice back then, lots of discrimination. The past is something to escape, not preserve. If we have to study it, we determine what went wrong, and figure out how to fix whatever effects of bias and inequality linger. Why revere materials from a world so inferior to our own (though we have very far to go)? The author of the Declaration of Independence was a slaveholder.

Few conceptions, however, are more damaging to the minds and souls of the young than that of the expulsion of the past. So our classicist believes with all her heart. Youths need tradition, they need roots. The past isn’t oppressive—it’s their inheritance, a river of greatness and brilliance in which they mature and deepen as they swim in it. Classical teachers have little time for guilt and injustice, not when they have the Sermon on the Mount, Hamlet’s words, and Beethoven’s concertos to impart.

What an evasion, our progressive snorts, a whitewashing. She’s indignant. To highlight George Washington’s Farewell Address and slight the slaves at Mount Vernon is a shameful practice. To teach Dante, Cervantes, and Milton without mentioning the denial of authorship to women during those times counts as a high crime.

Nothing will convince the progressive teacher to change that opinion. The moral frame is fixed, the long training secure. She welcomes critical race theory as the next step in schooling-for-social-justice. She has a lesson plan for Pride Month, which she rates above fourth-century Athens.

Which makes the disappearance of students from her classroom all the more incomprehensible. Parents should be happy with her moral outlook, not unhappy. And they most definitely should not retreat to classical schools. There, life is dull, prescriptive, insensitive, reactionary. Why those institutions are spreading is beyond her. Parents who like to hear their kids recite “Paul Revere’s Ride” and to find pictures of the Acropolis and the Pantheon in their kids’ folders don’t have an argument she must respect. They’re just a glass of ice water poured onto her convictions.

It doesn’t work for her to appeal to youth preferences, either. That won’t help, for the kids are alright in those old-fashioned spaces. Retention at classical schools is high, demand is strong and outcomes, too. The same isn’t true in public school classrooms, where the only question when NAEP results are reported is how disappointing they will be. Half the high-schoolers are bored to death, and they’re not learning much, either. The achievement gap that progressives abhor hasn’t closed in decades in spite of their efforts.

Our progressive can’t reconsider her premises, though. She has all the right ideas and values, and it’s not working. She’s at an impasse, and progressivism allows her no way out. There’s no “Let’s try this other way” available to her. The more her enrollments diminish, the more she hates Donald Trump and his supporters. Progressivism isn’t a theory to be tested by practice. It’s a faith, a worldview. She had a vision of the future in which she plays a productive role. The role of the classical teacher—to transmit the tradition—seems to her a constrained one, a comedown. She can’t go there. She’s like the Episcopal priest who observes fewer people in the pews as the months pass, but can’t stop boasting how inclusive his church is.

There’s no going back, not for our teacher. Classicism urges us ever to return to the sources, to innovate gradually and infrequently, to judge our creations by the examples of the masters. Progressivism looks forward, always forward. No masters, no timeless inventions, no second thoughts. She will stick with her vision, and if her classes get smaller, well, so be it. True believers do not weigh their truth by popularity. 

Enormous Amounts of Money Flow into the Bottomless Education Pit

How much will it really help student achievement?

by Larry Sand for American Greatness

Spurred by COVID panic, schools have been the recipient of ungodly sums of money. And it’s not as if the beast was starving before. To put things into perspective, the United States spends about $800 billion on national defense, more than China, Russia, India, the UK, France, Saudi Arabia, Germany, and Japan combined, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. America now spends even more on K-12 education, with an outlay of about $900 billion dollars a year, which includes an additional $122 billion from the COVID-related American Rescue Plan. 

While we have a military that is second to none, our education spending has not yielded a similar result. Our annual education outlay is second highest in the world, trailing only Norway. But in achievement, we are in the middle of the pack. For example, the 2018 rankings by the Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA, has the United States 36th out of the 79 countries that participated in the math test, which is given to 15-year-olds.     

So where does all this money go? 

Not to the kids. In fact, over 80 percent of it goes to salaries and benefits for teachers and other employees.

Maybe the money will help alleviate the teacher shortage? 

