Mario Loyola and Eric Groten

The EPA’s attempt to impose such a scheme on states was particularly bold because Congress had just declined to enact a similar scheme. After the 2008 election, Democrats introduced the Waxman-Markey bill, a sweeping cap-and-trade scheme to reduce carbon emissions dramatically. Even with Democratic supermajorities in both houses, Congress failed to pass the bill.

After his party lost the House in 2010 President Obama turned to the EPA, which in 2015 promulgated the Clean Power Plan. The basic idea of the CPP was to pressure states into shutting down coal and (eventually) natural-gas plants and switch to renewable electricity sources. The agency resorted to an obscure provision of the original Clean Air Act that lay largely dormant for decades. It empowers the EPA to designate a “best system of emissions reduction,” or BSER, for existing facilities. The provision had been used only a handful of times, mostly for solid-waste incinerators, to reduce emissions “inside the fence line” of the facility itself.

The EPA decided that BSERs could extend beyond the fence line to the whole economy. The CPP would have imposed costly technological requirements within its purview, but also imposed standards that would force states to switch to natural gas and eventually renewables. The agency even planned to adopt nationwide standards on how and when you are allowed to use electricity in your own house. 

There were a host of statutory and constitutional problems with this scheme, and the Supreme Court stayed it in 2016. In 2019, the Trump administration replaced it with the Affordable Clean Energy rule. That rule held to the traditional “inside the fence line” approach and accordingly focused on modest emissions improvements at coal plants. On the last day of Mr. Trump’s presidency, however, the powerful U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia vacated the Trump rule.

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

No When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Brian Gitt:

I started to realize that I had accepted as true certain claims about energy and our environment. Now I began to see those claims were false. For example:

• I used to think solar and wind power were the best ways to reduce CO2 emissions. But the biggest reduction in CO2 emissions during the past 15 years (over 60%) has come from switching from coal to natural gas. 
• I used to think that the world was transitioning to solar, wind, and batteries. This, too, was false. Trillions of dollars were spent on wind and solar projects over the last 20 years, yet the world’s dependence on fossil fuels declined only 3 percentage points, from 87% to 84%. 
• I used to believe nuclear energy was dangerous and nuclear waste was a big problem. In fact, nuclear is the safest and most reliable way to generate low-emission electricity, and it provides the best chance of reducing CO2 emissions.

It’s now clear I was chasing utopian energy. I was using green energy myths as moral camouflage, and I was able to believe those myths as long as I remained ignorant about the real costs and benefits of different energy sources. 

I’ve dedicated most of my life to protecting the environment. But I was wrong about the best ways to do it. I thought I was acting morally and protecting the well-being of people and the planet. In fact, I was harming both.

Census Bureau age estimates, 2021, Wisconsin county “kids-to-seniors” ratios: 44% of Wisconsin counties had more residents ages 65+ than ages 0-17, compared to 35% nationally. Nearly three times as many counties as in 2010. pic.twitter.com/2lALkx1Vf5

— UW-APL (@AppliedPopLab) June 30, 2022

America First Legal

Unlawful actions by the most notorious school district in America include:

• Knowingly, systematically, and willfully violating the Plaintiffs’ fundamental constitutional rights to care for, nurture, and direct the education, moral instruction, and upbringing of their children;
• Knowingly, systematically, and willfully taking advantage of the schools’ coercive power over children to impose a woke social, political, and psychological ideology and agenda, and thereby to shape and control student attitudes, beliefs, and behavior relating to, inter alia, human sexuality, equal rights, and the relationship between a parent and his or her child;
• Requiring schools and teachers as a matter of policy to deceive parents and secretly promote and facilitate a child’s “gender transition”;
• Requiring schools as a matter of policy to provide children with psychological or psychiatric counseling and treatment without parental knowledge or consent;
• Soliciting and obtaining information about student attitudes, habits, traits, opinions, beliefs or feelings regarding sensitive regulated topics such as sex, religion, race, and familial relationships without either express prior parental consent or a direct relationship to academic instruction;
• Knowingly, systematically, and willfully using “social and emotional learning” and other similar methods and techniques for the purpose of affecting childrens’ behavioral, emotional, or attitudinal characteristics related, inter alia, to race and sexuality, without prior parental consent or any direct relationship to academic instruction;
• Invidiously using racial “balancing” and quotas to favor some children at the expense of others;
• Intentionally failing to provide Plaintiffs with a safe and orderly learning environment for their children;
• Illegally hiding information about school operations and curriculum from parents;
• Illegally charging exorbitant fees and/or claiming legally deficient exemptions to Freedom of Information Act Requests;
• Illegally failing to comply with multiple Virginia laws mandating parental notifications and involvement in surveys and teaching related to sensitive personal subjects including human sexuality and race;
• Illegally implementing race-based quota systems for entry into advanced level classes and admission to the Academies of Loudoun; and
• Retaliating and discriminating against parents and children whose beliefs do not align with the woke LCPS agenda;

Anthony LaMesa:

Findings highlight importance of “normalcy” for children

A recently published journal article concluding Swedish primary school children suffered no learning loss drew international attention, but foreign observers of Sweden’s responsible decision to keep most schools open may have missed a journal article published in December 2021 with good news about the emotional well-being of the country’s middle school students: they didn’t suffer more emotional problems during the early pandemic than would otherwise be expected “due to typical mean-level changes during development.”

