Month: March 2025

The number of coups, coup attemps and conspiracies to overthrow a government rose substantially around the world since 2021. This is according to data collected by the University of Illinois Cline Center Coup d’État Project. The researchers found between 14 and 16 such events each year recently, up from mostly single-digit results in the 2000s and 2010s. The number of successful coups also rose, hitting seven in 2021 and five in 2024, up from a maximum of four in the previous decades. 

However, as Statista’s Katharina Buchholz reports, the numbers, however, do not surpass earlier counts from the 1960s or 1970s, when an average of 20 coups and attempts per year were the norm, including up to 18 successful ones annually.

 

You will find more infographics at Statista

Coups, attempted coups and conspiracies took part on all continents in 2024, the data shows, and included widely reported government overthrows in Bangladesh, Syria and Haiti. The numbers also include more technical coups that did not cause as much media attention, for example in semi-constitutional monarchies where monarchs and elected officials share power. In May, the emir of Kuwait dissolved the country’s parliament just one month after elections and suspended certain constitutional provisions for four years.

In the three years prior, successful coups in Africa drove up the count, specifically in Gabon, Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad, Guinea, Mali, Sudan and Tunisia. Successful coups also took place in Sri Lanka and Kazakstan in 2022 (the latter classified as an autocoup) as well as Afghanistan and Myanmar in 2021. Attempted coups and conspiracies also repeatedly touched Europe and other developed countries, including last year’s attempt in South Korea (as well as conspiracies in Armenia, Belarus and Ukraine in 2024 and in Moldova in 2023). The events of January 6, 2021, in Washington D.C. are also listed in the database as an attempted coup and the Reichbürger movement arrests in Germany in 2022 as a conspiracy.

Since the end of the Second World War, there have been more than 450 successful coups worldwide. In the 1960s, there were 103 while between 1970 and 1979, there were 95. Previous to 2021, this had dropped considerably to an average of just 22 successful coups per decade since the turn of the millennia. If extrapolated, the current tally would be the equivalent of 38 coups in the current decade – almost double the previous decades’ count.

The question is – after today’s chaos, will we see another one in Ukraine anytime soon?

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

The Oregon Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) resumed automatic voter registrations on Feb. 27, saying it had strengthened the system to prevent the registration of noncitizens.

Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek in October 2024 ordered a pause of the process after an audit discovered some individuals were automatically registered to vote despite not providing proof of U.S. citizenship. Officials later disclosed they’d identified additional individuals, taking the total to about 1,600.

The DMV said it has strengthened its system to minimize the risk of more noncitizens and others who have not provided proof of citizenship being registered. This includes hiring a voter registration integrity analyst and modifying the internal interface, which the agency says will reduce the likelihood of DMV staff selecting the wrong option.

Since the pause was imposed, the DMV has sampled new records and manually compared them with information collected from customers. The DMV said that no new mistaken registrations have been found so far.

“We believe these enhanced processes and permanent system changes, along with DMV’s observations and measurements regarding their effectiveness, provide adequate confidence that data integrity … is sufficient to reinstitute the process,” Deloitte, which the governor hired to review the system, said in a report.

“As a partner to Oregon’s Secretary of State, Oregon DMV is proud of the role it plays in helping U.S. citizens engage in our elections,” Oregon DMV Administrator Amy Joyce said in a statement. “We will continue our work to ensure the Oregon Motor Voter process is more secure and reliable than ever.”

The Oregon Secretary of State’s Office is also trying to prevent noncitizen voter registration.

The office said it has added more steps, including a daily confirmation step.

“The new protections we are adding today will help us catch and fix government data entry errors faster. These are first steps, focused on getting the fundamentals right. I will continue to dig into the system and take action whenever I can to strengthen our voter rolls and prevent future mistakes. Our highest priority is – and must always be – protecting the integrity of Oregonians’ fair, secure, and accessible elections,” Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read said in a statement.

Automatic voter registration, with an opt-out, is required by state law for all Oregon residents aged 16 and older. The DMV collects the residents’ information and sends it to the Oregon Secretary of State’s Office.

Officials say the system erroneously registered 1,619 people, some of whom were noncitizens, even though the people never proved citizenship.

“Since the error was discovered, many have confirmed their citizenship,” the Oregon Secretary of State’s Office says on its website.

Seventeen of the people voted in an election. The Oregon Secretary of State’s Office is still actively investigating six of the cases. It referred three others to the Oregon Department of Justice and closed the rest.

Average weekly working hours typically see a decline during recessions, as employers seek to cut payroll costs during these periods by reducing hours.

However, in recent years, weekly hours have seen a consistent decline despite the U.S. being outside of a recession.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Kayla Zhu, visualizes the average weekly hours worked by all private employees in the U.S.