Hardly. The teacher shortage writ large is non-existent. Using data from a National Education Association report, Mike Antonucci writes that  there were 48,985,186 students enrolled in the nation’s public school system in 2021, about 256,000 fewer than in 2012. But school districts hired an additional276,000 instructional staff during the same period. He adds that student enrollment fell 2.4 percent in the United States from fall 2019 to fall 2020, falling in every state and the District of Columbia, yet 17 states added teachers.

Maybe if we spend even more, it will equate to higher student achievement? 

Again, negative. In fact, there is no correlation between money spent and student proficiency whatsoever, and history bears this out. Using inflation-adjusted figures, we have increased our education spending over 17-fold in the last century. While there is no available data that tracks student performance for the early part of that time frame, the Cato Institute’s Andrew Coulson reported in 2012 that we tripled our spending between 1970 and 2010, and had absolutely no academic progress to show for it. Looking at more up-to-date data, even though spending rose, the average NAEP scores in math for black and Hispanic students, and male and female 13-year-old students were lower in 2020 compared to 2012.

But shouldn’t teachers be paid more?

It is a persistent yet convincing lie that teachers are underpaid. Most recently, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers came out with one of her typical statements that has no basis in reality. In an interview, she asserted, “You have a hot labor market where teachers can get 20 percent more for the skills and knowledge they have teaching in non-teaching jobs.”

But according to Just Facts, in the 2020–21 school year, the average school teacher made $65,090 in salary, and received another $33,048 in benefits (such as health insurance, paid leave, and pensions) for $98,138 in total compensation.

Also, importantly, full-time public school teachers work an average of 1,490 hours per year, including time spent for lesson preparation, test construction and grading, providing extra help to students, coaching, and other activities, while their counterparts in private industry workers work an average of 2,045 hours per year, or about 27 percent more than public school teachers.

All in all, with various perks included, a teacher makes on average $68.85 an hour, whereas a private sector worker makes about $36 per hour. (While it’s true that the average teacher has more education than the average private sector worker, much of the added study is in our schools of education, which the late Walter Williams, a standout professor of economics at George Mason University, referred to as “the academic slums of most any college.” Also, a 2011 paper in the journal Education Policy Analysis Archives backs up Williams’ assertion, finding that education majors are subject to considerably “lower grading standards” than other college students.)  

Regarding the recent $122 billion infusion of money into education, the Wall Street Journal reports that as of May, states and school districts had spent only 7 percent of it. As such, Tim Scott, U.S. Republican senator from South Carolina, has proposed  the “Recover Act,” which would allow states and school districts to use their unspent dollars from the American Rescue Plan to “issue Child Opportunity Scholarships directly to parents. The scholarships, targeted for low-income students, could be used for tutoring, school tuition, curriculum materials, educational therapies for children with disabilities, and other resources designed to get students the individualized help they need.”

Scott’s idea is certainly sound, but any move to empower parents will be met by fierce resistance from the education establishment.

I can hear shrieks coming from the Randi Weingartens of the world. “Children must go to a school run by the government with a state-credentialed (unionized) teacher! Education is too important to leave to the whims of the free market! We just need more (and more) money!”

The simple response here to the union boss and fellow travelers is to compare education to food. To feed your family, do you go to the government-run supermarket near your home? Of course not. You find a local, privately-run store that has the food you want at the best price. Just imagine if the government forced you to buy food from that awful government market down the street that sells rancid meat, overripe fruit, and month-old bread, staffed by incompetent store employees.

Also, making education into a free market entity would dictate that teachers be paid according to their effectiveness. The great ones would become wealthy while the competent ones would still make a good living, and the stinkers would be looking for work in another field.

The establishmentarians would then clutch their pearls and whine, “But, what about poor people who can’t afford to pay for their kids’ education! The answer is that we will do the same thing for schooling that we do for food. If a family demonstrates it can’t afford to buy food, we give them a SNAP card so they can buy groceries. Similarly, we can assist impoverished families by helping to subsidize their child’s education.

Pouring endless sums of money into the government-run education black hole is a terrible idea. It does little for children, and scams the taxpayers. But it does fortify and enrich the educational industrial complex.

It’s now time to change course and become competitive in the field of education. Our future depends on it.

