The Trump administration is asking all federal agencies to find ways to terminate all federal contracts with Havard University amid an ongoing standoff over foreign students’ records at the Ivy League school. 

The General Services Administration is planning to send a letter Tuesday instructing all federal agencies to review the estimated $100 million remaining in federal contracts with Harvard and potentially “find alternative vendors,” according to a copy of the letter obtained by Fox News.

The remaining federal contracts include a $527,000 agreement for Harvard ManageMentor Licenses, which was awarded in September 2021, a $523,000 contract for Harvard to conduct research on energy drinks and the health outcomes on other dietary intakes overtime, which was awarded in August 2023, and a $39,000 contract fir gradate student research services, which was award in April 2025, a source familiar with the matter told Fox News. 

TRUMP ACCUSES HARVARD OF BEING ‘VERY SLOW’ TO TURN OVER FOREIGN STUDENT INFO

The New York Times first reported about a draft of the letter. 

In the letter, GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service Commissioner Josh Gruenbaum said Harvard “continues to engage in race discrimination, including in its admissions process and in other areas of student life.” 

He said Harvard has shown “no indication” of reforming its admissions process despite the Supreme Court ruling that university policy discriminates on the basis of race. 

For applicants in the top academic decile, admissions rates were 56% for African Americans, 31% for Hispanics, 15% for Whites and 13% for Asians, according to the lawsuit. Gruenbaum said Harvard “now has to offer a remedial math course, which has been described as ‘middle school math’ for incoming freshmen.” He said that was a direct result “of employing discriminatory factors, instead of merit, in admission decisions.” 

Gruenbaum also cited possible violations of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 regarding Harvard hiring, promotion, compensation, and other personnel-related actions. He said discriminatory practices “have been exposed at the Harvard Law Review, where internal documents that have been made public detail the pervasive and explicit racial discrimination in the publication’s article selection and editor appointment process.”

“GSA is also aware of recent events at Harvard University involving anti-Semitic action that suggest the institution has a disturbing lack of concern for the safety and wellbeing of Jewish students,” Gruenbaum wrote. “Harvard’s ongoing inaction in the face of repeated and severe harassment and targeting of its students has at times grounded day-to-day campus operations to a halt, deprived Jewish students of learning and research opportunities to which they are entitled, and profoundly alarmed the general public.” 

Harvard has already sued in federal court seeking the restoration of about $3.2 billion in federal grant funding already frozen by the administration since last month. 

In a separate suit, the university was granted a temporary restraining order on Friday that temporarily blocks the government from canceling the school’s certification in the Student and Exchange Visitor Program. The program permits the university to host international students with F-1 or J-1 visas to study in the U.S. Harvard said the revocation would impact more than 7,000 visa holders – more than a quarter of its student body. Another hearing is scheduled for Tuesday in Boston federal court. 

President Donald Trump said in a TRUTH Social post on Monday that he is “considering taking Three Billion Dollars of Grant Money away from a very antisemitic Harvard, and giving it to TRADE SCHOOLS all across our land.” 

“What a great investment that would be for the USA, and so badly needed!!!” he wrote. 

JUDGE TEMPORARILY PAUSES TRUMP MOVE TO CANCEL HARVARD STUDENT VISA POLICY AFTER LAWSUIT

The president also accused Harvard of being “very slow” in handing over documents about foreign students and of having “shopped around and found the absolute best judge (for them).” 

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem said Thursday she revoked Harvard’s certification after the university refused to comply with multiple requests for information on foreign students while “perpetuating an unsafe campus environment that is hostile to Jewish students, promotes pro-Hamas sympathies, and employs racist ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ policies.” 

The requested records include any and all audio or video footage in Harvard’s possession regarding threats to other students or university personnel, “deprivation of rights” of other classmates or university personnel, and “dangerous or violent activity, whether on or off campus” by a nonimmigrant student enrolled at Harvard in the last five years. 

Noem is also asking for any and all disciplinary records and audio or video footage of any protest activity involving nonimmigrant students. DHS said that Harvard’s responses so far have been insufficient. 

Fox News’ Sarah Tobianski contributed to this report.

The FBI is taking another look at the cocaine found inside the Biden administration White House in 2023, according to Deputy Director Dan Bongino. 

“Shortly after swearing in, the Director and I evaluated a number of cases of potential public corruption that, understandably, have garnered public interest. We made the decision to either re-open, or push additional resources and investigative attention, to these cases,” Bongino said in a post on X. 

“These cases are the DC pipe bombing investigation, the cocaine discovery at the prior administration’s White House, and the leak of the Supreme Court Dobbs case. I receive requested briefings on these cases weekly and we are making progress. If you have any investigative tips on these matters that may assist us, then please contact the FBI,” he added. 

The FBI did not immediately respond Tuesday to a request for further comment from Fox News Digital. 

TRUMP REVEALS WHO HE BELIEVES LEFT INFAMOUS BAG OF COCAINE AT WHITE HOUSE 

Earlier this year, President Donald Trump said in an interview he believes former President Joe Biden or his son, Hunter Biden, left behind the infamous bag of cocaine at the White House. 

“So … who actually left the cocaine in the White House?” The Spectator’s Ben Domenech asked Trump. 

“Well, either Joe or Hunter,” Trump responded. “Could be Joe, too.”  

The bag of cocaine was discovered on July 2, 2023, in a storage locker near the entrance to the White House’s West Wing.  

NEWLY RELEASED PHOTOS SHOW MYSTERIOUS COCAINE DISCOVERED IN WHITE HOUSE 

The Secret Service discovered the cocaine and launched an investigation, which turned up inconclusive for a suspect. 

“On July 12, the Secret Service received the FBI’s laboratory results, which did not develop latent fingerprints and insufficient DNA was present for investigative comparisons,” it said in 2023. “Therefore, the Secret Service is not able to compare evidence against the known pool of individuals. The FBl’s evaluation of the substance also confirmed that it was cocaine.”

“That was such a terrible thing because, you know, those bins are very loaded up with … they’re not clean, and they have hundreds and even thousands of fingerprints,” Trump also said in the interview. “And when they went to look at it, it was absolutely stone cold, wiped dry. You know that, right?” 

The Biden family, including the former president and Hunter, were not staying at the White House when the cocaine was discovered. Instead, the family was staying at presidential retreat Camp David in Maryland. 

Hunter Biden has a long and well-documented history with substance abuse, and he detailed his hourly need for crack cocaine in his 2021 memoir, “Beautiful Things.” He has since gone through recovery efforts and has been sober since 2019, according to sworn testimony in federal court in 2023. 

Fox News’ Emma Colton contributed to this report. 

Former Vice President Kamala Harris had 107 days to convince the American people to elect her the next president. 

Tension between Harris’ team and former President Joe Biden‘s inner circle did not do her any favors, a new book by CNN anchor Jake Tapper and Axios political correspondent Alex Thompson reveals. 

“Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,” has returned questions about Biden’s cognitive decline and his administration’s alleged cover-up to the national conversation. 