The data comes from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) via the Federal Reserve and is updated as of Feb. 7, 2025.

Average weekly hours represent the total hours worked by employees for which pay was received, accounting for factors like unpaid absenteeism, turnover, and part-time work, and may differ from scheduled hours.

Average Weekly Hours Worked Are On the Decline

Below, we show the average weekly hours worked for all U.S. private employees from 2006 to early 2025.

Date	Average weekly hours worked for all U.S. private employees
2006-03-01	34.2
2006-09-01	34.4
2007-03-01	34.4
2007-09-01	34.4
2008-03-01	34.4
2008-09-01	34.2
2009-03-01	33.8
2009-09-01	33.9
2010-03-01	34
2010-09-01	34.3
2011-03-01	34.3
2011-09-01	34.4
2012-03-01	34.5
2012-09-01	34.4
2013-03-01	34.5
2013-09-01	34.4
2014-03-01	34.5
2014-09-01	34.5
2015-03-01	34.5
2015-09-01	34.5
2016-03-01	34.4
2016-09-01	34.4
2017-03-01	34.3
2017-09-01	34.4
2018-03-01	34.5
2018-09-01	34.4
2019-03-01	34.5
2019-09-01	34.4
2020-03-01	34.1
2020-09-01	34.7
2021-03-01	34.9
2021-09-01	34.8
2022-03-01	34.6
2022-09-01	34.5
2023-03-01	34.4
2023-09-01	34.4
2024-03-01	34.4
2024-09-01	34.2
2025-01-01	34.1

The average number of weekly hours worked in the U.S. in 2025 has dropped to levels seen during the 2020 pandemic, signaling potential weakness in labor demand.

This decline follows a steady decrease from a peak in 2021.

Sectors Driving the Trend

The BLS attributes this decline to reductions in the retail trade and leisure and hospitality industries, which have faced weaker demand, influenced by shifting consumer behavior post-pandemic, including a decline in in-person shopping and dining.

Despite employment gains since the pandemic low, both these sectors remain below or barely above pre-2020 employment levels, signaling ongoing weakness.

Both these sectors also have trended towards hiring more part-time employees, further contributing to lower weekly hours.

However, the BLS noted that while retail trade and leisure and hospitality saw the greatest recent declines in average weekly hours worked, there has been a broader trend toward slightly reduced average weekly hours across most industries in the United States.

The number of hours worked typically declines during recessions, as seen in both the Great Recession (2008–2009) and the COVID-19 recession (2020). However, the decline during the pandemic was more abrupt and short-lived.

To compare average working hours across the world, check out this graphic that visualizes the average weekly number of hours worked per employee by country.

Authored by Bruce Abramson via RealClearPolitics,

The world is in flux. Our much-discussed national vibe shift suggests that Americans are beginning to feel the change, but it understates what’s happening by a very large margin. What we’re experiencing is of global significance: the dawn of a new era.

Between 1989 and 1991, the Communist bloc collapsed. The United States stood bestride the world, history’s first truly global hegemon. Perhaps unsurprisingly in retrospect, that dominance wreaked havoc on our national psyche.

The most popular idea of that moment, summarized in Francis Fukuyama’s provocative title, “The End of History,” shaped the reconstruction and expansion of the “liberal international order.”

Fukuyama’s theory stated that history’s most vexing question – how best to organize society – had been answered definitively. The Washington Consensus preached that free markets and free trade would set every society on an inexorable glide path toward civil liberties and self-governance. Liberal Democracy and its faithful companion Free Market Economics were on the march.

Though adoption might be uneven, every nation, every culture, every society, would inevitably find its way into the community of liberal, democratic nations. Sensitive to the possibility that some might resent these Western models, Western leadership embraced self-deracination, severing “liberal democracy” from every cultural root that had contributed to its development. In their zeal to globalize their preferred modes of political and economic organization, they devalued and defamed every cultural, religious, and ethical underpinning that had made those modes possible.

There is, however, nothing new under the sun. Though few (or even any) appreciated it at the time, the end-of-history crowd had merely updated an ancient message: We have won a surprisingly bloodless victory over a fearsome foe. Now all the peoples of the world will see the glory of our gods and bend themselves to our faith.

Three decades later, our efforts to universalize the bounties of liberal democracy have proved as fruitless as all prior efforts to universalize faith, belief, societal organization, and human behavior. We re-learned that there is genuine variability among cultures, priorities, and value systems. We very emphatically do not all want the same things.

Disastrous American misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan made the point clearly: Overthrowing an odious, militarily inferior regime is easy. Restructuring an alien society in your own image is far harder.

