In speaking to the press recently, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell finally admitted that inflation is on the rise. But then he let himself off the hook by blaming “transient factors,” which is Fed-speak for, “it’s not our fault and it won’t last long.” Powell's comment is an almost perfect inversion of the truth. 
 
The factors which suppressed inflation last year are the transient, that is short-lasting, ones. When you shut down the stores, people stop buying stuff, temporarily forcing prices to drop. Temporarily. What drives long-term inflation is when the government does lots of spending and lots of borrowing and the Fed “prints” the money to finance it. And that has been happening at a jaw-dropping rate. 
 
What we can reasonably expect is that a temporary price suppression from the shutdowns will give way to the more long-lasting effects of spend, borrow, print, inflate, repeat. 
 
That’s why inflation hedges are doing so well. Investors know that if the Fed isn’t worried about inflation, consumers should be. 
 

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Americans might be forgiven for assuming that the American Federation of Teachers—the AFT—had some interest in the welfare of children, and the CDC existed to offer trustworthy, unbiased scientific guidance.

Apparently not. 

In fact, it’s been revealed that the CDC actually changed its official school reopening guidelines in response to AFT demands. It’s worth mentioning that Randi Weingarten, the AFT’s president, is a major Biden supporter.

The entire episode is a disgrace. 

Our children need to be back at school—living normal lives with their friends, not languishing in isolation behind screens.

Even by the fall of last year, math performance in third to eighth graders was 5 to 10 points lower than it was a year before. And a Harvard study found that two-thirds of the children studied were anxious and depressed, compared with only 30 percent before the pandemic.

The CDC and the AFT have played politics with our children’s lives. Shame on them.

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At the end of his life in 2015, commenting on the state of religious liberty, Archbishop of Chicago, Francis Cardinal George said, “I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square. His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the church has done so often in human history.”

That sort of succession is in process. It took the U.S. Supreme Court to redress some of the more grievous and unconstitutional abuses of enthusiastic lockdown politicians during the pandemic.

The rest of the West is in even worse shape. Recently, a longtime evangelical pastor in north London was arrested outside of a transit station for the crime of preaching a traditional understanding of men, women and families with Genesis 1 as his text.

Americans should be thankful for our 1st Amendment protections … thankful but not complacent. 

In our nation, private actors are doing well at limiting free expression.  

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If there’s anything the Democrats and the left want you to know these days, it’s that they hate racism. In fact, they tell us, the biggest problem facing America is … wait for it … we are marked by white supremacy.

That’s what made their recent behavior so hypocritical and disheartening. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, an African American, was chosen to provide the Republican response to President Biden’s joint address to Congress. In doing so, Senator Scott minced no words. He said that America was not a racist country, and he defended Georgia’s voter integrity law.

Predictably, the left went wild—because a black man dared to stray from Democratic orthodoxy. The term “Uncle Tim”—an ugly play on the racist epithet “Uncle Tom”—trended on Twitter. Worse yet, a Democratic Party official in Texas called Scott an “oreo”—referring to a black person perceived to display characteristics of a white person.

This is where the race-baiting bred by critical race theory leads us. Americans of both parties—and no party at all—deserve better.

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This is Ed Morrissey of HotAir.com for Townhall.

Imagine a Catholic priest blessing couples cohabiting rather than marrying, or polyamorous households, or any other relationship rather than sacramental marriage. That might sound laughable to people inside and outside of the Catholic Church, but that concept might become a reality in Germany next week.

Priests and lay ministers plan to conduct public blessings of same-sex relationships, defying an edict to cease from Pope Francis and the Vatican. This activism has no basis in Catholic teaching, but instead is intended to pander to popular opinion—and tax revenue, which German churches receive based on affiliation.

This has serious ramifications outside of the Catholic Church. The Vatican has remained firm on its core teachings on marriage and abortion, one of the few global institutions to resist a wave of relativist reconstruction of truth and scripture. A German assault on the integrity and authority of the Catholic Church will damage everyone who works to spread the truth of the Gospel.

I’m Ed Morrissey.