The book also pulls back the curtain on the complicated relationship between Biden and Harris, spotlighting the distrust that had been brewing between their teams since Biden tapped Harris as his running mate in 2020. 

NEW BOOK REVEALS BIDEN’S INNER CIRCLE WORRIED ABOUT HIS AGE YEARS BEFORE BOTCHED DEBATE PERFORMANCE

The choice for Biden’s vice president came down to Harris or Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, D-Mich., according to Thompson and Tapper.

NEW BOOK EXPOSES HOW TOP BIDEN COMMS STAFFER WAS ‘TIP OF THE SPEAR’ COVERING UP BIDEN’S COGNITIVE DECLINE

“Many on the Biden team felt that Harris didn’t put in the work and was also just not a very nice person. Several quietly expressed buyer’s remorse: They should have picked Whitmer.”

To Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign, Whitmer represented the “next generation of Biden Democrats,” Thompson and Tapper said. 

Additionally, former first lady Jill Biden resented Harris after hitting him hard during the first Democratic primary in 2019 for opposing the Department of Education’s busing program to integrate public schools. “That little girl was me,” Harris said on the debate stage.

“Still, Biden’s advisers did not fully trust her. Harris and her advisers felt it. Her aides got the impression that doing more than the bare minium to help was considered an act of disloyalty to Biden,” Tapper and Thompson said of Harris’ involvement in the 2020 campaign. “Some of that culture carried over into the White House.”

Biden privately called Harris a “work in progress” and was not confident she could beat then-former President Donald Trump in 2024. 

However, Harris’ team thought building up the vice president should have been a priority for Biden’s transitional presidency as a “bridge” for the next generation of Democratic leadership, as he said back in 2020. 

An excerpt of the book reads, “In the eyes of Harris’s team, the Biden White House was setting her up to fail. They gave her assignments her team considered politically toxic, such as dealing with the migration crisis, rarely offered to help, and knifed her to reporters along the way. Harris’s camp didn’t understand the hostility and the reluctance to offer her opportunities to shine.”

The Fox News Voter Analysis in 2024 found that 52% of voters said Trump was the better candidate to handle immigration, while just 36% said Harris. Additionally, it was a top issue for voters, with 20% saying it was the most important issue facing the country. 

Harris faced the brunt of criticism for the surge in border crossings during the Biden-Harris administration as the Trump campaign trolled her as the “border czar.”

When Biden dropped out of the race after his disastrous debate performance in summer 2024, Harris inherited his struggling campaign, and her old boss soon became a “liability.”

“From the beginning of her campaign in July to the August weeks of picking a running mate, presiding over the convention, rolling out wave after wave of ads, and on through September debate prep, it was clear that Biden was a liability,” Tapper and Thompson wrote. 

Harris was caught in the crosshairs of Biden’s relentless gaffes and missteps as she tried to walk a fine line between loyalty to Biden and distancing herself from his failing campaign, as the journalists described. 

While Harris had “great affection for Joe,” her loyalty fired back when she told “The View” she would not have done anything differently than Biden as president. 

“There is not a thing that comes to mind,” Harris said – an instant attack ad for the Trump administration as they highlighted the Biden-Harris administration’s record on immigration, the withdrawal from Afghanistan and inflation. 

“What is he doing?” Harris asked her team after Biden donned a Trump 2024 hat at a 9/11 memorial gathering at the Shanksville Fire Station, less than a month before the election. 

“This is completely unhelpful. And so unnecessary,” Harris told her team, according to the book. “That would be, the Harris campaign decided, the last time she would do a public event with the president before the election.”

However, Biden still wanted a role in the campaign, Tapper and Thompson said, as he saw former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama speaking at rallies on the campaign trail. 

“He didn’t seem to understand what a liability he had become.”

When one of Trump’s supporters called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage” during a Madison Square Garden rally about a week before the election, what should have been a political layup for Democrats, became another mess for Harris to clean up. 

“The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters,” Biden said on a Voto Latino Zoom call.

While Biden was creating a political mess for Harris to clean up, Trump seized the opportunity to claim the narrative, sporting a high-visibility vest at a rally in battleground Michigan and hosting an impromptu press gaggle from the front seat of a garbage truck that was decked out in Trump decals. 

“By the end of the campaign, she had helped the Democratic Party, but her own candidacy was barely treading water. And the albatross that was Joe Biden kept getting heavier,” Tapper and Thompson said. 

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Fox News Digital has written extensively dating back to the 2020 presidential campaign about Biden’s cognitive decline and his inner circle’s role in covering it up.

Representatives for Biden and Harris did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment. 

The Supreme Court declined to hear a case involving a Massachusetts student who was banned from school for wearing a shirt criticizing the transgender movement on Tuesday.

The student, Liam Morrison, brought the case through his father and stepmother, Christopher and Susan Morrison. The plaintiffs argue Nichols Middle School violated his free speech rights when it banned him from wearing two T-shirts to school with the words “There are only two genders” and “There are [censored] genders” on the front.

Liam was sent home both times after he refused to change shirts. The school argued the shirts made his classmates feel unsafe, and a federal court agreed, saying the message was demeaning for transgender students.

This is a developing story. Check back soon for updates.

Former President Joe Biden‘s official health reports during his White House tenure did not show signs of aggressive prostate cancer, a Fox News Digital review of the health documents shows. 

Biden, who suffered two brain aneurysms in 1988 that nearly claimed his life, received clean bills of health in 2021, 2023 and 2024, according to former White House physician Dr. Kevin O’Connor’s annual reports on the president’s state of health. 

Biden was scheduled to receive a physical by the end of January 2023 but delayed the evaluation due to a busy travel schedule, the White House reported at the time. The former president had a roughly 15-month period between his 2021 physical and one conducted in February 2023. 

Fox News Digital reviewed the three reports posted by the White House in 2021, 2023 and 2024 and found that there were no signs indicating aggressive prostate cancer was on the horizon for the 46th president — though concerns over skin cancer were a common theme throughout the three reports. 

‘SMALL NODULE’ FOUND IN BIDEN’S PROSTATE DURING ROUTINE EXAM, SPOKESPERSON SAYS

Biden’s White House physician released the president’s first annual health report in November 2021, declaring Biden a “healthy, vigorous” man. 

“President Biden remains a healthy, vigorous, 78-year-old male, who is fit to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency, to include those as Chief Executive, Head of State and Commander in Chief,” O’Connor wrote in the 2021 report. 

The report included routine screenings of Biden’s heart, eyes and teeth, as well as his occasional gastroesophageal reflux. 

TRUMP CALLS BIDEN’S CANCER DIAGNOSIS ‘VERY SAD’ WHILE QUESTIONING TIMELINE: ‘WASN’T INFORMED’

The report noted that Biden also underwent “routine” screenings for both colon cancer and skin cancer. Biden had multiple “localized, non-melenoma skin cancers removed” ahead of his presidency after spending a good deal of time in the sun as a youth, the report stated, but that there were “no areas suspicious for skin cancer” during the 2021 physical. 