Other lessons were subtler. Bill Clinton had led the charge to open trade with China, arguing that prosperity was the key to liberty. The Chinese leadership, however, understood something its Western counterparts had apparently forgotten: A large and growing middle class is the key to regime stability.

Westerners once understood that lesson well. The welfare state was introduced to anchor newly enfranchised peasants to the regime granting them regular benefits – thereby deterring bloody revolution. Socialist opponents screamed – correctly – that the wealthy were merely bribing the poor to keep themselves in power.

China parlayed its wealth to develop a competing model of governance: an authoritarian surveillance state that monitors and enforces strict rules in selected spheres of social behavior while encouraging robust commercial activity.

Meanwhile, sizable majorities of every Western country fell out of love with the program their leadership was peddling. Some ran hard to the left, reviving and inventing revolutionary doctrines that would upend what remained of the West. Others leaned rightward, yearning for a restoration of the cultural and religious norms that had once animated their societies.

Western leadership preferred the forces of “progressive” revolution to those of “reactionary” tradition. The twin shocks of Brexit and Trump pushed them into overdrive. They waged war against their own citizens, declaring any longing for tradition as hateful, dangerous, and insurrectionist.

The matter came to a head in 2020. Klaus Schwab, head of the globalist confab at Davos, put the matter clearly in The Great Reset and The Great Narrative: The variants of the Chinese model that had emerged to shut the world down during COVID exemplified global good governance at its very finest. They needed to become permanent, truly international, and focused on future crises – specifically, the looming climate crisis.

We had come full circle: Only widespread surveillance and enforced social conditioning could ensure the survival of liberal democracy. Echoes of “you will learn to love your neighbor if we have to beat it into you!” resonated loudly.

Our mid-2023 emergence from COVID found the world in a state that many recognized as superficially familiar but somehow, not quite right. Internal governance, individual rights, alliance structures, and the international order were suddenly all up for grabs. An era had ended; a new one was dawning.

When the history of our American hegemonic era is written, it will reflect a toxic combination of unrivaled innovation, prosperity, and technological advancement with a shocking and near total collapse of morality, faith, and community.

The defining question of the present moment is which new directions will define the future. The Chinese model remains immensely popular among the Western elite. Its strongest advocates, no longer sufficiently popular to govern on their own, have allied with the revolutionary left – in Canada, France, the UK, and a growing number of Western countries.

The U.S. has chosen a very different path – at least for the moment. The new Trump administration seeks to restore traditions and norms while disempowering the elite organizations that have supplanted them. A new web of allies with similar preferences – Argentina, Hungary, Israel, the UAE, India, and others – are cheering the move.

The next few years will prove critical. Which direction will define our future? For the sake of our children, we should all hope that the new team arriving in Washington chooses far more wisely than did its recent predecessors. We are indeed living through the dawn of a new era.

Bruce Abramson is the director of New Student & Graduate Admissions at New College of Florida and a fellow of the Coalition for America. His recent books include “The New Civil War” (RealClear Publishing, 2021) on the corruption of higher education and “American Spirit or Great Awokening?” (Academica Press, 2024) on America’s spiritual crisis and the new religion of Wokeism.

After the left clutched pearls for an entire news cycle over DOGE ordering federal employees to report back to the office, San Francisco is taking a page out of their book.

On Friday, the Epoch Times reported that SF Mayor Daniel Lurie (D) has ordered city workers back into the office.

“Bringing our workers back to the office will make our services more effective and responsive to our residents,” spokesperson Charles Kretchmer Lutvak told the Times in an email. “That is what San Franciscans expect and what Mayor Lurie will deliver. We look forward to working with our partners across the departments and in labor over the coming weeks to implement the mayor’s plan.”

The move reverses a July 21 decision by former mayor London Breed, who signed an amendment to the city’s Health Care Security Ordinance allowing employees to telecommute during the pandemic. Telecommuting had begun in the city on March 17, 2020, however, with the city’s shelter-in-place order.

As the Times notes further, not all city workers have been working from home since the pandemic, as the Port of San Francisco began welcoming all telecommuting employees back in November 2021, though the County of San Francisco Department of Human Resources (DHR) and SF Port at the time required all city workers to be vaccinated.

During his inaugural speech earlier this month, Lurie did not mention city workers but said he wanted to entice people to return to the downtown area.

“My job is not to demand that the private sector be back in the office every day. My job is to make you want to be downtown again for work—with your friends and with your family,” Lurie said.

“This is truly a new era of cooperation and mutual respect between City Hall, the Board of Supervisors, law enforcement, and the thousands of city employees working on the front lines—without you we cannot carry out this vision for change.”