Analyzing data from 30 middle schools in western Sweden, the “study’s aim was to compare Swedish middle school students’ (grade 4–5) psychosocial well-being before the pandemic to approximately a year into the pandemic.” The authors concluded that “when students continue attending school, their psychosocial well-being does not worsen as it does for students experiencing school closures.”

Students’ emotional problems showed no differences, whilst small differences in student’s relationships to significant others and factors of psychological adjustment may be partially due to typical mean-level changes during development (Meeus, 2016). Meaningful differences in students’ school adjustment are plausibly attributed to disruptions caused by the pandemic. Holistically, students do not seem to be doing poorly. This study together with Chen et al. (2021) has shown that when students continue attending school, their psychosocial well-being does not worsen as it does for students experiencing school closures (Cresswell et al., 2021; Viner et al., 2021).

The researchers compared data from October 2019-January 2020 (T1) to data from November 2020-February 2021 (T2):

Beth Mole:

Fauci subsequently went back on Paxlovid for another five-day course. “Right now, I’m on my fourth day of a five-day course of my second course of Paxlovid,” he said Tuesday. “And, fortunately, I feel reasonably good, I mean, I’m not completely without symptoms, but I certainly don’t feel acutely ill.”

Conflicting treatment advice

Fauci’s second course of treatment conflicts with the stance of the US Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In a May 24 health advisory, the CDC wrote, “There is currently no evidence that additional treatment for COVID-19 is needed for COVID-19 rebound. Based on data available at this time, patient monitoring continues to be the most appropriate management for patients with recurrence of symptoms after completion of a treatment course of Paxlovid.”

David Lat:

The nation’s capital is also the latest front in the law-school culture wars. Two law schools in D.C., American University Washington College of Law and the George Washington University Law School, have experienced free speech and cancel culture controversies in the past week. Here’s what’s going at American University (“AU”), per Karen Sloan of Reuters:

American University is investigating eight law students after a conservative classmate claimed they harassed him during an online group chat about the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, one of the students under investigation confirmed Monday.

The incident followed the May 2 leak of a draft of the decision, which was released in final form on Friday and overturned Roe v. Wade, reversing a Constitutional right to an abortion.

A male law student who described himself as Republican and “deeply religious” filed a complaint with the university alleging his classmates harassed and threatened him due to his political affiliation and religion, according to a May 25 letter from the university’s Office of Equity & Title IX.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (“FIRE”), which is assisting one of the students under investigation, has published an article about the episode, which links to a transcript of the GroupMe chat in question. As even cursory review of the chat reveals, it contains nothing remotely “harassing” or “threatening”; it’s just a heated disagreement between law students about a controversial topic. And it’s not even that heated, to be honest; the NYU Law listserv dust-up, which led to accusations of anti-Semitism, was far more contentious.

There are no threats, explicit or implicit, in the chat. Yes, there are some comments that are rude and uncivil—e.g., “can we shut the f**k up about personal opinions while people process this,” “no one asked for your personal opinion,” “[you should] have the decency to shut up while people come to terms with the fact that they’ve just lost a constitutional right”—but none of this rises to the level of harassment or threats.

Any other labels you want to throw at me?

The conversation at the grown-up table is about why the COVID-19 vaccine for children was approved with no data on clinical benefit.

You’re free to come join the adults once you’re done name-calling. https://t.co/Zw0OuznVGO

— Joseph A. Ladapo, MD, PhD (@FLSurgeonGen) June 30, 2022

Paul Thacker:

RICH: Correct. My initial efforts were to make an interactive geospatial visualization where you could watch payments drop like raindrops over time and visually recognize patterns. For example, there’s this spike in food and beverage payments at the end of December every year and this coincides with payments for speaker’s fees happening all across the country.

So you start to understand that one doctor was likely speaking to all these other doctors who got dinners and drinks that day.

I want to make it easier to explore the financial relationships between authors of articles in medical journals and industry, mostly drug and device companies.

Melissa Block:

The NPR/Ipsos poll shows that nearly two-thirds of Americans (63%) are opposed to allowing transgender women and girls to compete on teams that align with their gender identity, while 24% overall support that.

Among Democrats, opinion is fairly split: a plurality, 46%, support trans female athletes’ right to compete on women’s and girls sports teams, while 41% oppose it.

Independent voters oppose trans female athletes right to compete by 3:1 (21% support; 63% oppose).

Among Republicans, support plummets to just 4%, while 88% oppose.

Len Gutkin:

Two summers ago, The Review published a fascinating essay by the historian Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins on the question of “presentism” in the discipline of history. (In her 2002 article “Against Presentism,” Lynn Hunt defined the object of her attack in two ways: “1. the tendency to interpret the past in presentist terms; and 2. the shift of general historical interest toward the contemporary period and away from the more distant past.”) The topic felt newly urgent, motivated by questions about whether Trumpism could be illuminated by analogies to European fascism as well as by a series of highly publicized debates around