Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️

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[Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ @christopherrufo]

SCOOP: California is pressuring public utilities to award $633 million in special contracts to "LGBT-owned" firms. To qualify, residents must go through the state's official gay-certification program—and face up to a year in jail if they're not gay enough.
https://t.co/rOcnPqYJrl

[Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ @christopherrufo]

Curious to hear the strongest arguments for and against the Iran MOU. Make your case here:

[Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ @christopherrufo]

BREAKING: The Department of Justice is opening an inquiry into California's gay-certification program. As always, @AAGDhillon is moving into action—and defending the principle of equality under the law.

[Glenn Beck @glennbeck]

California has a gay certification program now?! A report from @christopherrufo detailed how the state is making lists and pressuring utilities to support gay-certified companies. Is this even legal?! @AAGDhillon tells me the DOJ is looking into it:

“I agree that it's ILLEGAL...It's actually a much bigger problem than what you just described. Everyone's kind of lampooning, you have to get three friends to sign up and agree that you're gay, and then you get certified as gay. But actually, this is part of a broader DEI initiative where they have minority set-asides based on race, based on gender, based on other factors.

The other people who could do something about it, in some instances, can be private parties who weren't picked for a contract because they don't have the correct boxes checked. I don't know how 'who somebody sleeps with' is relevant to their provision of utility-related support services. That's rhetorical, I think we know it isn't. It's nonsense, it needs to stop, and it's illegal.”

[Timcast News @TimcastNews]

Nothing says efficient government like creating a certification process to determine who is officially gay enough for taxpayer-funded benefits.

[J Michael Waller @JMichaelWaller]

.@ODNIgov should declassify ALL un-decrypted VENONA intercepts and place them online for crowdsourced decryption, translation & analysis.

There is no reason for anything to remain classified, except to protect those who engaged in, facilitated, or covered up Soviet espionage. @ItsYourGov @JudicialWatch

[David Hines @hradzka]

1952 GAY DUDE, hunched furtively over his beer. “Does… does the government of California still investigate your activities to find out if you’re homosexual”
ME, inexplicably a time traveler. “Yes, but not like you’re thinking”

[Coddled Affluent Professional @feelsdesperate]

I’ll take the position here of ‘defending’ James Surowiecki insofar that he sees himself as a member of a class of intellectual and ideological gatekeepers granted the authority to determine the bounds of acceptable discourse.

Because of changes in technology these people have less power than at any time in the past century in regimenting what conversations can and cannot be had. They just don’t have the bandwidth and the intellectual capacity has fallen off dramatically.

Because they’re running on empty and have too much to cover often the best they can do is to throw out cheap rhetorical jibes, eg ‘just asking questions.’

You don’t even have to really respond to them though, you can just reject the premise of the authority they grant themselves to engage in policing discourse. The fact is they don’t have the institutional advantages they once did that baked in a captive audience, and they have no real mechanism other than lazy disparagement to offset debate that organically attracts interest.

[Dan Morenoff @MorenoffDan]

Last week, below most people’s radar, the administration’s efforts to restore the original understanding of America’s most fundamental nondiscrimination laws (and, with it, American equality) took a huge step forward.

I explain that step and its limitations in @CityJournal.

[Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry @pegobry_en]

Some people on the right criticized the way the movie downplays the extent of Oppenheimer's communist involvement, which seems a textbook case of missing the forest for the trees: what the movie shows very well is the extent to which almost EVERYBODY in academia in the US in the '50s was either a Communist or a Fellow Traveler, which seems like a much bigger culture war W.

[Sean Hannity 🇺🇸 @seanhannity]

California has officially gone off the deep end. The state is now requiring business owners to prove they are "gay enough" before qualifying for hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded government contracts https://t.co/G7UBUleDFX

[Chronicles Magazine @ChroniclesMag]

Conservatives: Know Your Burnham

James Burnham’s theory of managerialism is a foundation that conservatives should build upon while also repairing any cracks in that foundation.

Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) writes for the June issue of Chronicles: https://t.co/nFTdwSqSl6

[Bradley J. Birzer @bradleybirzer]

To me, a republic supersedes a democracy. A democracy must be an element of a republic, but not necessarily the prime element. We know from the opening days of the Constitutional Convention that the Founders openly rejected the growing democracy in America, hoping to subdue it. As such, the only democratic element was the one vote we each get for one member of the House of Representatives. As originally understood, we had no democratic say in electing Senators, in electing the president, or in choosing justices for the Supreme Court. Republic (res publica) literally means "good thing" or "common thing." In a republic, we each give up a little bit for the common good of the community. All win. In a democracy, the emphasis is on the greater good, and there are serious winners and losers. I would also say that there's nothing morally superior to 50.1% of the population controlling society than an oligarchy or monarchy controlling society. The republic tries to allow EVERYONE a say.

[Harmeet K. Dhillon @HarmeetKDhillon]

The @USEEOC and state labor laws govern private employer disputes such as these. Time to lawyer up!

[Bishop Robert Barron @BishopBarron]

Looks like Major League Baseball has given the President’s Religious Liberty Commission more work to do.

[Adam Carolla @adamcarolla]

Crazy

[Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ @christopherrufo]

Approaching 3 million views 🚀

[Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ @christopherrufo]

SCOOP: California is pressuring public utilities to award $633 million in special contracts to "LGBT-owned" firms. To qualify, residents must go through the state's official gay-certification program—and face up to a year in jail if they're not gay enough.
https://t.co/rOcnPqYJrl

[John Sailer @JohnDSailer]

BREAKING: Stuart Bell told the University of Florida trustees he didn't merely rename and continue Alabama's DEI offices.

But unearthed faculty senate meeting minutes reveal that Bell assured faculty the exact opposite was true: "The DEI renaming is a name change only."

[Kyle Mann @The_Kyle_Mann]

If my @TheBabylonBee writers had pitched this as a joke, I would have rejected it for being too outlandish.

[Rep. Eli Crane @RepEliCrane]

While at the same time, it’s too much of a burden to require an ID to vote in California.

[Polymarket @Polymarket]

NEW: California pressuring public utility companies to issue $633 million in contracts to LGBT-owned businesses — must pass “gay-certification program” to qualify.