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On May the 1st this year, Marxists and socialists in the United States celebrated their International Worker’s holiday, complete with marches in Chicago, Los Angeles and other big cities—focusing on grievances surrounding issues of police brutality, immigration, and income inequality.

These marches remind us that positive feelings toward Marxist socialism are at an all-time high in our country. They shouldn’t be. Although almost all of us know of the horrors inflicted by Nazis, too few Americans realize Marxist socialism is history’s deadliest ideology. It caused some 100 million deaths through executions, man-made hunger, famine, war, deportations and forced labor.

It’s right that we commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day. It stands as a reminder of the dangers of anti-Semitism and radical nationalism. But May 1 should likewise be marked as Victims of Communism Day—so we always remember the dangers of leftist tyranny, and the misery that results when we hand our God-given rights over to government control.

I’m Carol Platt Liebau.

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Every year, publicly traded companies are required by law to hold a meeting of their shareholders. Members of the board are elected, and various resolutions are voted on. In addition, management takes questions from the company’s owners—the shareholders. I’ve attended half a dozen shareholder meetings in recent days and have been asking corporations about their endorsements of The Equality Act—a bill that would severely weaken the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. So far, every company has refused to answer my question. In the case of several—Exelon, Cigna and Corning—meeting organizers seemed to have implied that all questions had already been taken. 
 
Shareholders are the final line of accountability when CEOs stray from their day job into polarized politics. You probably own a lot of these companies in your retirement account. Annual Meeting season is just getting started, and they are typically online this year. 

You have a right to attend. 

You have a right to ask questions. 

It’s time to show up. Believe me, they’ll notice.

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The first third of the year has ended. It’s not too soon to size up the game for the Republican presidential hopefuls down the road in 2024.

I call it Season 1 in “The Hunt for Red November.”

Here are five leaders I have in “Tier 1”:

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has used his time well leading what’s been dubbed the “Free State of Florida.” 

We have a pair of “formers”—former secretary of state Mike Pompeo and former New Jersey governor Chris Christie—both have niches on television networks that give them visibility. 

Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton will be a serious, well-versed contender with high visibility in the Senate.

And then—just last week—South Carolina Senator Tim Scott delivered a beautifully written response to President Biden’s address to Congress.

He was immediately met with an avalanche of invective—pushing him into my “Tier 1,” as it did for many Republicans.

It’s still early in the first quarter of a long game, but it’s starting to take shape … and the GOP has a lot of talent. 

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Northern Virginia has been called the “Silicon Valley” of the East—but don’t expect that moniker to last much longer. In the name of “equity,” the state is considering changes that could leave students unable to take advanced math classes until junior year of high school. 

Papers by a national association for math teachers, shared by the Virginia education department, read as follows: “Those that have been privileged by the current system must be willing to give up that privilege for more equitable schooling.” And members of the group charged with rethinking the state math curriculum admit one of their goals is addressing “inequities” in math education. 

While Virginia flirts with social justice, American students rank a mediocre 30th in math in the latest scores from the Program for International Student Assessment. China’s students came in first. 

If America intends to compete in the future, it’s long past time for Virginia to worry less about equity—and more about excellence. 

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The confrontation with China over Taiwan approaches—and the Biden administration must make its position clear.

Reasonable people disagree on when China and its leader Xi Jinping will move militarily against Taiwan, but few doubt Xi’s ambitions.

Whenever it takes place, aggression against Taiwan will pose the same dilemma to the West as did Hitler’s militarization of the Rhineland to the Allies in 1936. Western democracies blinked 85 years ago, and war engulfed the world shortly thereafter. 

Threat followed threat, demand followed demand, and the policy of appeasement of Germany failed. 

What happened next then was a catastrophe.

Whenever China moves, the United States and its allies will face a sudden, inescapable choice: Defend Taiwan or acquiesce.

Thus far, team Biden has sent only a tremulous message from a confused administration. 

This is not the time for diplomatic pirouettes or ambiguity. It’s a time for clarity. Its absence sends every signal the Chinese Communist Party needs.

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