America in a World of Limits

In truth, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine does not change the fact that America’s global power position is constrained. 

by Dan Caldwell for The National Interest

RUSSIA’S VILE war of aggression against the people of Ukraine has accelerated discussion about the future of U.S. foreign policy. However, the terms of the debate have done more to confound than clarify. While foreign policy elites declare that the Russian invasion “changes everything,” their resounding chorus offers a familiar refrain, namely, the vindication and perpetuation of U.S. global primacy.

In truth, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine does not change the fact that America’s global power position is constrained. The heady days of unipolarity are over. Policymakers who fail to acknowledge those realities when dealing with the fallout from the war in Ukraine will only make America less safe and threaten the conditions of our prosperity.

To be sure, the United States retains a powerful economy and military. But unlike in the early 1990s, the United States faces real global competitors—in particular China—along with domestic challenges that will require better prioritization and trade-offs.

While far from guaranteed, there is a reasonable chance that China’s total economic power will overtake the United States within the next few years. China’s economy now comprises 18 percent of the world’s gross domestic product (in terms of purchasing power parity) compared to 16 percent for the United States. Additionally, future American economic growth is threatened by record levels of inflation and a $30 trillion national debt.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military has spent the last two decades bogged down in a handful of endless wars across the Middle East and Africa. The price of these conflicts has been steep. Thousands of American lives were lost and more than $8 trillion squandered. These conflicts also wore down important strategic assets like our B-1 bomber fleet, incentivized investments in platforms like the Littoral Combat Ship that are not suited for combat against near-peer adversaries, and forced cuts to the U.S. Air Force and Navy to build an Army designed to fight counterinsurgency conflicts in strategic backwaters.

Moreover, these wars were unpopular—both at home and abroad—and their pernicious effects have eroded the power of American leadership. The challenges facing America have not gone unnoticed. Many countries have refused to join the American and European-led sanctions regime imposed on Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine. These nations are clearly hedging their bets in a world where American dominance is less certain. This even includes countries that have benefitted from the American security umbrella. Take the United Arab Emirates for example, which has enabled Russian oligarchs to escape targeted sanctions on their assets. The Emirati crown prince doubled down on this bad behavior when he refused a call from President Joe Biden to discuss energy market distress.

The United States should not tolerate a delusional foreign policymaking elite that ignores real constraints on American power. Instead, our leaders should adopt a sober and realistic approach to the current state of the world that recognizes our limits so that America can remain safe and prosperous.

In Eastern Europe, the United States must make it clear to our wealthy European partners that they are primarily responsible for the security of their own continent. Russia’s failures in Ukraine have revealed that its conventional armed forces are not a threat to well-funded and well-trained European armies—even without significant American support. A Russian Army that cannot take Kharkiv certainly cannot take Warsaw, Berlin, or Paris.

Accordingly, the United States should encourage the strengthening and development of non-NATO security architectures in Europe, like the European Union’s Common Defence and Security Policy. To effectively facilitate this, the United States must avoid taking actions that encourage free-riding under the American security umbrella. This would include short-sighted policies like more permanent deployments of U.S. troops to Europe, or NATO expansion to countries such as Finland and Sweden.

In the Middle East, the United States should resist efforts by authoritarian petrostates such as Saudi Arabia to exploit the current energy crisis caused by the war in Ukraine to extract more security commitments from the United States. Instead, the United States should draw down from this increasingly less important region—especially from the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Syria—in order to free up resources for other priorities.

Real U.S. interests are at stake in East Asia, and this region will require careful navigation of perilous waters. China is a rising competitor that poses challenges that U.S. policymakers must take seriously. To deal with this, the United States should continue to develop defensive systems and technologies that enable partners in the region to deter Chinese aggression. Future defense budgets should prioritize funding for the Air Force and Navy over other branches since these two services would be at the forefront of any potential conflict in the Pacific. Additionally, the U.S. intelligence community should confront China’s malign economic and military espionage activities more aggressively.

But U.S. leaders should avoid overinflating the threat posed by China. Indeed, China has its own domestic and international constraints that may hinder its rise. Accordingly, policymakers should deal with the challenges posed by China without resurrecting the Cold War or raising the likelihood of direct conflict.

The acknowledgment that the United States faces real limits on its power does not mean accepting American decline or forlorn resignation that our best days are behind us. To the contrary, prudent foreign policy tradeoffs will better husband our power and provide the means to attend to our domestic economic and fiscal challenges thus ensuring future American safety and prosperity.

