Well, it’s a difficult question for California.

Two assembly Democrats have introduced bills that would allow California to fund shelters that require sobriety, which is against state law. California’s current homelessness regime is considered a “housing first” plan, which means homeless people get housing with no strings attached, but only if they want it, and with no further incentive to get them into housing or treatment programs if they refuse.

Is it really a surprise that California’s homelessness crisis, already easily the worst in the nation, has only grown worse year by year?

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Now, it seems that even some Democratic legislators in the Golden State recognize that making a dent in the homelessness crisis by any means necessary is much better than its current pie-in-the-sky attitude. It isn’t quite the realization that sobriety-focused housing would be better for dealing with rampant fentanyl overdose deaths, but hey, you can’t lead California to water and make it manage it in a responsible way. It is a miracle that California is even considering breaking the grip of ideological homeless “advocacy” groups. Consider it a small step in the right direction.

On the bright side, it is hard to see California’s homelessness policy getting worse. Between the billions spent for no progress and the various scam projects the state has fallen for, the status quo may just be the lowest the state could go. The fact that California is having this debate at all is a step in the right direction. Now, let’s see if it can finally make a good decision.

The NFL announced that Netflix will be exclusively airing the league’s Christmas games for the next three years, adding another service that fans will have to subscribe to if they want to watch games. There are six television channels that have NFL games: ABC, CBS, ESPN, Fox, NBC, and NFL Network. There are also now four separate streaming services that carry exclusive games, including prime-time and playoff games: Amazon Prime Video, ESPN+, NBC’s Peacock, and now Netflix.

This issue is plaguing more than just NFL fans. Multiple college football games are exclusively on Peacock. Major League Baseball’s blackout rules have not been helped by turning to streaming services. ESPN has paywalled several leagues and games on ESPN+, including hockey, soccer, mixed martial arts, and boxing. The latter two also sometimes require a pay-per-view fee on top of your streaming subscription, with boxing also being spread out across multiple services.

That pay-per-view model is effectively being offered to NFL fans as well who do not have subscriptions to those aforementioned streaming services, and everyone knows it. That is why NBC Sports President Rick Cordella tried to dismiss association with that term. That is what it will be though, especially in the cases of Peacock ($5.99 a month with ads), Netflix ($6.99 a month with ads or $15.49 a month without), and ESPN+ ($10.99 a month with ads), which do not have a weekly offering as Prime Video ($8.99 a month) does with Thursday Night Football.

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This fracturing of sports broadcasts into multiple separate streaming services adds even more of a burden for fans with the increased costs behind multiple other subscriptions to which many weren’t subscribed. NBC’s pay-per-view playoff game on Peacock is a prime example, and the NFL slapping Christmas games on Netflix shows that the league is keen to continue banking major broadcast deals with streaming services for exclusive games.

Regardless of how you want to spin this, it is going to result in fewer games for fans who are being forced to budget time and money toward all of these separate services across multiple sports. Fans are going to be the ultimate losers, especially as this trend shows no signs of stopping.

The commission was already on shaky ground after the Republican Party announced in 2022 that it would not participate in the commission’s debates, citing the entity’s extreme bias against the GOP. Wednesday’s announcement from the Biden campaign sealed its fate and changed the debate structure for the presidential election for the first time in decades.

Shortly after the letter was released, President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump announced they would participate in two debates: one on CNN at the end of June and another in September to be hosted by ABC. A vice presidential debate will also take place at a to-be-determined date. These are the first debates to be hosted by an entity other than the CPD since the 1984 election debates that featured President Ronald Reagan and Democratic nominee Walter Mondale.

There is nothing lost by spurning the Commission on Presidential Debates. In fact, voters will be far better served by the three debates organized independently between the two campaigns and news networks than they would be by the three CPD debates that typically take place in September and October.

To begin with, Election Day has turned into Election Season. Early voting and absentee voting begin in September in several states before most of the debates have typically taken place. Voters who opt to vote early are then deprived of the opportunity to view the debates before they vote.

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While early voting has been around for some time, the Commission on Presidential Debates has refused to shift the debate calendar to accommodate this change in the voting process for multiple cycles. Furthermore, it has turned the events into media spectacles on college campuses with little benefit to voters while repeatedly selecting debate moderators that have skewed the debate process in favor of the Democratic candidate.

With the commission consigned to irrelevancy for the 2024 cycle and perhaps beyond, the presidential debates will be more transparent and hopefully more substantive than in election cycles past. The candidates and voters will be better served by it.

Democrats are currently freaking out about Kansas City Chiefs placekicker Harrison Butker’s commencement speech at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas.