Telecommuting in both the private and public sectors has been a problem for the economic activity of downtown San Francisco, the city has said. According to city data, nearly 470,000 people commuted into San Francisco every weekday prior to the COVID-19 lockdowns, drumming up significant economic activity for the downtown area.

Work-from-home reduced economic activity, hurting small businesses in the economic core. As recently as Feb. 5, San Francisco lagged behind major cities such as Austin, Los Angeles, New York, and San Jose in office attendance. While 55 percent of New Yorkers work in the office, only 43 percent of workers in San Francisco commute to the office.

Lockdowns resulted in San Francisco office attendance dropping to less than 10 percent of what it had been prior. It began to slowly increase in the summer of 2021 and 2022. The reduction in the city’s in-person overall workforce led to significant economic losses for the city, according to research by WFH Research Group.

Telecommuting had been framed by the city as an opportunity to increase productivity, recruit and retain talent, save employees time due to not having to commute, and decrease the city’s carbon footprint.

A Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco report, however, found little evidence of increased productivity due to telecommuting.

Authored by Kimberly Hayek via The Epoch Times,

Californians are falling behind on their bills amid the highest per capita debt levels since 2008, according to debt statistics by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in its most recent Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit.

In the first quarter of 2024, household debt per capita in California peaked at $86,940 before decreasing slightly in the fourth quarter to $86,130. The average U.S. per capita debt was only $50,540 in the fourth quarter.

Furthermore, a rising number of Californians were falling behind on said debt. New York Fed numbers show that 3.25 percent of Californians fell 30 days late on debt repayment in the fourth quarter—a nine-year high. That’s the highest level since 2016’s first quarter. The U.S. average for this metric was even higher, at 4.14 percent.

Joel Kotkin, executive director at Chapman University Center for Demographics and Policy, said that while households in other states also struggle with bills, California’s debt numbers may be high due to the cost of living.

“The pressures may be greater due to high costs,” he told The Epoch Times.

Bad habits plus a mediocre economy, he said, could mean more Californians will opt to rent instead of buy, or go into further debt to buy a home.

“They won’t be buying houses as much as elsewhere, but if they do, their debts will be enormous,” Kotkin said.

A December 2024 report by Upgraded Points, a financial information website, found that the California metropolitan area with the most severe credit card delinquencies—defined as 90 days or more past due—is the Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario region with a 15.2 percent delinquency rate, the eighth worst in the nation. Meanwhile, the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara metropolitan area had the lowest in the nation at 6.3 percent.

According to data compiled by personal finance company WalletHub in January, California ranks 11th in overall credit card delinquency with 21.58 percent. Another WalletHub report, released in July 2024, found that the city of Chula Vista in San Diego County leads the nation in the largest increase in credit card delinquencies, nearly 85 percent during the first quarter of 2024.

Numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show the unemployment rate in California remained relatively steady from July to December 2024, ticking only slightly higher to 5.5 percent. The manufacturing sector, however, saw a 3.4 percent decrease in employment over the same period.

Household debt is not only on the rise in California. 

The New York Fed numbers show that nationwide household debt increased by $93 billion to reach $18.04 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2024. Furthermore, mortgage balances nationwide increased by $11 billion in the third quarter to $12.61 trillion at the end of the fourth quarter.

Auto loan, credit card, and home equity lines of credit delinquencies slightly increased in 2024. Auto loans, in particular, saw an $11 billion increase to $1.66 trillion in the fourth quarter. Credit card balances, meanwhile, increased $45 billion in the fourth quarter for a total of $1.21 trillion at the end of last year.

A sheriff in New Mexico said Friday that Oscar-winner Gene Hackman and his wife could have been dead for weeks and noted that pills found at the scene are concerning, while noting there are conflicting reports about the incident.

Hackman, 95, and his wife, Betsy Arakawa, 65, apparently had been dead as long as several weeks when investigators found their bodies while searching the couple’s Santa Fe home on Wednesday, said Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza.

“Just based on their bodies and other evidence on the body, it appears several days and possibly up to a couple weeks,” Mendoza told the “Today“ show on Friday morning, when asked about the timing of their deaths.

When asked whether Hackman and his wife died at the same time in their home in Santa Fe or if either passed before the other, the sheriff told the outlet, “I think that’s very difficult to determine. I think it’s going to be pretty close.”

“You know, there’s no indication that anyone was moving about the house or doing anything different, so it’s very difficult to determine if they both passed at the same time or how close they passed together,” Mendonza said. 

“We’re trying to put that information together and, obviously, with the assistance of the office of the medical investigator, I think the autopsy report is going to be the key to this investigation.”

The Epoch Times’ Jack Phillips reports that investigators are also attempting to figure out the last time anyone saw or spoke to them, Mendoza added.