However, those who continue to deny reality and advocate the same failed policies that led us to where we are today will only guarantee American decline—not greatness. In the interest of American security and the American people, we must demand better.

Donald Trump has enemies everywhere

Even, according to Peter Navarro, inside his own house

by Roger Kimball for Spectator World

I think that Michael Anton is correct that “the people who really run the United States of America have made it clear that they can’t, and won’t, if they can help it, allow Donald Trump to be president again.”

“The people who really run the United States”: that would be denizens of the Swamp, the bureaucratic elite, their media and academic mouthpieces, worker bees in the ambient welfare jelly and the nomenklatura who win elections and circulate in and out of the corridors of power.

It’s a powerful, nearly monolithic force, a monument to special privilege and two-tier justice — and the prospect of dismantling it is daunting to say the least. The fact that Donald Trump, from the moment he sailed down the elevator at Trump Tower to announce his candidacy in 2015, managed to open a bleeding fissure in that smug consensus shows why the ruling class considers him so dangerous. One man, almost without allies, inexperienced in the ways of the Swamp, dependent at every turn on ambassadors and front men from the very thing he had campaigned to destroy: how much damage could he really do?

Look around. Is there anyone, anyone at all, who occupies more space in the political ecosphere than Donald Trump? His every endorsement garners national headlines. His trolling of Democrats in various New York House races does the same. No wonder Dick and Liz Cheney, talking orifices for the Swamp, provided sound bites for the mass market edition of Michael Anton’s essay. In the entire history of the United States, quoth Cheney père, no individual has presented a greater threat to the republic than Donald Trump. Gosh. Really, Dick? Do you think wearing a cowboy hat while you say that makes it more plausible?

But look at what just happened. Donald Trump was instrumental in Liz Cheney’s crushing defeat in the Wyoming GOP primary earlier this week. Of course, Liz Cheney helped. Her obsession with Trump was her undoing. But the consensus that she and her father represent underscores the panic coruscating through the arteries of the Deep State. Like many others, they have reached for the rhetoric of revolution to oppose Trump. They have vowedto do “whatever it takes,” to employ “any means necessary,” to keep him from getting “anywhere near the Oval Office” again. This panicked extremism has not only been ratcheted up against Trump — and it’s not only rhetoric, as last week’s FBI Stasi-like raid against Trump’s residence in Palm Beach reminds us — it has also and increasingly been wielded against anyone who can be presented as being allied with the spirit of Trumpism.

But here’s a question: is there a sliver of light shining through Michael Anton’s assessment? Maybe. After all, he says that the regime will not allow Trump to become president again “if they can help it.” Can they?

I don’t know the answer to that. Many commentators say that Trump’s signal failure the first time around was in not securing a broad and deep enough cadre of allies. He really was a political outsider. Hence the disastrous Cabinet appointments, the inability to get the sprawling bureaucracy of the executive branch on board with his administration. And then there was — there is — the civil service write large. All those layers upon layers of sticky Deep State presumption: how can any one man, however dedicated a team he leads, cut through it?

Trump has plans in place to purge the civil service if reelected. Will it work? I don’t know. But the mephitic cauldron of the civil service is not Trump’s only problem. If Peter Navarro, the former assistant to the president for trade and manufacturing policy, is right, one of his chief liabilities is closer to home. According to Navarro, Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, “did more damage to the presidency and the Trump agenda during his four year reign of error at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue than anyone.” Kushner, Navarro continues, (or “Kushner/Rasputin” as he sometimes designates him, is “the man most responsible for the loss of the Trump White House.”

Actually, I think there are many contenders for that title, but I suspect that Navarro has a point. “Ultimately,” he argues,

the biggest failure of the 2020 election was the failure of the Trump campaign itself. The campaign went from the beautifully orchestrated Steve Bannon masterpiece in 2016, with twenty people on Trump Force One barnstorming flyover country, to the ugliest equivalent of Hillary Clinton’s beyond-bloated Hindenburg of a campaign in just four years.

It seems pretty clear, at any rate, that Kushner was not on board with Trump’s America First agenda. At the center of that agenda were the imperatives to “buy American” and “hire American.” Kushner, by contrast, a beaming “Wall Street transactionalist,” was as committed to the elite globalist agenda as much as Larry Fink.