The report did find that Biden was increasingly “throat clearing” and coughing during public events. O’Connor stated that Biden had long cleared his throat or coughed during speaking engagements, but such coughing or throat clearing “certainly seem more frequent and more pronounced over the last few months.” 

O’Connor said gastroesophageal reflux was likely the culprit behind Biden’s coughing after conducting multiple lung, oxygen and biological tests. 

The report also noted that Biden’s gait had become noticeably more stiff, which the doctor said required a “detailed investigation.” The stiffened gait was attributed to Biden’s wear and tear on his spine and mild sensory peripheral neuropathy of the feet, which O’Connor said could be addressed with physical therapy and exercise. 

O’Connor released details on Biden’s second physical as president on Feb. 16, 2023, roughly 15 months after the release of his first presidential physical. The delay between the health assessments was attributed to the president’s busy schedule. 

Biden was notably also diagnosed with COVID-19 in July 2022 during the interim period of his first and second physicals. Biden was reported to have mild symptoms that July and was treated with the antiviral drug Paxlovid. 

The February 2023 physical report found that Biden was in good health and “fit” to serve as president. 

“President Biden remains a healthy, vigorous 80-year-old male who is fit to successfully execute the duties of the presidency,” O’Connor wrote in his 2023 health memo.

OBAMA REACTS TO BIDEN CANCER DIAGNOSIS 

The report found that Biden’s gait had remained stiff since his last physical, though the issue had not worsened. The report overall found that his heart, lungs, eyes and teeth were all in good health. 

Biden underwent routine skin cancer surveillance, which found a small lesion on the president’s chest that required biopsy. The lesion was removed just a couple of weeks later without issue, a follow-up memo from O’Connor states. 

“As expected, the biopsy confirmed that the small lesion was basal cell carcinoma,” Biden’s doctor wrote in a memo after the lesion was removed. “All cancerous tissue was successfully removed. The area around the biopsy site was treated presumptively with electrodessication and curettage at the time of biopsy. No further treatment is required.” 

The 2023 physical health report also provided updates on Biden’s COVID-19 recovery, which the White House doctor said went smoothly in part due to Biden receiving the coronavirus vaccine and two booster shots before the infection. 

BIDEN HEALTH SUMMARY RELEASED BY WHITE HOUSE, PRESIDENT CALLED ‘HEALTHY, ROBUST’

The report on Biden’s final physical examination as president was released Feb. 28, 2024 and again found the president in good health and able to serve as president. 

“President Biden is a healthy, active, robust 81-year-old male, who remains fit to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency, to include those as Chief Executive, Head of State and Commander in Chief,” the most recent memo stated. 

Again, vital organs such as the heart and eyes received a clean bill of health, while Biden’s stiff gait did not worsen in the interim since 2023, though the doctor noted “arthritic changes” that were moderate to severe. 

O’Connor reported that he conducted a neurological exam and determined that no cerebral or neurological issues were compounding the president’s stiff gait. The test did support previous findings of peripheral neuropathy of the feet, the report stated. 

JOE BIDEN DIAGNOSED WITH ‘AGGRESSIVE FORM’ OF PROSTATE CANCER WITH METASTASIS TO THE BONE

The 2024 physical additionally noted that the lesion removed from Biden’s chest the year prior needed no additional treatment, as basal cell carcinoma typically does not metastasize. 

The report added that Biden had been using a continuous positive airway pressure, or CPAP, machine when sleeping after he showed symptoms of obstructive sleep apnea. The president had previously reported similar symptoms in 2008 and 2019, O’Connor stated, but that they subsided after sinus and nasal passage surgeries before his presidency.

He also underwent a root canal that year with no complications. 

Dr. O’Connor has overseen Biden’s health since 2009 and built a close relationship with the president and his family, Fox News Digital previously reported. 

“I have never had a better commander than Joe Biden,” O’Connor said in a profile interview with his alma mater, New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine, when Biden served as vice president. “All politics aside, he approaches his craft with such honor. He’s 100 percent ‘family first.’ He’s ‘genuinely genuine.’”

FLASHBACK: WHITE HOUSE PRESS SEC KARINE JEAN-PIERRE LAUGHS OFF QUESTION ON BIDEN’S HEALTH IN 2022

O’Connor overwhelmingly remained out of the spotlight during Biden’s tenure until the spring of 2024, when speculation mounted among both conservatives and Democrats that the president’s mental acuity was slipping, with pundits and the media subsequently demanding to hear directly from O’Connor on the state of Biden’s health. 

The White House physician is affectionately known to Biden and his family simply as “Doc,” and was requested by Biden in 2009 to stay on as his physician after serving in the White House Medical Unit under the President George W. Bush administration, according to the profile. 

O’Connor was first appointed to the White House Medical Unit in 2006 for what was intended to be a three-year military assignment, according to his profile published by the New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine, from which he graduated in 1992. 

Instead, “Vice President Biden asked O’Connor to stay on,” the profile continues. 

O’Connor complied, marking the beginning of their doctor-patient relationship that has reportedly evolved into a close relationship with the president’s large family. 

Biden’s 2017 memoir, “Promise Me, Dad,” features the president reflecting on his close relationship with “Doc,” including O’Connor joining the family on their annual vacation to Massachusetts’ Nantucket in his capacity as the White House physician and balking at the family’s “browsing extravaganza” on the island. The White House medical unit always travels with a president to best protect his health and safety.  

The physician’s relationship with the family seemingly grew closer, according to the memoir, when the president’s son, Beau Biden, was diagnosed with brain cancer — which ultimately claimed his life in 2015. 

“Doc was good with Beau, who was still trying to get his bearings in those first few days. Real fear was starting to creep in. Sometimes Beau would grab him when everybody else was out of earshot to get his honest assessment,” Biden wrote in the memoir. 

“‘Whatever it is, this is bad,’ he told Beau, ‘but we’re gonna find out what it is. And once we find out what it is, we will have a plan.’” 

“‘Promise?’ Beau asked.”

“‘Promise.’” 

WHO IS WHITE HOUSE PHYSICIAN DR. KEVIN O’CONNOR AND WHAT ARE HIS CLOSE TIES TO THE BIDEN FAMILY?

In another excerpt, Beau Biden requested O’Connor “promise” to take care of his father if he should die. 

“‘Seriously, Doc. No matter what happens,'” Beau Biden said to O’Connor, according to the book. ‘”Take care of Pop. For real. Promise me. For real.’”

Back in 2018, Joe Biden’s sister-in-law, Sara Biden, described O’Connor as a “friend” who provided medical advice to members of the Biden family beyond the eventual commander in chief. 

“Colonel O’Connor was actually a friend and he — we would frequently ask for his recommendations if any of us had a medical issue, so it was not uncommon to ask him if he had a recommendation,” she said in a deposition related to a New York state medical malpractice case involving her daughter, Fox News previously reported. 

Biden’s office announced May 18 that the former president had been diagnosed with an “aggressive form” of prostate cancer, which set off concern that such a cancer should have been discovered sooner. 