“It’s very difficult to put a timeline together even with the help of the office of the medical investigator,” he said, adding that Hackman and Arakawa, a classical pianist, were “very private individuals and a private family.”

Aside from Hackman and Arakawa, one of their dogs was found dead nearby, according to a search warrant affidavit. A maintenance worker called 911 after spotting the bodies at the couple’s Santa Fe home. He reported the home’s front door was open when he arrived to do routine work, a detective wrote.

In a recording of the 911 call, though, the worker said he could see Arakawa lying on the floor through a window, but he was unable to get inside.

In the interview, Mendoza noted that there are conflicting accounts about the doors, whether they were locked or unlocked, and said an investigation is underway. Several of their doors were unlocked and a back door was open, allowing two of their other dogs to go in and out, he said, while adding he suspects the front door was unlocked and closed.

The affidavit said that their deaths were deemed “suspicious enough in nature to require a thorough search and investigation because the reporting party found the front door of the residence unsecured and opened.”

There was also an opened bottle of prescription medication and pills scattered on a nearby countertop, officials noted.

“Deputies observed a healthy dog running loose on the property, another healthy dog near the deceased female, a deceased dog laying 10-15 feet from the deceased female in a closet of the bathroom, the heater being moved, the pill bottle being opened and pills scattered next to the female, the male decedent being located in a separate room of the residence, and no obvious signs of a gas leak,” the search warrant stated.

A sheriff’s detective wrote that there were no obvious signs of a gas leak, but he noted that people exposed to gas leaks or carbon monoxide might not show signs of poisoning. Neither had obvious signs of blunt force trauma, the warrant added.

On Friday, Mendoza said that the pill bottle is “very important” to investigators.

“That’s obviously very important evidence,” the sheriff said., adding that “we’re looking at that specifically and other medications that were possibly in the residence. So that is something of concern.”

Hackman was a five-time Oscar nominee who won best actor in a leading role for “The French Connection” in 1972 and best actor in a supporting role for “Unforgiven” two decades later. He’s also appeared in a number of other critically acclaimed films such as “The Conversation,” “The Royal Tenenbaums,” and “Hoosiers.”

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson,

At some point, some president was going to have to stop the unsustainable spending and borrowing.

To have any country left, some president would eventually have had to restore a nonexistent border and stop the influx of 3 million illegal aliens a year.

Some commander-in-chief finally would have to try to stop the theater wars abroad.

But any president who dared to do any of that would be damned for curbing the madness that his predecessors fueled.

And so none did—until now.

Not since Franklin Roosevelt’s rapid and mass implementation of the New Deal administrative state have Americans seen such radical changes so quickly as now in Trump’s first month of governance.

Americans are watching a long-awaited counter-revolution to bring the country out of its madness by restoring the common sense of the recent past.

It is easy to run up massive debts and hard to pay them back. Politicians profit by handing out grants and hiring thousands with someone else’s money or creating new programs by growing the debt.

Yet it is unpopular and considered “mean” to spend only what you have and to create a lean, competent workforce.

1776, not 1619, is the foundational date of America.

Biological men should not manipulate their greater size and strength to undermine the hard-won accomplishment of women athletes.

Affordable fossil fuels, when used wisely, are still essential to modern prosperity.

American education must remain empirical and inductive, not regress into indoctrination and deduction. If college campuses no longer abide by the Bill of Rights, then perhaps they should pay taxes on income from their endowments and guarantee their own student loans.

If American citizens are arrested and arraigned for violent assaults, destroying property, and resisting arrest, then surely foreign students who break the laws of their hosts should be held to the same account—and if guilty, go home.

Tribalism and racialism, and government spoils allotted by superficial appearances, are the marks of a pre-civilized society. Such racialism leads only to endless factions and discord.

It is easy to destroy a border, and hard to reconstruct it. And it was not Trump who invited in 12 million unaudited illegal aliens, a half million of them criminals.

Who is the real culprit in the Defense Department—the new secretary with the hard task of restoring the idea among depleted ranks that our race, religion, and gender are incidental, not essential, to defeating the enemy and ensuring our national security?

Is it really wise to divert money from needed combat units and weapons to indoctrinate recruits with social and cultural agendas that do not enhance, but likely undermine, our national defenses?

Who is the real callous actor—Elon Musk, who is trying to prevent the country from insolvency by eliminating fraud and waste, or those who bloated the bureaucracy in the first place with jobs and subsidies for their constituents, friends, clients, and fellow ideologues?

No one likes to fire FBI agents.

That certainly is an unpleasant job for the new FBI Director, Kash Patel.

But again, who are the true culprits who so cavalierly turned a hallowed agenda into a weaponized tool to warp elections, harass political enemies, lie under oath, surveil parents at school board meetings, doctor court documents, and protect insider friends?