Butker’s crime? Having the temerity to thank his wife for making his career possible. After congratulating the women in the audience on their “amazing accomplishment,” Butker then guessed that while many of them were looking forward to successful careers, a majority of them were also looking forward to becoming wives and mothers.

“I can tell you that my beautiful wife Isabelle would be the first to say that her life truly started when she began living her vocation as a wife and as a mother,” Butker said.

“It cannot be overstated that all of my success is made possible because a girl I met band class back in middle school,” Butker continued choking back tears, “would convert to the faith, become my wife, and embrace one of the most important titles of all, homemaker.”

For these words, Democrats have started petitions to get him fired, and one sports writer in San Francisco is calling the NFL hypocrites for not treating Butker like Colin Kaepernick was treated.

“After Colin Kaepernick used his platform as an NFL quarterback in 2016 to push a political/ideological agenda that offended a lot of people, the president of the United States the next year told a rally audience what NFL team owners should say to Kaepernick and his ilk,” The San Francisco Chronicle’s Scott Ostler wrote. “And so he was. The San Francisco 49ers told Kaepernick they would not pick up the team option on the final season of his contract.”

Except this is not what happened. Kaepernick “used his platform as an NFL quarterback in 2016 to push a political/ideological agenda that offended a lot of people” for months and literally no one cared. That was the problem.

It was only when Kaepernick decided to dishonor the flag by sitting during the national anthem that people became upset. 

“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” Kaepernick told NFL Media at the time. 

Kaepernick was perfectly free to talk about police violence before, after, or even during the game. If he had kept his statements to press conferences, Twitter, and Instagram he never would have become controversial. It was only his decision to attack the flag during the anthem that made him a household name.

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If Harrison Butker’s Catholic views expressed at a Catholic college offend you, don’t listen to them. And don’t go to a Catholic school. It is a free country. 

But when we come together as a community to honor what binds us together as a nation, don’t disrupt the ceremony. Your opinions can wait until after.

In an interview with ABC News, Zelensky blamed the U.S. and other world powers for the Russian offensive against Ukraine’s northeastern bastion city of Kharkiv. Asked the somewhat odd question as to whether he believed the U.S. was to blame for the Russian offensive, Zelensky responded, “It’s the world’s fault, they gave the opportunity for Putin to occupy. But now the world can help.” Asked about American voter concerns over aid spending, Zelensky argued, “That money is not given to Ukraine. It’s money spent in American factories, creating American jobs. … And we are not just fighting for our freedom. If not Ukraine, it would be another country.” ABC’s reporter referenced Zelensky as having a broader “sense of frustration” in terms of Western support.

Some of that frustration is understandable. That’s especially true when it comes to the failure of Western governments to match the recent U.K. decision to allow Ukraine to use its weapons inside Russia. It’s also obvious that Zelensky laments the Biden administration’s penchant for using media leaks to test reactions over the prospective delivery of new weapons instead of simply delivering them. The problem for Zelensky is that frustration goes both ways. Criticizing America while failing to take responsibility for his own failures, Zelensky undermines the otherwise deeply compelling American interest in providing Ukraine with continued aid.

True, Zelensky has a strong argument when he says that Ukraine deserves support because Russia will threaten America’s NATO allies in Eastern Europe if Ukraine fails. That must not happen. Over a longer-term basis, this threat of expansive Russian aggression is very real. That said, Zelensky’s claim that U.S. aid to Ukraine is being spent in “American factories, creating American jobs” is disingenuous and he knows it. Yes, some U.S. aid is being spent to reconstitute depleted weapons stocks previously sent to Ukraine. But that hardly constitutes a major “made in America” jobs campaign.

Moreover, Zelensky is well aware that the U.S. has sent tens of billions of dollars to Kyiv to support Ukraine’s budget and refugee challenges. The oft-media-referenced Kiel Institute underplays this fact because it is German government funded and wishes to color EU support for Ukraine as excessive in contrast to that of the U.S. (And because, unlike the U.S., the Europeans do not deliver much of that which they pledge.) But even the Kiel Institute provides some insight into how much U.S. aid has gone to Ukraine without benefiting the U.S. economy.

Ignoring this reality rather than simply thanking America for it, Zelensky only risks fueling American antipathy toward Ukraine. Again, whatever one thinks of that antipathy, it is an undeniable reality. This is especially true on the Right. In turn, Zelensky should recognize that fueling antipathy is bad for Ukraine.