If Kushner was so deeply at odds with Trump’s America First agenda, how could he have been such an important player in the Trump White, handed a portfolio of responsibilities which included everything from border security to trade with China to the Middle East? According to Navarro, there is “simply no other explanation than nepotism.”

And what does that portend for the future? I think the jury is still out. Navarro may be optimistic that “if Trump makes it back to the White House, it will be a Kushner-free zone.” Trump is, by all reports, very close to his daughter Ivanka, Jared’s wife, and that tie may well preclude his political ostracism.

But in the larger sense, I think Navarro’s warning is correct. If Trump is to succeed, he needs to extricate himself from the Swamp. But the Swamp is well nigh ubiquitous. It supports and has infused its spirit into close members of his family, even. It has also insinuated itself in the America First Policy Institute, a nominally Trump-friendly think tank whose members include many anti-Trump figures.

My point is simply that forces stacked against the successful return of Donald Trump are formidable. Some commentators sympathetic to his his agenda are speaking about “Trumpism without Trump.” My own suspicion is that without Trump, anything put forward as “Trumpism” would be a masquerade, just another version of elite, beltway bureaucratic surrender, enlivened here and there with little dollops of robust-sounding rhetoric.

So we are left with a paradox: Donald Trump is far and away the most vital political force in American politics. He supplies almost all the oxygen for public debate. But “the people who really run the United States of America” have decided that he is unacceptable. Where does that leave us? It depends on two things. One, how far the opponents of Trump are willing to go to keep him out of power (“whatever it takes”?). Two, how far the rest of the country — the tens of millions of people who support Trump — are willing to allow the anti-Trump leviathan to go.

No one, I think, knows the answer to either question. It seems pretty clear, though, that we are in for a yeasty couple of years.

WATCH: Alabama Off-Duty Cop Barely Escapes Murderous Attack in His Front Yard

Alex Parker reporting for RedState 

Despite a perpetual media presentation, guns aren’t the only deadly weapons in the world. In northern Alabama recently, an off-duty policeman was nearly murdered in his driveway — and it wasn’t by an AR-15.

Around 5 p.m. Tuesday, Decatur Officer Jack Brown was relaxing at home. He noticed an unfamiliar black Jeep Wrangler sitting idly in front of his house. Jack went out to ask the driver if he needed help, and what followed was absolutely nuts.

As relayed by Al.com, now-identified 54-year-old Gregory Martin Hill swore at Jack before backing out. The man then attempted to run over the officer.

A Ring camera caught it all.

In the viral video, Gregory’s Jeep darts forward as Jack barely escapes. The vehicle hits a tree, and Jack hits the pavement — as he frantically makes his way inside the house. Prior to reaching the door, the cop tosses his phone to the ground; he appears to have possibly been speaking to dispatch.

Gregory exits the Jeep and runs into Jack’s carport. After his leisurely return to the crashed car, Jack comes running with a pointed pistol. Despite a wealth of commands to the contrary, Gregory turns the ignition and hits Reverse.

For a moment, the scene recalls an Old-West shootout: Two men stare each other down, each brandishing a lethal weapon. Then the man with the one-ton death machine triggers the gas.

The Jeep catches Jack on its hood, pushing him far outside the camera’s frame.

See the insanity for yourself:

Per the Decatur Police report, Jack “discharged his weapon into the Jeep numerous times.”

But he got at least as well as he gave.

Back to Al.com:

[Jack] was pushed almost the entire length of the front yard… [Gregory] then backed up and ran over [his] legs.

[Gregory] then exited the vehicle and was subdued by [Jack] and a civilian who witnessed the ordeal.

Gregory was initially charged with second-degree assault. The charge has since been upgraded to attempted murder. He was booked into the Morgan County Jail, his cash bond set at $1,000,000.

According to police spokeswoman Irene Cardenas-Martinez, there is no apparent connection between the officer and his would-be executioner.

As for the policeman’s tactics — if we might learn from a situation such as this — the showdown seems to have left Jack in clear need of cover. Perhaps not standing in the open would’ve been the better move. And it may have been advantageous to keep his phone.