Massive borrowing is an opiate addiction that needs shock treatment, not more deficits to break the habit. An unchecked administrative state becomes an organic organism that exists only to grow larger, more powerful, and more resistant to any who seek to curb it.

Yet those who brought the cultural revolution of the last years are now screaming that it is unfair to restore what they undermined. It is as if a patient blames only the tough chemotherapy and not the invasive cancer that it seeks to cure.

Most of the Trump people are not high-fiving firing people. They are not laying off miners or frackers and directing them to go “code” or dismissing half the country as “deplorables.”

The left screams that those who are tasked with balancing a budget and pruning back a strangling bureaucracy are heartless.

No, the pitiless are those who recklessly sought to hire with borrowed money and fire people on the basis of their race, used federal programs to feather their own nests, and harassed and arrested those for their politics.

No SWAT teams are now raiding the homes of ex-presidents.

No one is trying to take a presidential rival off state ballots.

No one is coordinating local, state, and federal prosecutors to indict, harass, and bankrupt an ex-president.

And no president—his dementia sheathed by political insiders and toadish media—is working three days a week, avoiding press conferences, or stonewalling reporters’ questions.

No wonder the current normal seems abnormal to the status quo of the recent past.

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi on Wednesday warned Minnesota, California, and Maine that they need to comply with federal law to keep “men out of women’s sports,” according to a statement issued by the Department of Justice (DOJ).

The DOJ said Bondi sent letters to the officials of those three states and said that they may be out of compliance with an order signed by President Donald Trump earlier this month that makes it illegal for transgender individuals to compete in women’s and girls’ sports.

“This Department of Justice will defend women and does not tolerate state officials who ignore federal law,” Bondi said in the statement. “We will leverage every legal option necessary to ensure state compliance with federal law and President Trump’s executive order protecting women’s sports.”

Bondi sent letters to California Interscholastic Federation Executive Director Ron Nocetti, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, and Erich Martens, executive director of the Minnesota State High School League. She also sent a letter to Maine Gov. Janet Mills.

Trump and Mills, a Democrat, were involved in a verbal altercation on Feb. 20 while the president was meeting with governors. The president told Mills that she needed to comply with the executive order or he would withhold education funding to her state.

“We are the federal law,” Trump told her at one point. “You‘d better do it. You’d better do it, because you’re not going to get any federal funding at all if you don’t.”

“See you in court,” Mills said in response, according to a video recording of the exchange between the two.

Trump then told her: “Good, I’ll see you in court.”

In a statement on Feb. 21, Mills said that she and the state of Maine won’t “be intimidated” by Trump’s warning that federal education funding could be withheld.

“If the President attempts to unilaterally deprive Maine school children of the benefit of Federal funding, my Administration and the Attorney General will take all appropriate and necessary legal action to restore that funding and the academic opportunity it provides,” she said.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said in a letter last week that Trump’s order “would violate the Minnesota Human Rights Act,” a state law that allows transgender individuals to compete in women’s sports.

“The Executive Order does not have the force of law and therefore does not preempt any aspect of Minnesota law. Complying with the Executive Order and prohibiting students from participation in extracurricular activities consistent with their gender identity would violate” state law, the letter said.

Under the executive order, the Trump administration can deny federal funding to schools that allow transgender athletes to compete in women’s sports. Schools that do not comply with the order would be deemed to be violating Title IX, a federal law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in schools and educational programs that get federal funds.

“It is the policy of the United States to rescind all funds from educational programs that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities, which results in the endangerment, humiliation, and silencing of women and girls and deprives them of privacy,” his order said. “It shall also be the policy of the United States to oppose male competitive participation in women’s sports more broadly, as a matter of safety, fairness, dignity, and truth.”

During his 2024 campaign, Trump often said that he would move to end allowing transgender individuals from competing in women’s sports.

Aside from the order on women’s sports, Trump also signed several orders to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs in the federal government.

One order declares that the federal government would recognize only two immutable sexes: male and female. The definition will be based on whether people are born with eggs or sperm, rather than on their chromosomes. The change is being pitched as a way to protect women from what the administration has called gender extremism.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Authored by Paul Sperry via RealClearPolitics,

Although Hunter Biden got away with multiple crimes thanks to his father’s unprecedented pardon, he still faces punishment for his conduct before the District of Columbia Bar. Even presidential clemency cannot shield him from possible suspension of his law license.

But former President Biden’s pardon has muddled – and delayed – the process of deciding Hunter’s professional fate, according to the D.C. attorney who is leading the investigation into his fitness to practice law in the nation’s capital. And legal critics view this as favoritism possibly leading to a resolution short of disbarment.

