Woke watch: Not-So-Scientific American
“American journalism has never been very good at covering science,” argues City Journal’s James B. Meigs — but, wow, Scientific American has decided that science must serve as a “handmaiden” to progressive orthodoxy.
Witness the magazine’s coverage of COVID, trans kids and climate, “a new style of science journalism” indistinguishable from advocacy for “a politically approved opinion.”
(Including endorsing a presidential candidate, Joe Biden, for the first time in its 175-year history.)
“The public notices when claims made by health officials and other experts prove to be based more on politics than on science.”
Tragically, “the percentage of Americans who say that they have a ‘great deal’ of trust in scientists has fallen from 39 percent in 2020 to 23 percent today.”
Conservative: Trump’s Insane Trial
The craziest thing “about former President Donald Trump’s trial in New York is that we do not know precisely what crime Trump is charged with committing,” muses the Washington Examiner’s Byron York.
Yes, “we know that Trump is charged with falsifying business records,” but that’s “only a misdemeanor with a two-year statute of limitations.”
Prosecutors upgraded it to a felony by citing “intent to defraud that includes an intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof.”
But “the indictment did not specify any other crime,” so two weeks into the trial Trump effectively faces charges “without knowing what he was accused of doing.”
If “that sounds vaguely unconstitutional to you, you’re right.”
Liberal: Dems’ Problem With Health-Care Voters
As in 2016, voters this year with “populist/progressive” views on health care are also “conservative-leaning on immigration,” reports The Liberal Patriot’s Ruy Teixeira, per poll findings from his group and Blueprint. E.g., the data show that 81% of voters back letting Medicare negotiate drug prices, and among those, 72% support the use of “existing presidential power to stop illegal migrant crossings at the border.”
Notably, “the big shift toward Trump occurs precisely among those who both support an aggressive Medicare role” and the use of presidential powers to stop illegal border-crossing.
Oh, and those who back the bigger Medicare role also oppose Democratic approaches on police and climate change. “There’s a lesson there for Democrats should they care to take it.”
From the right: Jamaal Bowman Loves Hamas
Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-W’chester) “held a fundraiser with a Hamas-sympathizing Muslim leader who . . . celebrated the brutal October 7 attack on Israel,” fumes National Review’s Caroline Downey.
At last November’s Convention for Palestine in Chicago, “Nihad Awad championed the October 7 massacre as a powerful show of resistance by the Palestinian people.”
That prompted the White House to end “collaboration with CAIR, Awad’s organization, to counteract religious-based hatred in the U.S.”
Bowman just “slammed the police for intervening in the Columbia protests” and was previously caught on video “questioning the mass sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas terrorists against Israeli women” (though he later walked back his remarks).
DEI beat: MIT Drops Thought Control
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology ending “the use of diversity statements for faculty hiring . . . is momentous,” cheers John Sailer at UnHerd.
Such mandatory statements force would-be hires to endorse the pernicious DEI agenda; “pushback” against them had so far “succeeded almost exclusively at public universities in red states, encouraged or enacted by lawmakers.”
But “the decision at MIT is different — reform from within, prompted by a university president alongside deans and provosts.”
“It’s very possible that more private universities, and state universities in blue states, will eventually follow MIT’s lead,” since “a significant number of faculty from across the political spectrum simply cannot stand mandatory DEI statements.”
“It’s more than a narrow issue of free expression and compelled speech. Diversity statements . . . create a uniquely bad orthodoxy, one that is corrosive to civic life and inimical to true higher education.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