The problem is that this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Zelensky’s lack of gratitude. The comedian turned president has variously offended Ukraine’s most resolute partners with his outbursts, including Poland and the U.K. Sometimes his offenses have been gratuitous in their stupidity. The former British defense minister was so frustrated by Zelensky’s lack of gratitude that he once told Ukrainian officials, “I’m not Amazon.” A similar challenge appears when Zelensky complains about NATO accession timeline for Ukraine, failing to recognize that accession is impossible while Ukraine is still at war.

At the same time, Zelensky appears loath to recognize his own failings. For one, his autocratic approach to governing has overly isolated him from effective advice and democratic accountability. Zelensky must also take heavy responsibility for Ukraine’s failure to mobilize sufficient combat troops and ensure leadership accountability from Cabinet ranks down to brigade commanders. And while Ukraine is taking steps to address corruption, these remain inadequate in scale. When a corruption scandal breaks that pertains to misuse of U.S. funds, and eventually it will, Zelensky’s hesitant prior action will weaken his ability to point out that this corruption is the exception rather than the rule. He will thus have fueled Russian propaganda narratives targeting already aid-skeptical U.S. voters and will have undermined Ukraine’s own interests. All because of ego.

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Zelensky should take note of another wartime leader facing fearful odds, Winston Churchill. Zelensky takes a positive example from Churchill’s resolution and deserves great credit for it. But he ignores another of Churchill’s key leadership tenets. Namely, Churchill’s ability to detach his ego from his pursuit of national needs. That allowed Churchill to quickly consolidate American support for the U.K. after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and thus secure the priority defeat of Nazi Germany. If, in December 1941, Churchill had brought Congress his complaints rather than his charm, the U.K. would have suffered for it.

In the same way, Zelensky should recognize his ego is cashing checks that his country cannot afford.

During the Trump years, NATO allies paid up; today, they again stick America with the bill. Two-bit dictators such as Azerbaijan’s Ilham Aliyev mock and belittle American diplomats without fear of consequence. Eritrea continues to imprison an Eritrean employee of the U.S. Embassy. To harass American diplomats serving in Cuba, Cuban agents often kill their family pets.

Turkey provides a case in point about how coercion can trump consultation. Backbone matters.

There is no doubt Turkey is problematic. After two decades of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s strongman rule, Turkey has become a money-laundering hub, the world’s worst prison for journalists, a human rights black hole, and a terrorism sponsor in all but name. Erdogan’s brownshirts assaulted peaceful protestors not only in Ankara but also in Washington, D.C. Erdogan extorted NATO and put the alliance at risk for ego and greed. Ukraine may be the front line of the defense of the free world, but rather than stand firm for Kyiv, Turkey plays both sides.

Turkey’s terrorism sponsorship is problematic. Erdogan may complain about U.S. partnership with Syrian Kurds, but that alliance came about only because Turkey provided aid and sustenance to the Islamic State. More recently, Erdogan has scrambled to become Iran’s coequal in sponsorship of Hamas.

On May 13, Erdogan hosted Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis. After Mitsotakis referred to Hamas as a terrorist group, Erdogan chided him. “If you call Hamas a ‘terrorist organization,’ this would sadden us,” he said. “We don’t deem Hamas a terrorist organization … More than 1,000 members of Hamas are under treatment in hospitals across our country,” Erdogan added.

Put aside the numerous sanctionable lines Erdogan crossed. Diplomatically, Erdogan is an expert hypocrite. He has become so accustomed to Western weakness that he no longer fears Western counterparts seizing the precedents he creates to the West’s advantage and Turkey’s misfortune.

When Erdogan spoke about revising the 1923 Lausanne Treaty that set modern Turkey’s borders, no Western official suggested that might mean Turkey conceding territory to allow the Greek community, ethnically cleansed alongside the Armenians, to return. Had Washington, Athens, and other European states used the opportunity to demand the return of Smyrna, Erdogan might think twice about aggression.

The same holds true for Turkey’s support for statehood in northern Cyprus, a region its army occupies, or for Hamas, a group whose covenant calls for Israel’s eradication. If Erdogan is going to declare Hamas a legitimate insurgent group, why should the State Department not respond by declaring the Kurdistan Workers Party a legitimate organization? The United States could go further by offering PKK members and other Kurds, wounded by Turkey’s drone and jets, free medical care in the U.S. Erdogan might whine and bluster, but a stronger State Department could then simply point the finger back at Erdogan and the precedents he embraced.

A more aggressive diplomatic posture, defined by extreme prickliness and backbone rather than supplication and scoliosis, would pay dividends. The mere mention of relative minor tariffs in response to Erdogan’s seizure of Pastor Andrew Brunson set the Turkish dictator backpedaling in an effort to make amends.