“This is a very complicated situation because of the pardon,” Hamilton Fox of the bar’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel said in an interview with RealClearInvestigations. Fox serves as the prosecutor in disciplinary cases for members of the D.C. Bar.

With Biden’s firearms and tax-evasion convictions wiped clean, Fox said, he and his investigators have to “prove” all over again that he violated the law before they can pursue a case against him for possible disbarment.

“Essentially, there is a process that we follow once there is a criminal conviction, but the pardon disrupted that process,” Fox explained. “After the pardon, there is no criminal conviction, but the misconduct that occurred doesn’t go away. So now we are required to start over.”

Added Fox: “Instead of relying on the conviction, we have to follow the normal procedure and prove the misconduct.”

After a jury in Delaware found Biden guilty of three gun-related felonies last June, his license was automatically suspended because any felony is considered a “serious crime” under D.C. Bar rules. But his suspension is temporary pending an investigation to determine if his criminal acts were serious enough to meet the bar’s “moral turpitude”threshold for more severe and lasting punishment, including long-term suspension or even disbarment.

Such misconduct generally requires criminal intent or recklessness. Offenses involving “violence,” such as reckless use of firearms, and “dishonesty,” such as cheating on taxes, fall into this category.

On Dec. 1, two weeks before Biden was scheduled for sentencing in both the gun case and a felony tax conviction in California, his father issued a blanket pardon nullifying his guilt and sparing him expected prison time.

Hunter Biden has been a member of the D.C. Bar since 2007 and has used his license to practice law there for a number of years. Though he now works as an artist, his paintings have lost value since his father opted not to seek a second term.

A Washington watchdog group suspects investigators for the D.C. Bar are not serious about punishing Biden and are dragging their feet in the probe, which is now entering its ninth month.

“While Hunter Biden’s pardon for committing felonies was bad enough, the D.C. Bar’s slow-walking disciplinary action against him based on the pardon is outrageous and inexcusable,” said Paul Kamenar, counsel to the National Legal and Policy Center, an ethics watchdog that previously filed a formal complaint against Biden with the Justice Department alleging he violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Kamenar argued there is no reason to re-prove the crimes committed by Biden. “That’s a lame excuse,” he said. He pointed out that Biden originally pleaded guilty to the gun charges, before a judge ripped up a “sweetheart deal” he made with prosecutors and forced a trial which ended in a jury unanimously finding him guilty on all counts. Biden copped a plea to the tax charges as well.

Fox’s own ethics adviser has said a presidential pardon shouldn’t impact bar discipline. “[It] relieves a criminal or criminal defendant of the punishment, but it doesn’t necessarily have any effect on the ethics violation,” said Saul Jay Singer, senior legal ethics counsel to the D.C. Bar.

Records reviewed by RCI reveal that staff errors by lawyers working for Fox have resulted in additional delays. In one misstep, attorneys were supposed to file an updated “status report” on the Biden case on Dec. 21, but did not do so until Jan. 7.

“Disciplinary Counsel’s failure to file this update was inadvertent,” Fox’s staff attorneys explained to the D.C. Court of Appeals Board on Professional Responsibility, the legal body hearing the Biden case.

The belated status report simply stated, “The investigation remains ongoing,” while adding that “the parties intend to discuss possible dispositions of this matter soon.”

In other words, Kamenar said, Fox plans to enter into settlement talks with Hunter’s lawyers on how to dispose of the charges.

“Considering the slap on the wrist the D.C. Bar gave former FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith for his felony criminal conviction for altering a CIA document to obtain a FISA search warrant to spy on a Trump adviser, it’s not surprising that Fox appears to be giving Hunter undeserved leniency,” Kamenar added.

Fox negotiated a light sentence for Clinesmith, a registered Democrat who sent anti-Trump rants to FBI colleagues after the 2016 election and then doctored evidence against Trump aide Carter Page, as RealClearIinvestigations first reported. Even the Democrat-controlled Board on Professional Responsibility noted that the deal was “unusual.” Clinesmith was let off with “time served” after just seven months of suspension. His D.C. Bar status was restored to “active member” in “good standing.” (Clinesmith was legally represented by Eric Yaffe, the former chairman of the Board on Professional Responsibility. Yaffe is a major Democratic donor, records show, who’s supported Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden.)

Kamenar questioned the impartiality of Fox, a Democrat who like Hunter is a Yale Law School alumnus. Federal Election Commission records show Fox, a former Watergate prosecutor, has contributed several thousand dollars to Democratic political candidates, including Obama. 

While Fox declined to comment on accusations of bias, he addressed concerns about a settlement in lieu of punishment for Biden. “A disposition means we agree upon a sanction and don’t try the case,” Fox said. “But it is different and more complex than a plea bargain in a criminal case.”