“Last week, President Joe Biden was seen for a new finding of a prostate nodule after experiencing increasing urinary symptoms,” Biden’s team shared in a statement. “On Friday, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, characterized by a Gleason score of 9 (Grade Group 5) with metastasis to the bone.” 

“While this represents a more aggressive form of the disease, the cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management,” the statement said. “The President and his family are reviewing treatment options with his physicians.” 

Physicians have remarked that they are “shocked” that the cancer had not been discovered sooner. 

“Thank God they found it. (Biden is) a fighter. He’s been through a tremendous amount in his life… with his son, with (his) wife, with (his) daughter,” Fox News senior medical analyst Dr. Marc Siegel said May 19. “Two aneurysms, atrial fibrillation. He’s been through a lot health-wise, but I am absolutely shocked that they didn’t find this earlier.” 

A spokesperson for Biden confirmed to Fox News on May 20 that Biden’s last known prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test, which screens a patient for prostate cancer, was conducted in 2014. 

“President Biden’s last known PSA was in 2014,” a Biden spokesperson told Fox News. “Prior to Friday, President Biden had never been diagnosed with prostate cancer.” 

Biden posted to X on May 19 in his first message since publicly revealing the diagnosis to thank supporters. 

“Cancer touches us all. Like so many of you, Jill and I have learned that we are strongest in the broken places,” Biden wrote on X, accompanied by a photo with former first lady Jill Biden. “Thank you for lifting us up with love and support.” 

FOX DIGITAL REVIEW: Progressive Newark, New Jersey, Mayor Ras Baraka, one of the top Democratic candidates for New Jersey governor, has a record of associating with alleged abusers of women and has been accused of fostering a toxic work environment for women in his administration, a Fox News Digital review found.

Baraka, who has been mayor of Newark since 2014, hired his brother, Amiri Baraka Jr., as his chief of staff. In June 2020, Sebrivious Scott, a woman who was hired through a prisoner reentry program, accused Baraka Jr. of silencing her after she raised concerns about being sexually assaulted. 

Scott alleged that she spoke with Baraka Jr. about being sexually assaulted by her boss and about being denied full-time employment for refusing sexual favors, Real Garden State reported. 

Instead of helping, Baraka Jr. allegedly informed Scott that no steps would be taken to address her complaints and said, “Don’t be coming here complaining about discrimination. You should be happy you have a job.”

WATCH: NEWARK MAYOR COMPARES SELF TO BIBLICAL HERO IN WAKE OF ICE PROTEST ARREST: ‘THIS IS OUR DAVID MOMENT’

Scott further claimed that her inquiries about her full-time application were ignored by her supervisors, including Mayor Baraka. Scott claimed numerous men hired through the reentry program obtained full-time positions upon completing the program as she waited.

In a 2020 Facebook post reacting to another user who posted support for Scott along with the Real Garden State article and a comment of “keep your head up cuzzo,” Scott wrote, “Cuzz I’m trying. Just need all the support I can get against these monsters. I’m not afraid.” 

When Fox News Digital reached out for comment, Scott said, “They actually just settled after fighting this since 2018.” However, she declined to go into details of the settlement, citing her lawyer’s advice.

Baraka also hired another brother, Obalaji Jones, as a youth opportunity coordinator who was later accused of sexual assault. In 2017, Dannisha Clyburn, a former City of Newark employee, accused Jones of sexually assaulting her in 2013 and attempted sexual assault in 2015, TapInto Livingston reported.

According to Clyburn, Jones called her into a dark room and inappropriately touched her without her consent at a 2013 political speech by Baraka. She further claimed that Jones attempted to assault her again by calling her into a private room during a children’s event in 2015. 

Clyburn, who previously served time in prison, told the outlet she had been a political supporter of Baraka but came forward because she did not want to see other women victimized. 

“Your brother Obalaji, he’s a whole other monster,” Clyburn posted on Facebook, addressing Baraka directly.

“Your brother, you better get him out of here. He is a predator. He is a menace to our city. And if you know, you taught us best. If you see something, you say something. I learned that from you, Ras Baraka,” Clyburn said, according to Politico’s New Jersey Playbook. “So I’ve seen something, I heard something, and I’m saying something. I’m speaking for every person, every female, every male that can’t come forward and are afraid to come forward.”

Former Newark Councilwoman Gayle Chaneyfield Jenkins, who ran against Baraka for mayor in 2018, accused Baraka’s administration of widespread abuse in which many women were pressured into sexual favors in exchange for jobs, according to a 2018 report from TapInto Newark.

FAR-LEFT MAYOR ARRESTED AT ICE FACILITY DENIES IMPEDING LAW ENFORCEMENT, SAYS PROTEST ‘ABSOLUTELY’ EFFECTIVE

Jenkins said during a council meeting, “I’m not on Team Baraka for a number of reasons, but one of the reasons is their abuse of power. I cannot believe that any of my council colleagues…that none of these women haven’t come up to you and told you what they’ve had to go through as far as having to have sex to get a job, or they’ve been abused, or they’ve been talked about, or they’ve been ridiculed.”

Three years later, a lawsuit filed by a former Newark city employee said that Baraka ignored legislation directing him to appoint an independent task force to investigate claims of sexual harassment brought by Newark employees, according to Chaneyfiled Jenkins in a report from NJ.com.

According to the suit, the legislation created an independent task force to investigate claims brought by Newark employees. The five-member panel was supposed to be appointed by the mayor and include a retired police officer from outside Newark, a clergy member, two members of the public and a final member to be nominated by Rutgers University. However, Baraka never appointed a member to the task force. 

Baraka has also associated himself with alleged abuser Kiburi Tucker, who was arraigned in 1996 in a Newark municipal court on allegations that he sexually assaulted a 15-year-old girl, an archived version of the Star-Ledger reported. 

The girl’s parents filed a complaint, and Tucker was charged with aggravated criminal sexual contact, criminal restraint and endangering the welfare of a child for holding the victim and fondling her body, according to online records reviewed by Fox News Digital. He would end up serving a four-year prison sentence between 1997 and 2001 after pleading guilty to aggravated assault and drug possession charges.

Tucker would later face more legal trouble, which led to him serving a 17-month prison sentence for wire fraud and tax evasion after racking up hundreds of thousands of dollars in expenses for personal use using resources from a childcare nonprofit started by his father. After leaving prison, Tucker told TapInto Newark that Baraka was his “best friend” and that he was “doing a hell of a job.” 

Tucker has remained close to Baraka, as evidenced by several Facebook posts in recent years and months. Tucker, who was reportedly business partners with Baraka’s wife for several years, has posted in support of Baraka’s gubernatorial campaign several times this month and as recently as this week. 

On May 9, Tucker posted several pictures of Baraka and supporters at an event, saying, “Lets go ! Post your V for Victory In Support of Mayor Baraka for Governor!” 

Earlier this week, he also posted a photo that appears to be at a Baraka fundraiser in Cranford, New Jersey.

Baraka’s brother, Amiri, has also remained supportive of Baraka’s run for governor, posting about an upcoming political event just last week. 

