Activists who demand strict oversight for homeschooling rarely apply the same standards to public schools, entrepreneur and defense contractor Palmer Luckey argued this week.

Luckey pushed back against growing calls for tighter regulation of homeschooling, responding to critics who say parents should face more evaluations and state monitoring.

‘Ask them what the consequences should be for homeschooling parents who fail to educate children.’

Home invasion

His comments came after writer Jill Filipovic argued that homeschooling families should accept more scrutiny if they believe homeschooling delivers better educational outcomes.

“If homeschooling is actually super high quality, then homeschooling families should not object to being evaluated, tested, and checked-in-on to make sure their kids are actually learning,” Filipovic wrote in a post viewed more than one million times.

Luckey responded that homeschool students often succeed precisely because they are not forced into what he described as the “slow-progress-across-all-subjects method public schools impose on every student, no matter how they learn.”

He added that standardized oversight would likely undermine the flexibility that makes homeschooling effective in the first place

“The evaluation/testing you are talking about would almost certainly prohibit that sort of tailored education,” Luckey wrote, “especially since they would be designed and administered by a system that wants to eliminate homeschooling in almost all cases.”

Several studies appear to support at least part of Luckey’s argument.

RELATED: Right-wing investor to challenge traditional banking with national crypto bank

Study haul

A 2022 study analyzing results from the Classic Learning Test — a college entrance exam launched in 2015 — found homeschool students outperformed peers from other school systems by margins ranging from three to 12.1 points, including in verbal and writing categories.

A 2025 study by Cardus found that 45% of short-term homeschoolers earned at least a bachelor’s degree, roughly comparable to the 46% rate among non-homeschooled students. The same study also found homeschoolers were more likely to be married, have children, volunteer in their communities, and report higher levels of optimism.

Meanwhile, a 2026 overview of peer-reviewed research found that 62% of studies conducted over a 30-year period concluded homeschool students outperformed their traditionally schooled peers.

RELATED: Anti-Trump Indian investor wants you to use this hat that reads your thoughts

Rubber rooms

Luckey also rejected the argument that public schools better prepare children for real-world socialization.

“We are putting the vast majority of our children into madhouses that no longer have anything to do with how society works or what they will experience in said society,” he wrote.

Despite the growing body of research and the rapid rise in homeschooling, major media outlets continue to advocate for tighter oversight. The Washington Post reported in 2024 that between 1.9 million and 2.7 million American children were being homeschooled — roughly a 50% increase over six years.

In England, homeschooling numbers rose from fewer than 81,000 students in 2022 to roughly 92,000 in 2023. The Guardian attributed much of the increase to COVID-era lockdowns while simultaneously calling for greater regulation and oversight, arguing public schools provide stronger safeguards for children.

Luckey, however, said critics often apply a double standard — demanding accountability from parents while excusing systemic failures in public education.

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Former California Democratic Rep. Katie Porter’s newest political ad is getting savaged on social media for trying to make a joke about one of her worst moments.

Porter is one of the Democratic candidates in the California gubernatorial race, but her campaign has been dogged by allegations that she has an abusive temper toward her staff and her family members.

‘Whoever shot and produced that video should be fired.’

In Oct. 2025, a damaging video leaked that showed Porter screaming an expletive at a staff member for straying into her video shot.

“Get out of my f**king shot!” she yells. “You also were in my shot before that. Stay out of my shot.”

On Tuesday, Porter’s campaign published a video ad showing the candidate addressing voters while actors in the background hold whiteboards with several campaign slogans. At the end, she turns around and yells at them.

“Now, could you guys please get out of my shot?” she says with a smile.

The bizarre callback has bewildered critics online who questioned why she would refer to one of her worst moments.

“I’m at a loss for words. This is so bad,” replied Democratic political strategist Keith Edwards.

“Does she think verbally abusing staff members is a joke now?” responded the Libs of TikTok account.

“Most people that run for governor — even in CA — are substantially less unhinged,” said another commentator.