Of course, that’s armchair quarterbacking; the officer was under stress amid a surprise domestic assault. Clearly, he didn’t want to shoot Gregory; some will surely accuse him of having been too nice.

And for those wondering why he didn’t remain in his house after the initial incident, Jack’s wife posted an explanation to Facebook:

[W]e have two small children who were at home at the time. [Jack] went inside and told the kids to hide and went back outside in an effort to protect our home and family after calling 911. My husband is blessed to be alive. He is sore, bruised, and scraped up but no serious injuries.

The video is a harrowing reminder that the world is a crazy place. And you need to be prepared for anything — because sometimes, “crazy” comes and parks in your front yard.

GOP Needs to Demand Answers for Big Mistake That Is Likely to Hurt Them in Midterms

Nick Arama reporting for RedState 

We’ve seen the politicization of the FBI and we’ve seen how that can create a two-tier system of justice. We’ve seen how it can even adversely impact the former president of the United States. The latest leak even suggests that the FBI may have conducted the raid to grab Russia probe documents.

But that’s not the only place where there may be issues. There’s another arena that’s going to have a big bad impact on Republicans in elections. It hasn’t been getting a lot of attention — but it has to, if we’re going to rectify the problem.

In a shocking report, the U.S. Census Bureau recently admitted that it overcounted the populations of eight states and undercounted the populations of six states in the 2020 census.

All but one of the states overcounted is a blue state, and all but one of the undercounted states is red.

Those costly errors will distort congressional representation and the Electoral College. It means that when the Census Bureau reapportioned the House of Representatives, Florida was cheated out of two additional seats it should have gotten; Texas missed out on another seat; Minnesota and Rhode Island each kept a representative they shouldn’t have; and Colorado was awarded a new member of the House it didn’t deserve.

So you mean it shorted the red states out of representatives (not to mention federal funds) in a very significant way that would adversely impact the elections? Gee, how did that happen? Especially when they didn’t happen in the prior census? Three guesses whose state had the biggest overcount?

After each census, the bureau interviews a large number of households across the country and then compares the interview answers with the original census responses. The 2020 survey showed that the bureau overcounted the population in Delaware, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Utah. The largest mistake was in President Joe Biden’s home state of Delaware, which was overcounted by 5.45%.

The states whose populations were undercounted were Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Texas. The largest error in the undercount was in Arkansas, where the population count was off by 5.04%.

The original census reported that Florida needed only 171,500 more residents to gain another congressional seat. Yet the survey shows that Florida was undercounted by over three-quarters of a million people. The bureau also said that Texas needed only 189,000 more people to gain another congressional seat. The survey shows that Texas was undercounted by 560,319 residents.

Minnesota, according to the original census report, would have lost a congressional seat during reapportionment if it had 26 fewer residents; the survey shows the state was overcounted by 216,971 individuals. Similarly, Rhode Island would have lost a seat if the Census Bureau had counted 19,000 fewer residents. It turns out that the state was overcounted by more than 55,000 individuals.

This is a mistake not just that adversely impacts these midterms but all the elections and federal allocation of money for the next ten years until the next census. They had one duty and they massively messed up. Congress needs to rake people over the coals for this so someone answers up as to how this happened, so they make sure it doesn’t happen again and appropriate action is taken. Unfortunately, given how we’ve seen the Democrat operatives seem to infiltrate areas that are supposed to be objective, I no longer trust that politics aren’t influencing these things.

Come On, Mitch McConnell, Republicans Need You To Step Up And Lead

As the top elected Republican in the country, Mitch McConnell has an obligation to immediately and dramatically improve his performance.

by Mollie Hemingway for The Federalist

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was asked yesterday about Republican prospects for the November elections.

“I think there’s probably a greater likelihood the House flips than the Senate. Senate races are just different, they’re statewide, candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome,” McConnell replied.

The media and others on the left were of course thrilled with the Republican leader’s “notable quotable” disparagement of Republican candidates and the voters who chose them, which somehow came off even worse on video.

What was McConnell thinking? What in the world was he thinking?

Unnecessarily ceding an incredibly winnable Senate to Democrats three months before an election is a great example of the leadership choices that have led McConnell to be the least popular national politician in the country, according to the RealClearPolitics average. And it’s a good example of why so many Republicans — grateful as they may be for his successes — think it’s time for new leadership.