In 2022, the mayor also endorsed Louis Weber, a former Newark police officer who was running for city council and was accused of sexual assault by a former female partner. Weber has denied the allegation and was not charged criminally, Politico reported.

“It’s interesting to me that these fabricated stories that are unsubstantiated and built on innuendo are coming out just as the mayor is gaining in popularity and the polls,” Mark Di Ionno, a Newark city spokesman, told Fox News Digital in a statement. 

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Baraka has dominated news headlines in recent weeks after being arrested outside an ICE facility in Newark and ultimately being charged with trespassing.

After a court appearance last week, Baraka told reporters that he was being unfairly targeted.

“We believe that I was targeted in this,” Baraka said. “I was the only person arrested. That’s right. You know, I was the only person identified. I was the only person, you know, they put in a cell. You know, the only person, I think that was in cuffs to the whole process that’s here this morning, going through this humiliation for these people.”

On Monday evening, the charge against Baraka was dropped.

Fox News Digital reached out to Baraka’s gubernatorial campaign, his two brothers, Tucker and Clyburn, and Jenkins but did not receive a response.

Editor in Chief Jamila Robinson talks about a new era of drinking. 

​Editor in Chief Jamila Robinson talks about a new era of drinking. 

Outgoing United States Capitol Police (USCP) Chief J. Thomas Manger has sounded off on President Donald Trump’s pardons of the Jan. 6 defendants – calling the day of the sweeping pardons one of the most troubling moments of his career, according to a report. 

Manger, who will retire later this week, has been a vocal critic of those who participated in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot and lamented Trump pardoning nearly all defendants shortly after his inauguration this year.

He told WTOP “I was angry and as frustrated about that as I’ve ever been professionally.”

TRUMP PARDONS NEARLY ALL JAN. 6 DEFENDANTS ON INAUGURATION DAY

Manger told the outlet that as discouraging as that was, it made him determined to continue to make improvements. “What it made me feel like is somebody’s got to stay here and stand up for these cops,” Manger said.

Manger has served as USCP chief since July 2021 and was hired to rebuild the force and implement reforms to enhance security and preparedness in the wake of the Jan. 6 riot. The more than 100 reform recommendations included expanding intelligence, training and riot-response capabilities.

He has often condemned the attack, referring to it as an “insurrection” and an attack on democracy. Trump has referred to those who were imprisoned as “hostages.” 

“Some people in this country believe January 6 wasn’t that bad,” Manger told WTOP. “My cops know what happened on January 6. They know what happened. They were here.”

Manger’s police career stretches back to 1977, when he started out as an officer with the Fairfax County Police Department in Virginia. He rose to chief of department in 1998 and remained in that role until 2004. Manger became chief of police in Montgomery County, Maryland, in 2004 and held the position until his retirement in 2019. 

US CAPITOL POLICE CHIEF TOM MANGER UPSET COLBERT CREW WAS SPARED

On July 23, 2021, he was appointed chief of the United States Capitol Police, succeeding Acting Chief Yogananda Pittman.

When news broke that the Justice Department had agreed in principle to pay $5 million to the family of Ashli Babbitt, a former Air Force veteran who was shot dead during the Capitol Riot, Manger sent a message to his department’s officers writing that he was “extremely disappointed.”

“In 2021, the DOJ said that there was no evidence to show that law enforcement broke the law. After a thorough investigation, it was determined to be a justified shooting. “This settlement sends a chilling message to law enforcement officers across our nation — especially those who have a protective mission like ours,” Manger wrote, according to the Washington Post.

In December 2022, the USCP were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal — the highest civilian honor bestowed by Congress — for their bravery on Jan. 6, 2021. Manger accepted the honor on behalf of the department.

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The USCP dates back to 1800, when the Congress moved from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C., and a lone watchman, John Golding, was hired to protect the Capitol Building, according to USCP website.

After a number of incidents in 1827 that could have been prevented with sufficient security and surveillance, then President John Quincy Adams asked that a regular Capitol Police force be established. On May 2, 1828, Congress passed an act that expanded the police regulations of the City of Washington to include the Capitol and Capitol Square. It is on this date that the USCP commemorates its founding.

Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., called Russian President Vladimir Putin “crazy,” expressing support for Ukraine and advocating for “Secondary sanctions & arms support NOW.”

“I agree with President Trump, war criminal Putin is crazy. The civilized world will not sit by for Putin’s imperial tantrum at the cost of more children’s lives. Secondary sanctions & arms support NOW. Grateful to stand with Ukraine as they continue to repel this unprovoked INVASION and work for peace in their homeland,” Wilson wrote on X on Monday.

President Donald Trump asserted in a Sunday night Truth Social post that Russian President Vladimir Putin had “gone absolutely CRAZY!” and is “needlessly killing” many people. 

GERMANY’S CHANCELLOR ENDS WEAPONS RANGE LIMITS FOR UKRAINE DESPITE RUSSIAN NUCLEAR THREATS

Trump, who has been aiming to help bring an end to the Russia-Ukraine war, blasted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the post as well, declaring, “Everything out of his mouth causes problems, I don’t like it, and it better stop.”

In a Monday night post on X, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, urged President Trump to act. 

“I’ve had enuf of Putin killing innocent ppl. Pres Trump Take action AT LEAST SANCTIONS,” Grassley said in the post.

GOP LAWMAKER BLASTS ‘DUMB’ TRUMP COMMENT ON ZELENSKYY DESPITE ‘PERFECT’ CRITICISM OF PUTIN

A massive bipartisan coalition of U.S. senators is supporting a proposed sanctions measure. Grassley is an original cosponsor on the Senate measure and Wilson is an original cosponsor on the House edition.

Zelenskyy is also advocating for sanctions.

RUSSIA, UKRAINE SWAP HUNDREDS OF PRISONERS HOURS AFTER MOSCOW LAUNCHES MASSIVE AERIAL ASSAULT

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“New and strong sanctions against Russia — from the United States, from Europe, and from all those around the world who seek peace — will serve as a guaranteed means of forcing Russia not only to cease fire, but also to show respect,” Zelenskyy declared Monday in a post on X.

Politics

Randy Fine Should Resign

The Florida congressman advocated Gaza’s nuclear annihilation. 

Florida Republican Randy Fine, a sitting congressman, called last week for nuclear bombs to be dropped on the people of Gaza.

Fine made the comment on national television after two employees of the Israeli embassy in DC were murdered by a left-wing lunatic, who shouted “free Palestine!” as he was apprehended.

“We nuked the Japanese twice in order to get unconditional surrender,” Fine said during a Fox News interview. “That needs to be the same here.”

After calling for a nuclear assault on a densely-populated territory smaller than Seattle, Fine added, “There is something deeply, deeply wrong with this culture, and it needs to be defeated.” You’d almost think Fine was breaking the fourth wall and telling us there is something “deeply wrong” with his own culture of American ideologues who dehumanize the Palestinians. But no, he was instead referring to the culture of the Palestinians themselves.

As the founder and president of the Catholic apostolate the Vulnerable People Project, I have had the privilege of getting to know first-hand the various cultures of the Holy Land, including the Palestinian Christians in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, the West Bank, and Gaza, as well as their non-Christian neighbors. In my discussions with these people, I have not encountered the view that entire cultures must be annihilated to make more room for themselves. 