“Lol whoever shot and produced that video should be fired,” said another detractor.

RELATED: Katie Porter suggests she will defend truckers who can’t speak English from Trump in bizarre debate moment

“It won’t work. Her ‘advisors’ probably thought it would help deflect from her true self being exposed. It just highlights her narcissism harder,” responded another X user.

While Porter has decent name recognition as a former congresswoman, she has underperformed in the gubernatorial race. In one recent poll, she was tied for fourth place behind the two Republicans in the race and Democratic front-runner Tom Steyer.

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A year-long Department of Justice investigation has found that the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, discriminated against applicants based on race.

A Wednesday press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Central District of California announced that the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division discovered evidence that the school’s leadership “intentionally selected applicants based on their race.”

‘Federal law and the Supreme Court precedent are clear: Race discrimination has no place in our nation’s institutions of higher learning.’

The DOJ cited UCLA’s “dubious contention that patients receive the best care when treated by a doctor of the same race, rather than by the most qualified.”

The investigation claimed that, on average, black and Hispanic applicants whom the medical school admitted had lower academic qualifications than their white and Asian counterparts.

The department concluded that the medical school violated civil rights laws by intentionally discriminating on the basis of race. The DOJ highlighted that medical schools receive significant federal financial assistance.

“UCLA’s admissions process has been focused on racial demographics at the expense of merit and excellence — allowing racial politics to distract the school from the vital work of training great doctors,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division stated. “Racism in admissions is both illegal and anti-American, and this Department will not allow it to continue.”

RELATED: DEI class at UCLA’s medical school sets up future doctors to fight the patriarchy and accept ‘weight loss is useless’

Imeh Akpanudosen/Getty Images

First Assistant United States Attorney Bill Essayli said, “Federal law and the Supreme Court precedent are clear: Race discrimination has no place in our nation’s institutions of higher learning.”

“The pattern of illegal and odious conduct by UCLA’s medical school is abhorrent to our Constitution and our nation’s founding principles,” Essayli added.

RELATED: UCLA School of Medicine’s radical DEI czar clumsily plagiarized vast portions of her dissertation on DEI: Report

Mario Tama/Getty Images

A UCLA medical school spokesperson told the Los Angeles Times that its admissions process is “based on merit” and “grounded in a rigorous, comprehensive review of each applicant.” The spokesperson rejected claims that it broke the law.

“We are confident in our practices and our mission to maintain access to a high-quality education to all qualified students,” the spokesperson told the Times. “We are carefully reviewing the Department of Justice’s report. The David Geffen School of Medicine is committed to providing equal opportunity to all applicants and fully complying with federal and state laws.”

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While progressives claim the Spirit Airlines collapse was good for consumers, Glenn Beck and Carol Roth argue the exact opposite happened: Regulators strangled a struggling company’s lifeline and handed even more market power to the major airlines.

“Spirit Airlines is out, and Elizabeth Warren, when she announced this with Joe Biden — that they weren’t going to merge with JetBlue — she said that’s a ‘win’ for the Republic and win for Biden.”

“It’s not a win for anybody who had, you know, tickets on a cheap airline to go someplace — to go see Grandma, or go back to school, or whatever it was. That’s not a win for you today. All these people have lost their jobs. The airline is closed, and the only ones that will win are the bigger airlines,” Glenn tells financial expert Carol Roth.

“They are always wrong and never in doubt,” Roth agrees.

“And this is a very dangerous combination, because, you know, you can have this moral preening, but it doesn’t replace economic reality. And they are so decoupled from the economic reality, either because they don’t understand or because they don’t care,” she says.

And Roth knows this from experience.

“I’m a recovering investment banker. We see this all the time. You have a company that needs a lifeline, and another company steps in and it’s letting the market sort it out,” she explains.

“What they did is they took a struggling company and they said, ‘No, you cannot have that lifeline. Look, we did a good thing,’ and like you said, now we have less choice. Now we have people who are out of a job. Now we have, you know, less of an opportunity for this to work its way out in the markets and in the system,” she continues.