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Effective diplomacy requires the secretary of State to be more pit bull, less golden retriever. His bite should be as bad as his bark; he should not roll on his back with his proverbial tail between his legs.

It is time for a fundamental rethink of American diplomacy. The State Department could begin by labeling not only northern Cyprus occupied, but also eastern Turkey. If Erdogan describes Hamas as the legitimate representative of the Palestinians, then the U.S. should consider the PKK as the legitimate representative of Turkish-occupied Kurdistan. Erdogan is long overdue for a dose of his own medicine.

Michael Rubin is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

Dexter Taylor, a software engineer from Brooklyn, was raided by police and arrested in 2022 after Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzales, the man who pledged to lead “the most progressive D.A.’s office in the country,” brought a 37-count indictment against him. The crime? Taylor was using his skills as a machinist to build his own firearms, specifically firearms that Democrats have nicknamed “ghost guns,” or guns built by nontraditional manufacturers. 

Taylor explained his hobby to conservative commentator Jeff Charles: “I found out that you can actually legally buy a receiver and you can machine that receiver to completion, and you buy your parts and you put them together and you’ve got a pistol or a rifle. And once I saw that, I was hooked. I was like, ‘This is the coolest thing ever. This is the most cool thing you could possibly do in your machine shop.’”

Being a conservative gun owner living in New York, Taylor always had the deck stacked against him. The lawless Left brought the power of the state against Taylor because his firearms lacked licenses required by the state, even though his “crimes” were victimless and, if the Constitution is to be taken seriously, were no crimes at all. Judge Abena Darkeh boldly revealed the Left’s philosophy from the bench, telling Taylor’s attorney, “Do not bring the Second Amendment into this courtroom. It doesn’t exist here. So you can’t argue Second Amendment. This is New York.” 

“This is New York,” indeed. Specifically, the same jurisdiction of New York that hands out remarkably light sentences to violent criminals up to and including killers and child rapists and is currently trying to throw the book at Daniel Penny, a Marine veteran accused of killing a mentally ill man while preventing him from harming innocent civilians on the subway.  

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Dexter Taylor’s legal team will appeal, and there is hope that following a string of pro-Second Amendment rulings by the Supreme Court, his conviction could ultimately be overturned. Part of Taylor’s statement given just before sentencing, which can be read in full here, says, “Let us show them a soldier’s intensity and diplomat’s calm. Let our adversaries find us stern in battle, patient in defeat, and gracious in our ultimate victory, which is certain. In short, when our adversaries look for us, let them find reasonable men and irrational patriots.”

Godspeed, Dexter. Irrational patriots everywhere are praying and rooting for you. 

Brady Leonard (@bradyleonard) is a musician, political strategist, and host of The No Gimmicks Podcast.

The California State University system has offered an example of what exactly should happen. Mike Lee, the president of Sonoma State University, announced that he had cut a deal with antisemitic protesters, agreeing to start an academic boycott of Israel and to work with the antisemitic student group Students for Justice in Palestine as an advisory council on his decision-making.

In other words, Lee went full BDS, embracing and empowering the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement that targets the world’s only Jewish state and does so because that state dares to defend itself from genocidal terrorists. He tried to backtrack on this with a statement when the backlash began, but that only proves him to be incompetent and incapable of understanding what he was doing negotiating with antisemites in the first place.

The CSU system did exactly what it should have, placing Lee on administrative leave for insubordination. He took activist students up on their plans to single out Israel for criticism and sanctions and wanted to give those antisemitic students direct influence over university decision-making in the future on top of relenting to the demands they have no business making, all without the approval of the CSU system.

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The only thing CSU approval would have shown, though, is that the entire system needs to have its leaders replaced along with Lee. Lee proved that he is not capable of leading a university, more so than the other university presidents who negotiated with protesters and ended up with vague promises on votes that their universities can try to brush away at a later date. Insubordination or not, Lee should be removed from his post.

This is an example for every university system of how to handle weak university “leaders” who are eager to please antisemitic students who think the world (and their college) should revolve around them. Just as you don’t negotiate with terrorists, universities should not be negotiating with terrorist-sympathizing, entitled students throwing tantrums on issues about which they understand nothing.

The two leaders did little to hide their disdain for their Western interlocutors. Chinese President Xi Jinping repudiated French President Emmanuel Macron’s recent and rather pathetic encouragement that Xi pressure Putin into ending the war in Ukraine. Instead, Xi and Putin affirmed that while they support a “political solution” to the war, that solution must respect everyone’s security interests. This is coded language for a solution that leads to Russia’s domination over Ukraine’s political sovereignty. That Xi or Putin has any interest in a meaningful negotiated settlement is unserious. The opposite is proved by Russian offensive action targeting Kharkiv and a recent Russian warning that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s “fate is definitely sealed.”