No, that disgraceful sentiment belongs to Fine, who describes himself as a “Zionist” and calls pro-Palestinians “demons” who “must be put down by any means necessary.” That statement came in response to the grotesque act of political violence in DC, but Fine was painting with a broad brush.

Before I go on, I first and foremost want to give my own response to the Florida congressman’s recent comments: Rep. Randy Fine is a disgrace, and I am calling on him to resign.

What’s more, if he will not resign, then I call on his colleagues in Congress to force him out.

What Fine proposed last week is a betrayal of what voters turned out in record numbers for last year. The Trump movement, though it shored up Fine’s own vote count considerably, is a movement of peace. A movement of holding the pro-war establishment accountable and wrestling away their power after decades of them cynically using foreign peoples—especially in the Middle East –as their own private chess pieces and as means to their own bizarre military ends rather than as human beings, who ought only ever to be treated as ends in themselves.

The Trump movement drew record numbers of Middle-Eastern voters in particular, including from Palestine. I personally know Palestinian Christian ex-pats who voted for Trump, moved by his advocacy for a ceasefire in Gaza.

After taking office, Trump has reassured those supporters by speaking compassionately about the “suffering” people of Gaza, by telling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to his face “you got to be good to Gaza,” and by pressuring Israel to open up corridors for humanitarian aid.

The Trump movement, in fact, has much more in common with the best representatives of the “free Palestine movement” that Fine wants “put down” than with his own mass-murderous brand of “Zionism.”

MAGA is based, to an extent, on a basic degree of human solidarity with the vulnerable. At the very outset of Trump’s career in national politics, he spoke often of the “forgotten men and women of America,” showing compassion for those whom the old ruling class had ignored for decades.

So, it was no surprise that Trump—and his movement more broadly—would later show the same compassion for the victims of the U.S. foreign policy establishment’s many cynical wars.

Increasingly, that includes compassion for the victims in Gaza—half of them under the age of eighteen—who are starving and wasting away behind an Israel-imposed blockade on lifesaving medicine and food.

And what about their culture? My friend Khalil Sayegh, a Palestinian Christian, represents it well, and he resists the temptation to demonize and dehumanize members of other tribes. “The attack on the Jewish museum yesterday in Washington is a despicable act of violence,” he stated after the murder of those two Israeli embassy employees. Sayegh continued:

It brings shame to the “Free Palestine movement” if someone associated with it commits a random murder while shouting its slogans. There must be self-reflection, and a clear condemnation. 

My deepest sympathy to our Jewish neighbors in DC. We love you, support you, and stand with you. We will never accept the name of our cause being used to attack your spaces or harm your people.

That is a Palestinian Christian’s response to the same event that occasioned Fine’s deranged rant.

American Christians should take note: The culture Fine referred to as having something “deeply” wrong with it is the culture of the people of the Holy Land, including Christians directly descended from the Jews who first accepted Jesus and received the Holy Spirit.

That’s the culture that gave birth to much of what sets the West, and the United States, apart. It’s the culture of the Gospel, which proclaims the inviolable dignity of every human being as made in the Image and Likeness of God. Or, as our Declaration of Independence put it: “all men are created equal” before “Nature’s God” with “certain unalienable rights.”

And it’s the same culture that eventually gave rise to the Trump movement, with its respect for the common man and for the victims of U.S. aggression abroad. If Fine finds something “deeply wrong” with it, then, again, he should show himself the door. And again, if he won’t, Trump and his supporters should show him out ourselves.

The post Randy Fine Should Resign appeared first on The American Conservative.

Books

Parent Power Versus Big Tech

Social media and smartphones have changed everything about being a kid. The Tech Exit explains how to reverse course.

The Tech Exit: A Practical Guide to Freeing Kids and Teens from Smartphones,
By Clare Morell, Forum Books,
pp. 256, $27.00

At this point in history, screen time for children can be considered “Lindy”—it has been done for a long time and seems to have staying power. The baby boomers tuned into Captain Kangaroo on weekday mornings. Gen Xers munched on cereal while watching The Electric Company. Millennials even learned a little bit of Spanish from Dora the Explorer. But somewhere along the way, screens—and our relationships with them—changed. It’s this change that inspired Clare Morell to write her debut book, The Tech Exit: A Practical Guide to Freeing Kids and Teens from Smartphones.

Morell, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, hasn’t always been a denizen of the ivory tower. Before joining EPPC, she worked at the Department of Justice’s Office on Violence Against Women. Before that, she worked in Guatemala, trying to improve the justice system for children who were victims of the worst crimes imaginable. She’s seen the dark side of the internet, and she doesn’t want her fellow parents to be fooled by ineffective online pornography blockers or Instagram’s supposedly safe teen accounts.

But The Tech Exit goes beyond the moral panic that pedophiles lurk around every digital corner. Through countless interviews with families from across the United States, Morell shows that smartphones and social media don’t just put kids in physical danger. They’ve changed everything about how children learn and socialize, and the negative effects on tweens’ and teens’ mental health have been enormous. When every school desk comes with a laptop and every friend group comes with a group chat, families can’t opt out of screens—or can they?

“Phones have reoriented kids’ greatest aspirations from a higher purpose to a cul-de-sac of self-involvement. Technology is habituating our children to lives of endless consumption,” Morell writes. “As parents, our job is to consider what is forming our children and to manage what they are being formed into. Every time we hand our children a screen, technology answers that question for us.”

Fortunately, per Morell, parents have more power than they think. She educates parents about online dangers they may not be aware of, from sextortion to cyberbullying, but she doesn’t just leave them with a list of “thou shalt nots.” Using the acronym FEAST, Morell shares a positive plan for families to exit tech (FEAST stands for Find Other Families; Explain, Educate, and Exemplify; Adopt Alternatives; Set Up Digital Accountability and Family Screen Rules; Trade Screens for Real-Life Responsibilities and Pursuits). It turns out that The Benedict Option for childhood technology use is the only option—Morell compares giving kids limited social media access to the harm reduction model of drug use. Even 15 minutes a day is too much, according to her research.

Morell is aware that her plan will strike many parents as impossible—after all, she takes an even stricter stance than author of The Anxious Generation Jonathan Haidt, to whose work she responds. That’s why she humbly and non-judgmentally lays out the stakes. Today’s children are more likely than ever before to be exposed to disturbing, violent, and/or sexual material. Haidt’s thesis, which has attracted much criticism, is that smartphones are making children more depressed, anxious, and lonely. Morell largely assumes that her reader has already bought into this thesis (she is much less concerned with showing graphs of kids’ porn use and sleep deprivation than Haidt). Knowing that a parent who has picked up The Tech Exit is a parent who is already concerned about these issues, she doesn’t waste time trying to convince the reader that the kids are not all right. She details the deaths of Nylah Anderson, a 10-year-old who accidentally killed herself after watching a TikTok video about the dangerous “blackout challenge,” and Walker Montgomery, a 16-year-old who committed suicide after being sextorted by an account posing as a teenage girl. The accounts are hard to read. Also hard to read are the firsthand accounts from parents of feeling like they “lost” their child to social media and video game addictions. But the families Morell talks to always get a happy ending—parents push through the tantrums from their children as they put them through screen detoxes. The children eventually get used to the new normal and are able to thrive.

