July 2, 2026

Photo credit: Chip Somodevilla / Staff / Getty Images News via Getty Images

Earlier this week, the Supreme Court ruled in West Virginia v. B.P.J., and Little v. Hecox that schools can reserve women’s and girls’ sports for biological females.

The cases concern laws in West Virginia and Idaho that prevented males from joining female athletic teams. The states pointed to Title IX, which exists to preserve opportunity, fairness, and safety. The plaintiffs, meantime, argued that the states should consider whether a certain athlete indeed has any male advantage—and because puberty blockers suppress testosterone early, they maintained, trans athletes shouldn’t be excluded in the first place.

But boys experience a brief surge of testosterone as early as infancy, which influences body composition later on, Colin Wright points out. “By school age, boys already tend to have more lean mass, less fat, larger hearts, and greater lung capacity,” he writes. “These differences are not ‘stereotypes.’ They are physical traits directly relevant to sport.”

Further, asking judges to weigh in on the effects of puberty blockers for every single athlete would be next to impossible, the Court ruled. “The point of a sex category is to draw a clear line,” Wright argues. “The more we blur that line, the less it can serve the women and girls it was created to protect.”

Read more about the cases.

Back in 2016, the Labor Community Strategy Center filed a civil rights complaint alleging that L.A. Metro was targeting black riders. it claimed that black riders received at least half of all citations despite making up less than 20 percent of overall riders.

The following year, L.A. Metro approved a plan that shifted more than half of the county sheriff’s department’s duties to the Los Angeles and Long Beach police departments. L.A. Metro took over fare enforcement, which fell from between 500,000 and 1,000,000 fare checks per month under the sheriff’s department to about 5,000 per month in 2025.

With fares essentially free, crime has exploded. Since Metro took over fare enforcement in 2017, battery and aggravated assaults have both increased by more than 100 percent, while narcotics offenses are up more than 800 percent.

“The system is a hellscape drenched in human feces, where riders are subject to verbal or physical threats, open needles, and screaming homeless people,” Christopher F. Rufo and Haley Strack write. “Hundreds of thousands of people must contend with the system every day—including some who have been brutalized on buses, trains, and platforms.”

Read more about the failed transit system.

CNN Chief White House Correspondent Kaitlan Collins took President Trump to task last week for calling the Democratic Socialists of America “communists.” She claimed that “socialism, much less democratic socialism, is not communism.”

Collins and the other media figures criticizing the president might want to brush up on Stu Smith’s reporting. “To dismiss the DSA as simply ‘not Communism,’ as Collins does, is wrong,” maintains Smith. “Members with Communist political tendencies now significantly shape the DSA’s leadership.” 

“Media figures who reflexively criticize Trump’s rhetoric on the DSA should look into the organization’s evolution,” Smith continues. “Its leadership is increasingly dominated by individuals who openly identify as Communists, Marxists, or Marxist-Leninists.”

Canada is facing a “brain drain,” with many educated professionals fleeing to the U.S. to escape high taxes and secure better employment opportunities. Yet former Google Chief Financial Officer Patrick Pichette—himself a Canadian expatriate—says Canadians who leave for the U.S. should pay a $500,000 “exit penalty.”

Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Steven Malanga argues that Pichette’s solution treats the symptom rather than the cause. Canada already imposes a departure tax on unrealized capital gains when residents emigrate; expanding it would further discourage talent instead of addressing the policies driving skilled workers away.

“Research suggests the country’s emigration problem arises from Canada’s heavy tax and regulatory regimes, which stifle innovation and economic growth,” Malanga said. “For the past 20 years, per capita GDP in Canada has averaged well below 1 percent a year. Wages have stagnated, even for the talented.”

And still some Canadians, like Pichette, want even higher taxes.

Read more here.