“They’re not helping. And they’re making it harder for Americans to thrive, to be successful, and in some cases just to afford the cost of living,” she says. “And unfortunately, that’s where we’re at today.”

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The man arrested for a shooting Monday at the National Mall that led to a White House lockdown has been identified in a federal criminal filing.

Michael Marx, 45, was spotted at about 3:30 p.m. by a plainclothes officer who believed he was carrying a gun. When he was approached by uniformed officers, he fled and allegedly fired a gun at them.

Marx allegedly said, ‘F**k the White House,’ as well as, ‘Kill me, kill me, kill me.’

The suspect was shot, captured, and arrested, but a juvenile bystander was also shot during the altercation.

Investigators confirmed an initial report that the motorcade for Vice President JD Vance had just passed by before the shooting.

The gunshot victim was described as a civilian witness who was standing behind an officer and was shot in the leg. The officers returned fire and shot the suspect in the hand, left arm, and upper abdomen.

As he was being transported in an ambulance to a hospital, Marx allegedly said, “F**k the White House,” as well as, “Kill me, kill me, kill me.”

A Sig Sauer P365 handgun was recovered in the area where Marx fell to the ground, and investigators claimed he did not have a permit to carry a handgun in the District of Columbia.

A court filing included security video showing a man firing at police and the victim clutching his leg after getting shot. The bystander is expected to recover from the non-life-threatening injury.

The suspect’s digital devices and social media footprint are being searched in order to establish a possible motive, according to officials at a media briefing Monday.

Marx was charged with one count of assaulting federal officers with a dangerous weapon, another count of using and discharging a firearm during a crime of violence, and a third count of unlawful possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.

“Whether or not it was directed to the president or not, I don’t know. But we will find out,” said Matthew Quinn, the deputy director of the Secret Service.

RELATED: DOJ releases new video of WHCD shooting to dispel ‘friendly fire’ rumor

Marx had false identification with aliases that included Patrick Michael and Michael Zavici, according to officers.

“We will prove this defendant carried an illegal firearm into the heart of Washington, D.C., opened fire at Secret Service officers near a crowded intersection, and shot an innocent bystander who was simply crossing the street with his family,” reads a statement from U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro.

“My office will pursue the most serious charges available against anyone who brings gun violence to our streets, particularly when that violence unfolds steps from the seat of our government and the path of the Vice President of the United States,” she added.

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Artemis II pilot Victor Glover is showing kids that progressive ideology and groupthink are not pathways to success.

Despite the media’s persistent interest in the color of his skin, the 50-year-old NASA astronaut prefers to keep the focus on his crew’s historic April 6 spaceflight, which marks the farthest distance humans have ever traveled from Earth.

‘I think one of the reasons we were as successful as we [were] is we spent a lot of time thinking about us and not me individually.’

This was once again evident Friday, when the team of four sat down for a “CBS Mornings” town hall, taking questions from children from nearby science-focused school M.S. 255 Salk School of Science.

No DEI in ‘team’

“How did it feel to be the first person of color to fly to or around the moon?” an 11-year-old girl named Ameya asked, 10 minutes into the discussion.

Glover replied with a smile, “I will tell you one of the things about swinging for the fence and trying to hit a home run when the game is on the line is if you think about that, that can add pressure and make you not go up there and and play your best game.”

The astronaut said instead he “focused a lot on working with this team and trying to be a good teammate,” before stressing the importance of being a team member, and not focusing on individual attributes.

“I think one of the reasons we were as successful as we [were] is we spent a lot of time thinking about us and not me individually.”

Glover continued, “I would answer this by maybe just making a visual lesson here that I spent a lot of time thinking about this patch and this patch,” he said while pointing to his NASA patch and then the United States flag, “and not this patch,” pointing to his own name.

“And now we get to be here and we get to talk about it, though.”