To be fair to Macron, he is bolstering European leadership in Ukraine’s defense. Still, Macron and a significant bloc of the European Union, most notably led by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, continue to deceive themselves that close relations with China are compatible with Europe’s security.

Put simply, Xi is playing the Europeans for fools, gambling that their desperation for short-term economic investment (or, in Scholz’s case, boosted car exports) will motivate them to excuse his enabling of Putin. Xi’s vast sanction-skirting trade flows to Russia and his expanding purchases of Russian energy prove that he wants Putin to win. Putin, after all, is China’s key partner in destabilizing the United States-led alliance structure and creating political space for Beijing’s own agenda.

That agenda is clear: the Chinese Communist Party’s supremacy in global politics. Xi and Putin said Thursday that they seek the “democratization of international relations in an equitable and orderly manner, and unite their efforts to build a just and rational multipolar world.” But Xi actually wants to displace a U.S.-led democratic order based on free trade and democratic rights with a Chinese-led order based on feudal mercantilism. An order, that is to say, in which access to economic growth flows wholly through political submission to Beijing. An order in which democratic sovereignty thus hemorrhages with the need to make ever greater political sacrifices at the CCP altar.

The proof of this geopolitical alignment isn’t measured simply by the Sino-Russian alignment against Ukraine and America. It is measured by the two nations’ common antagonism toward Taiwan, Japan, and the Philippines. China is now threatening war with the Philippines, infuriated by its willingness to defend its exclusive economic zone against utterly ludicrous CCP claims that this zone constitutes Chinese territory. Here, the Sino-Russian alignment bears common teeth. While the Chinese and Russian intelligence services deeply mistrust one another, military-to-military cooperation is leaping forward. Russia’s capable submarine forces are boosting the People’s Liberation Army’s ability to contest the U.S. military, for example.

The threat is also strategic in nature. The risk of Russia launching a simultaneous escalation against NATO in the event of a Chinese attack on Taiwan or the Philippines is also increasing. And because the Europeans have neglected their military capabilities, especially in terms of long-range fires and logistics/air-to-air refuelers, a simultaneous Russian escalation or Taiwan war would feasibly allow for a division of the most finite and capable U.S. military forces between Europe and the Pacific. This underlines why the U.S. must clamor for increased European defense spending and deprioritize allies who fail to provide it now.

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The key here is to recognize what Putin and Xi are actually doing beyond their red-carpet rhetoric. If recognition is paid, those nations that value Ukraine’s sovereignty, Europe’s stability, and the sovereignty and stability of the Indo-Pacific will recognize Xi and Putin aren’t cooperating because they feel like it. Rather, they are doing so because they share fundamentally similar ambitions for the future of the world.

And those ambitions manifestly do not comport with the better interests of free peoples.

The most recent Biden-replacement tinfoil hat delusion comes after the details of the 2024 presidential debates were finalized Wednesday. An article in Townhall.com suggested that the “great Biden replacement switcheroo” still had a slight chance to happen. It all depends on how Biden performs in the debates.

“If Biden soils the sheets in a June debate, that gives Democrats plenty of time to find a new nominee before their convention in August,” the article reads. “If Biden drops out before being officially nominated there is no need for lawsuits to change ballots, it’s all nice and clean.”

It doesn’t take a soothsayer or political genius to know that Biden is not going to perform well in the debates. He has always struggled in this area even when he was operating with significantly better cognitive functions and not repeatedly showing signs of mental decline. Biden struggled to film his social media piece announcing the debate. He struggles daily with stating simple sentences despite often being aided by a teleprompter. Short of wearing a hidden earpiece telling him what to say, Biden is going to “soil the sheets.”

But that still doesn’t mean he is going to be replaced.

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As mentioned above, short of Biden suffering from serious health problems, he will be the nominee. Nothing like the scenario proposed above has even the slightest chance of happening. It’s a ridiculous notion and not at all grounded in reality. Biden is the nominee. It’s done. It’s all but official. Anyone envisioning otherwise is engaging in political onanism.

These conspiracy theories accomplish nothing. They are fanciful myths that do not address the troubling realities plaguing the nation. The Right needs to start being serious instead of engaging in senseless daydreaming. Biden is going to be the 2024 Democratic nominee for the presidential election. From this point forward, anyone who says anything differently should be immediately disqualified from discussing politics and not at all taken seriously.