Morell isn’t numb to the concerns of children and teens who will be “different” if they don’t have access to the same technology as their peers. “Your kid can’t be the only one,” Morell writes. “Children need friends who also aren’t on screens. And parents need to help their kids find those friends. When parents start coordinating with other parents to resist phones, the kids without phones naturally gravitate toward one another because they talk about in-person things.” Not having a smartphone is probably hardest for high-schoolers, who are often expected to log in to apps for homework and sports practice updates, but this isn’t a reason to cave, according to the parents whom Morell interviews. “If a ‘friend’ is so shallow that because you are not on the group text or social media chat, then you are dead to them and they won’t reach out separately to make sure you know about the social event, then that’s not a true friend,” one father says in the book. It’s the kind of lesson we all have to learn sooner or later.

The high-schoolers in the families Morell interviews aren’t totally tech-free. They shop for clothes online. They text with friends using so-called dumbphones. (Morell shares a list of non-smartphone alternatives in the appendix.) They watch movies with family and friends. Most importantly, they do buy into their parents’ ideas about protecting them from the internet (the “E” in FEAST). Sometimes the kids bellyache about the various hardships that come with being low-tech. But some of them even eschew smartphones as college students when they’re no longer bound by their families’ rules.

It’s almost incomprehensible how much of an advantage these Tech Exit kids will have in college and beyond. Their attention spans haven’t been ruined by TikTok. They’re entrepreneurial and well read. They have social skills and are comfortable interacting with adults. It’s a huge contrast from the innumerable headlines about the sorry state of college students today (many of whom can’t read entire books or complete a homework assignment without the help of artificial intelligence). It’s almost as if these Tech Exit kids will have bigger, better brains just by virtue of the fact they lived like the kids of the 1970s, not the 2010s. Is the issue really that simple? Could Morell’s thesis be the missing piece to raising happy, healthy kids?

Tech Exit families will still face hardships. Teen angst will arrive, whether a child has access to Snapchat or not. Children disobey, lie, and whine. Parents get things wrong. But eliminating tech eliminates such a web of horrors from a child’s life that it’s clearly worth it. Saying no to smartphones is saying yes to creativity, self-control, real-world experience—to “human flourishing,” as Morell writes. The alternative is grim. In the hit television series The White Lotus, one of season one’s main characters is a screen-addicted, friendless teen named Quinn. He’s staying at a gorgeous luxury resort in Hawaii—but when his iPhone and tablet are ruined by the ocean, so is his stay. He skulks around and convinces his dad to give him his phone so he’s not disconnected from his digital dopamine delivery system. Despite the beauty of the nature around him and the amazing activities available at the resort, Quinn is laser-focused on his devices. His character is presented as a weirdo in the show, but that’s the thing—Quinn doesn’t represent an outlier among American kids. Yet it’s never too late for any kid, even Quinn. Eventually, he realizes he’s ready to leave the screens behind and join the real world.

The so-called real world, that is. Internet reporters like writer Katherine Dee are right to point out that the lines between digital and corporeal are blurring, and that for whatever we’re losing, we’re gaining something too. The internet has enabled parents to earn a living without leaving their living rooms. It’s created marriages, friendships, and mom groups. Even so, some adults, including parents, are choosing to deactivate their social media accounts and get rid of their smartphones. (“How quitting social media saved my motherhood” and “This Brick Gave Me My Life Back (From My Phone)” are both posts written by parents in the burgeoning I-quit-tech-for-good-but-still-write-email-newsletters genre of Substack.) Using a dumbphone is not something Morell says Tech Exit parents have to do, but it’s the path she’s chosen for herself. She encourages as little screen use as possible for parents as well as children, giving examples of moms and dads who always opt for analog options (calculators, notepads, alarm clocks) and don’t have social media on their phones. But for the many parents who need to stay constantly connected for work via Slack, Teams, and a plethora of other apps, Morell does have a hopeful message: 

Far and above everything else a parent does when it comes to their own tech use, though, is simply putting their phone down and giving their children time and attention. Remember, they are watching us all the time. We are their models for everything, including tech use. Our children will value what we value. Let’s show them we value people more than phones.

Parents are only one piece of the puzzle—lawmakers need to step up and protect children too, Morell writes. The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) of 1998 has failed, so she advocates for raising the age of “internet adulthood” (right now it’s 13) and giving age restriction policies real teeth, including for adult websites. Morell wants every state to have laws like Utah’s 2024 legislation requiring all devices belonging to minors automatically turn on adult content filters (“a phone user already has to enter their birth date to create an Apple or Google Account,” she explains). She wants to amend Section 230 so that social media companies actually take the removal of child sexual abuse material seriously.

Of course, Big Tech has an army of lobbyists who will fight to block all of these measures. None of these reforms will happen without parents pushing for them. Morell highlights moms like Julie Scelfo of Mothers Against Media Addiction (MAMA), Melanie Hempe of ScreenStrong, and the UK politico Miriam Cates. “Parents, we have to make noise for policymakers to hear us. Don’t take no for an answer. Don’t be afraid to open your mouth. It doesn’t need to be polished, and honestly, it’s best when it’s not,” Morell writes in a section titled “Just Be the Awkward Mom.” Mothers are banding together to make our nation’s food supply healthier and safer. Why not the internet? The dangers of the infinite scroll are harder to trace than those of glyphosate and Red 40, yet they’re just as real and much, much more contagious. 

“Social media use by even a few children in a school or organization creates a ‘network effect,’ so even those who do not use social media are affected by how it changes the entire social environment,” Morell wrote in The American Conservative in 2023. Some school boards have recognized this network effect and banned phones altogether—students can’t use their phones in classrooms, at their lockers, or in the lunchroom. If students break the rules, teachers confiscate their devices until the end of the school day. “Marc Wasko, the principal of Timber Creek High School in Orange County, which has 3,600 students, finds the policy has made a night-and-day difference. They saw a lot of bullying before… [S]tudents now look him in the eye and respond when he greets them. Teachers have remarked how students are more engaged during class time,” Morell writes. 

But public schools with such policies are rare. If there’s any way that The Tech Exit falls short, it’s by understating just how countercultural it is to give your kids a low-tech childhood. Unless a family has access to a rare public school system that bans phones, their best options are homeschooling or private school, both of which are costly. Morell points out in that same 2023 article that there is a “screen-time disparity” between lower income families and high-income families. Children from lower-income families spend about two hours more a day on screens than children from high-income families, according to one survey. This divide is only going to grow as more people learn more about the negative effects of screen time not only for children but for everyone. As X user @coldhealing put it, “In [less than] 10 years we’ll see screen time the same way we do food now. It will be a status symbol of the elite to consume less, and of a higher quality, while the poor gorge themselves on cheetos and AI-generated short-form vertical video.” 