Asked if a deal is in the works, Fox said that such matters are “confidential.” Hunter Biden’s attorney did not respond to requests for comment.

However, Fox suggested his office is using an old case involving Reagan administration official Elliott Abrams as a precedent. In 1992, President Bush pardoned Abrams of perjury charges related to the Iran-Contra scandal. The next year, the D.C. Bar found Abrams committed the crimes and suspended him from practice for one year.

Contrast With Giuliani et al.

Kamenar believes Hunter’s crimes are serious enough for the bar to suspend his license for at least three years. He pointed out that the D.C. Bar’s rules for professional conduct expressly state that criminal conduct such as “willful failure to file an income tax return” reflects “adversely on fitness to practice law.”

In a recent report responding to Biden’s pardons, Special Counsel David Weiss, who prosecuted Hunter, said his tax crimes were serious and egregious, and he should have known better as a trained attorney.

“As a well-educated lawyer, Mr. Biden consciously and willfully chose not to pay at least $1.4 million in taxes over a four-year period,” from 2016 to 2020.

Weiss said Biden’s crimes were not “inconsequential” or “technical” tax code violations, but were part of a deliberate “scheme” to cheat the IRS that can’t be “explained away by his drug use.”

“After becoming sober, he chose to file false returns to evade payment of taxes he owed,” the special prosecutor wrote. “Instead of paying his taxes, he chose to spend the money on [female] escorts, luxury hotels, and exotic cars,” and even wrote off the prostitutes as business expenses on tax returns he eventually filed.

Regarding his illegally obtained gun, Weiss said Biden “carelessly left it unsecured on a property where children lived.” And in an additional “aggravating factor,” he noted, Biden lied on a federal form to obtain the revolver, along with a speed loader and hollow-point bullets.

“As a Yale-educated lawyer, he understood that he was lying on the background check form he filled out and the consequences of doing so,” Weiss said. “But he did it anyway, because he wanted to own a gun, even though he was actively using crack cocaine.”

Asked if he will use Weiss’ report as guidance in his probe of Hunter Biden, Fox replied, “I have it.”

Other critics point out that Fox, in contrast, has thrown the book at embattled Republican members of the bar. He recommended the disbarment of Trump lawyers and advisers Rudy Giuliani, Jeffrey Clark, and Paul Manafort, for example.

Giuliani’s conduct “calls for only one sanction, and that’s the sanction of disbarment,” Fox said. “What Mr. Giuliani did was use his law license to undermine the legitimacy of a presidential election, to undermine the basic premise of the democratic system that we all live in, that has been in place since the 1800s in this country.”

Fox accused Clark of being “intentionally dishonest” about the 2020 election results. But the board rejected his request for disbarment and has recommended a two-year suspension. His case is still being heard by the court of appeals.

“Mr. Clark is in front of the D.C. Bar’s Board because the head of the D.C. Office of Disciplinary Counsel dislikes the advice he believes Mr. Clark gave to former President Trump,” Clark’s attorney said. “If this power grab by the D.C. Bar is successful, it will transform the head of the D.C. Office of Disciplinary Counsel, a local government official, into the most powerful lawyer in the country, granting him a permanent supervisory role and veto over the highest counsels of the federal government.”

Last year, government ethics watchdog Larry Klayman, founder of Judicial Watch and Freedom Watch, filed a complaint against Fox over what he called selective prosecution of Republican members of the bar and favorable treatment for Democratic lawyers.

In the court filing, he wrote: “Once Fox took over as Disciplinary Counsel, ODC has steadily transformed into a highly partisan tool and weapon of the entire District of Columbia attorney discipline apparatus with the apparent goal of removing prominent conservative and Republican activist attorneys from the practice of law in the District of Columbia.”

Added Klayman: “Fox has made it clear that he hates President Trump and those who support him. He has made a point to personally try disciplinary complaints against pro-Trump Republican individuals, despite the fact that the chief disciplinary counsel generally does not perform that function.”

He pointed to a Politico article that reported that the D.C. Court of Appeals “had to step in and stop his attempts to strip away Trump Department of Justice official Jeffrey Clark’s constitutional Fifth Amendment rights, and tellingly, Fox responded by saying, ‘I’m not going to push that hearing back unless somebody cuts off one of my arms.’”

This shows his animus towards conservative and Republican activist attorneys who are pro-Trump,” Klayman said.

*  *  *

Paul Sperry is an investigative reporter for RealClearInvestigations. He is also a longtime media fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. Sperry was previously the Washington bureau chief for Investor’s Business Daily, and his work has appeared in the New York Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Houston Chronicle, among other major publications.