Still, for the time being, McConnell is the top elected Republican, and he has an obligation to effectively lead the Republican team, respecting the voters and who they have chosen.

In this case, having a nearly opposite response about Republican prospects rather than the pouty and clinical one McConnell offered would have been strategically and politically wise. It also would have matched much more with the reality of the political environment.

Republicans vs. Democrats

To understand the utterly bizarre nature of McConnell’s response, a few reminders are in order.

Of the 14 Senate seats that are in contention, two are considered safe for Democrats, one leans Democrat, two are considered safe for Republicans, one leans Republican, and the remaining eight are toss-ups, according to polling averages.

The country is 18 months into Democrats’ total rule, and by nearly every measure the results of their political control are utterly disastrous. The southern border has essentially been erased. Inflation is reminiscent of the 1970s, as is the energy policy causing high gas prices and reliance on other countries. Consumer confidence has cratered. War with nuclear powers is dangerously close in at least two parts of the world. The economy should be roaring out of the pandemic, but it’s returned to Obama-era sluggishness or worse. Woke mobs are completing their destruction of the country’s institutions. Democrats are persecuting political opponents with their deeply unpopular J6 star chamber.

More than 70 percent of Americans say the country is moving in the wrong direction, according to the RealClearPolitics average. Americans are clearly not happy with the quality of leadership coming out of Washington, D.C.

And in this milieu, Republican voters who care deeply about their country have chosen a slate of extremely interesting candidates, many of them non-career politicians. Particularly compared to the crop of senators currently in Washington, they are all extremely talented and impressive people. This is something to highlight and praise, not lament. Having non-career politicians running is a good thing, not a bad thing,

Herschel Walker, Mehmet Oz, J.D. Vance, and Blake Masters are successful and impressive people in a variety of careers. Even the more traditional politicians running for re-election — Ron Johnson and Marco Rubio — are among the better senators in office. Adam Laxalt, running against an incumbent Nevada Democrat, is a highly decorated former Naval officer and Iraq War veteran. He was an incredibly successful attorney general in Nevada.

These are not bad candidates! If you can’t work with this level of quality, you can’t work with anyone. And they’re running against a crop of extreme and discredited candidates that a competent Republican leader should have no problem talking about, given the slightest opportunity. John Fetterman, an ostensibly grown man running for the Senate from Pennsylvania, is still supported by his parents. Raphael Warnock, trying to keep his Georgia seat, is a troubled man with an extreme voting record. Mark Kelly has envious funding but an extreme voting record and the personality of a fish.

More importantly, the Republicans won their nominations by running on the policies that have so reinvigorated and expanded the party. They have clear messages about helping out middle-class workers and their families, protecting the country from open borders and wasteful wars, and defending American values and freedom against leftist authoritarians.

It is political malpractice to pout and run them — and the voters who selected them — down. Republican voters came out in droves to nominate these candidates. They like them! McConnell, who is unfortunately quite politically unpopular — but who is the top elected leader of the party — should be taking every opportunity to sing their praises and push a unifying and expansive message nationally.

McConnell has a reputation for being a pessimistic individual, but he is more than capable of singing praises when he feels like it. He went out of his way to praise and congratulate Liz Cheney — not even a senator — when she initially defeated an effort to oust her from Republican leadership on account of her obsessive opposition to President Donald Trump. That obsession grew so extreme that Republican voters took matters into their own hands and decisively crushed her re-election bid this week in the Wyoming primary.

If McConnell can praise the politically toxic House member Cheney, surely he can take every opportunity to praise the men and women currently trying to help Republicans take back the Senate, no? To do otherwise risks seeming petulant about McConnell not getting his preferred pick in some of these tight primaries.

Money and Passion

As Republican voters decried McConnell’s curious decision to aid and comfort Democrats months before a tight election, some of his supporters defended him on the grounds that his political action committee is spending money on many of these races.

Money, which goes to political consultants, is important. But the measure of success isn’t fundraising dollars given to consultants, but victory in November.

Enthusiastic and motivated voters — the type the country saw this primary season — are preferable even to huge piles of cash. Periods of political excitement, such as the one the country has been in this past decade, result in outsider candidates, some of whom can’t defeat incumbents or win tight races. Sometimes you get a real clunker. But it’s still better to embrace the enthusiasm and excitement than run boring establishment candidates who also frequently risk loss.