Parents and policymakers who read The Tech Exit can consider themselves warned. It’s for good reason that Morell compares taming tech to battling a hydra. But she always brings her point back to the goal of exiting tech: creating a happy, healthy family life. The importance of that goal will never change, no matter how much our technology does.

The post Parent Power Versus Big Tech appeared first on The American Conservative.

Books

A New Book for an Old Problem

Louise Perry correctly identifies what is wrong with our sexual economy, but does not take the next, obvious step.

(Tada Images/Shutterstock)

A New Guide to Sex in the 21st Century by Louise Perry. Polity, 176 pages.

The birth of my daughter radicalized me. Stereotypes of the next generation of young women as liberal and lonely, sexually liberated yet secretly miserable, were once just numbers. Now they wear a precious, familiar face. While the challenge of raising sons in the 21st century is not to be glossed over, the challenge of raising daughters is unique and distinct, particularly in the wake of the sexual revolution. Young women today have everything they once demanded—jobs, money, stigma-free sex, and dishwashers to boot—yet have found themselves not more fulfilled, but less. 

In her 2022 book The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, Louise Perry argued that the so-called sexual freedom of the 21st century has benefitted a few powerful men at the expense of most women, who find themselves spiritually impoverished by the liberal feminist approach to sex. Liberalism’s toothless response to rape and sexual abuse (consent!), the pornified minefield of casual sex, and especially the breakdown of traditional marriage have served only to make women less happy, not more free. In other words, the sexual revolution really was terrible for women, and those who pretend otherwise are foolish. A New Guide to Sex in the 21st Century, Perry’s young adult edition of The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, applies these lessons to practical scenarios for girls who wish to escape the debased culture of Tinder and OnlyFans but don’t know how. 

“Instead of asking ‘how can we all be free?’” as feminism did, “we must ask instead, ‘how can we best promote the wellbeing of both men and women, given that these two groups have different sets of interests, which are sometimes in tension?’” Perry writes. Or, put another way, what should mothers teach their daughters about sex, love, and marriage, since clearly, the liberal feminist line isn’t cutting it? 

While reading, I asked myself: Would I give this book to my daughter? 

Perry’s advice for young women is, by her own characterization, mostly the sort of thing her grandmother would have said. It is advice that should be painfully obvious, yet has not been taught to a majority of the last two generations of young women. She calls consent workshops “mostly useless” for preventing rape, scorns dating apps for lacking the built-in vetting of mutual friends, and asserts, somewhat provocatively, that a woman should “only have sex with a man [she thinks] would make a good father to [her] children.” Not because she actually wants him to father her children, interestingly, but because this is an effective rule of thumb. (The reader, surely, can surmise why.)

Pornography and casual sex occupy much of Perry’s treatment as key sources of female misery in the modern sexual landscape. Engagement in both is lauded by feminists as anti-patriarchal, yet it gratifies lustful men and degrades women: “The Hugh Hefners of the world are not threatened by ‘sexually liberated’ women,” Perry writes. “Quite the opposite, in fact. They are delighted to find themselves with a buffet of young women to feast on, all of them apparently willing to suffer mistreatment without complaint.” 

Sociology, of course, has been demonstrating this point for decades. Women naturally look for “identical qualities” in a hookup as in a husband, while men look for just the opposite, having low standards for casual sex and high ones for a spouse, Perry reports. While female biology is predisposed to be selective in sexual intimacy, male biology is the opposite. Perry attributes this intelligent design to evolutionary biology: Men cannot have babies. The effects on women in an era of sexual disenchantment are wretched. A woman who allows herself to be a casual partner will rarely be considered “marriage material” by the same man. If she gives it away for free—and everyone is telling her she must give it away, because it’s just sex—he will not simply grow to respect her later.

This is why, Perry argues, the traditional institution of marriage actually served women’s interests, balancing them against men’s natural physical dominance and freedom from the physical work of childbearing. Indeed, it is on the subject of marriage that Perry is at her most interesting. The advice only to sleep with a man whom you could respect enough to father your children dovetails with a pro-child approach to sexual politics, and not accidentally; Perry quite consciously reminds her reader that sex and children are inherently bound for women, contraceptives notwithstanding. These days, this is not as obvious as it should be: Young women reflexively separate romance from children, and are then perplexed when the long-term live-in boyfriend is indifferent to their personal quests for offspring. Female happiness requires sex and children to be made a package deal for men too, Perry argues.

Childbearing saves women not once but twice in Perry’s treatment. The second instance is in her revelation of where young women should turn for good advice, contra the secular rot: mothers.

“Feminism has a blind spot when it comes to motherhood,” Perry writes. “It has shut mothers out. That’s important, given that at least three-quarters of women become mothers.” And again: “It’s no coincidence that most of the feminists who opposed marriage never had children.” Perry does not mention Mary Wollestonecraft’s own gnarled relationship with motherhood and marriage, but the fact that the founder of feminism chased the father of her illegitimate child around Europe, so desperate for his approval that she twice attempted suicide, and was still ultimately rejected by him, seems relevant.

In the spirit of restoring motherhood to its rightful place of honor, Perry calls her advice what “most mothers would tell their daughters, if only they were willing to listen.” This raises a painful question: Why are daughters not willing to listen? More to the point, if they would not listen to their own mothers, would they listen to Louise? Perry anticipates this problem. She knows the real matriarchs in a young woman’s life are the women walking with them in daily struggles. Girls become women by mimesis—imitation. Whether they know it or not, Gen Z women are already imitating certain matriarchs; Perry’s goal is to encourage them to choose good ones. 

Perry is not a Christian, and she explicitly rejects traditionalism, the idea that a solution for our modern problems may be found by reinstating older ways of living. This leads to a muddled conclusion: Feminism needs to revive the nuclear family and the traditional role of the matriarch as model and teacher to young women, yet without rejecting certain post-’60s talismans, especially pre-marital sex and gay marriage.

Perry is right that young women should reject liberal feminism. But what she seeks to replace it with—a half-hearted endorsement of the wisdom of previous ages, cautiously dosed with assurances of pardon for modernity—is depressingly thin gruel. True, we cannot go backwards, and the past had its own issues that rival those of the present, yet the cure for liberal feminism cannot be simply a moderate version of the same. 

What is needed is not a softer feminism, but something entirely different: the sturdy love of real, Christian matriarchs. The solution to the sexual revolution is not a new book for daughters, but old virtues for mothers.

The post A New Book for an Old Problem appeared first on The American Conservative.

This towering salad—built with the components of a muffuletta sandwich like mortadella and an olive dressing—is ready for a party. 

​This towering salad—built with the components of a muffuletta sandwich like mortadella and an olive dressing—is ready for a party. 

With elderflower liqueur, mint, and prosecco, the effervescent Hugo spritz cocktail is a hit year round, but particularly on warm nights. 

​With elderflower liqueur, mint, and prosecco, the effervescent Hugo spritz cocktail is a hit year round, but particularly on warm nights.