One thing that depresses many Americans who vote Republican or can be persuaded to do so is seeing how little Republicans do to stop Democrat policies. To this end, McConnell’s current leadership strategy of having Republicans either help Democrats pass legislation or not really try to stop it, seems unwise. One voter called his legislative approach this Congress a “voter enthusiasm killing spree.”

It’s not just about what has been done, but what could be done in the future, too. When House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy set about to create an action plan for when Republicans take the House, McConnell said he thought it would be sufficient to run against Biden’s record. This misreads the mood of the country, which, as noted above, is extremely dissatisfied and seeking not just rhetoric but real policy changes to help heal the country.

McConnell has many strengths, even if his more vociferous critics are unwilling to admit them. He has done good work, particularly with judicial nominees. He prides himself on playing effective small ball to accomplish legislative victories. He has many powerful connections and does a good job raising money.

But at this moment, McConnell simply must be a better leader. As the top elected Republican in the country, he should be ecumenical in his support for all Republican candidates for Senate, becoming their biggest cheerleaders on a national stage. It’s understandable that an establishment figure such as himself might have preferred candidates more like himself, but he should set aside his hurt feelings for the sake of the party and country. He should motivate and energize the Republican voters while reaching out to those who can be persuaded to become Republican voters. He should learn how to fight the left-wing media that daily seek Republicans’ destruction, rather than kowtowing to them. He should be envisioning a bold legislative strategy to help save the country.

Mitch McConnell is the top elected Republican in the country. He has an obligation to immediately and dramatically improve his performance of these obvious, basic, and rudimentary political skills.

Gross Conflict of Interest Regarding January 6th Committee Revealed

Bonchie reporting for RedState 

While Liz Cheney’s epic defeat in Wyoming has stolen the headlines, the congresswoman isn’t quite done yet, and neither is the January 6th committee she helps lead. The Daily Caller has a new report out exposing what appears to be a pretty big conflict of interest involving a contractor the committee has hired with your tax dollars.

One of the investigative consultants brought in just so happens to be married to a high-level official who is supposed to be under scrutiny by the committee.

The Jan. 6 Committee hired an investigative consultant who could have a major “conflict of interest,” watchdogs told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Brian Young is a senior financial investigator at the consultancy Polar Solutions Inc and a contractor for the Jan. 6 Committee, according to his LinkedIn profile and an internal congressional document obtained by the DCNF. But he is also married to House Deputy Sergeant-at-Arms (SAA) Kim E. Campbell, the second most senior official in the SAA, which like the U.S. Capitol Police is being probed by the committee for security failures in connection to the Capitol riot.

Ostensibly, the January 6th committee exists to examine the failures that occurred on that day in order to recommend changes to prevent a future breach of the Capitol Building. I say ostensibly because we all know that’s not what they are really doing, as the focus has been almost exclusively on unsubstantiated innuendo and out-of-context accusations against Donald Trump.

Still, it seems like a big conflict of interest to hire the husband of the House Deputy Sergeant-at-Arms to investigate the security failures that happened. Wouldn’t the entire point be to get an unbiased view of how the Sergeant-at-Arms, the Capitol Police, and other law enforcement agencies not only responded, but prepared for what happened? It wasn’t exactly a mystery that there could be unrest, as evidenced by the fact that there was talk of mobilizing the National Guard prior.

What gets me is just how incestuous DC is. We are talking about a city of nearly a million people surrounded by an area of millions and millions of other people in a country of over 300 million people. And the January 6th committee couldn’t find anyone else to hire as an investigator except the husband of someone who is supposed to be under investigation? It’s just gross to witness how politicians and officials operate in Washington. They do things in ways that no normal person would ever get away with.

The other thing to note is what this says about Liz Cheney’s supposed integrity. Namely, that she doesn’t have any despite all her virtue signaling. Cheney is as much a part of the swamp as anyone else in and around the beltway, and she clearly doesn’t care at all about operating the January 6th committee in a credible way. It’s just a partisan tool for her that serves as a way to get the bad orange man while letting everyone else on the other side of the equation off the hook, including those actually in charge of security at the Capitol Building.