RELATED: ‘I wanted to thank God in public’: Fighting tears, Victor Glover gives legendary speech on return to Earth

–

‘Human history’

Glover has been fielding such questions since the mission was announced. Just three days before the launch, a journalist asked Glover what being the “first black man” to travel to the moon meant to him.

Glover dismissed the notion, saying he hoped society would be “pushing the other direction” so that one day “we don’t have to talk about these firsts.”

“This is the human history,” he emphasized. “It’s about human history. It’s the story of humanity, not black history, not women’s history, but that it becomes human history.”

RELATED: Victor Glover reminded us what an American is

Todd Owyoung/NBC/Getty Images

Glory to God

Glover has also been known to put his Christianity before ethnic identity.

Glover has used his time in the spotlight to talk about his faith. Just before circumnavigating the moon, Glover shared what he called the “most important mysteries of the world” in a live radio transmission.

“Christ said in response to ‘what was the greatest command’ that it was to love God with all that you are. And he, also being a great teacher, said the second is equal to it, and that is to love your neighbor as yourself.”

Upon returning to Earth, he made his priorities even clearer: “When this started … I wanted to thank God in public, and I want to thank God again.”

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Tickets for the 2026 World Cup are almost sold out, but some U.S. venues are worried there may not be enough visitors to meet their economic forecast.

FIFA dropped its prices in late April at its predetermined “50 days away” mark, having already sold more than 5 million tickets.

Nearly 80% of bookers said hotels are tracking below their initial forecasts.

The cumulative attendance record of 3.5 million set at the 1994 World Cup is projected to be broken, FIFA reported. At the same time, Reuters noted that there were just over 6 million tickets available for the tournament in total, meaning around 80% of seats have already been purchased.

However, one sector is worried that there may not be enough travelers to the United States for the tournament, which could result in a lower-than-expected return on investment.

The American Hotel & Lodging Association said in its recent World Cup outlook report that after years of preparing for the tournament and making “significant investments” to “welcome a global audience,” bookings are likely to fall short of expectations.

In fact, nearly 80% of bookers who responded to the survey said hotels are tracking below their initial forecasts, with international demand being the largest culprit.

RELATED: Faith, ‘divine journey,’ and Trump will ensure unforgettable World Cup, island nation’s soccer president says

Jamie Squire/Getty Images

The group pinpointed several factors that are preventing hotel chains from hitting their marks.

First, international travelers may believe they will face lengthy visa wait times, increased fees, and increased airport security screening and check-in times.

The organization is seemingly blaming current federal policy for compounding the issue, claiming that a strong American dollar, airfare costs, and gas prices are all affecting the willingness of fans to travel.

The AHLA also blamed FIFA for creating an artificial demand by booking large blocks of hotel rooms but picking up only 15% of what it booked in the end.

The report noted that international travelers spend more money than domestic travelers, $5,048 per person versus roughly $4,794. World Cup international travelers also spend about 1.7 times more than the average international visitor.

RELATED: Who’s to blame for the un-American ban on tailgating at the World Cup?

Andrew J. Clark/ISI Photos/ISI Photos/Getty Images

At just under 90%, business owners from Kansas City, Missouri, reported the highest projection that they will perform below expectations for the World Cup, with Atlanta being the only host city with a projection under 50%.

The hotel organization warned that a temporary tax increase in New Jersey on prepared food and lodging could further derail expectations, as could a 2% increase in Philadelphia’s hotel tax.

The White House previously told Blaze News that it expects the tournament to be “one of the greatest and most spectacular events in the history of mankind.”

White House spokesman Davis Ingle also said that it will be the safest and most secure tournament in history.

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A Massachusetts city in the Greater Boston area commissioned a pair of 10-foot-tall bronze statues heavy with cultural and historical significance to honor police and firefighters outside its new public safety headquarters.

Since the statues also carry religious significance — one depicts the winged archangel Michael stepping on the head of a demon, and the other depicts Florian, a third-century firefighting Roman Christian — the American Civil Liberties Union and a handful of secularizing activist groups joined local thin-skinned critics in suing to block the installation last May.

According to the ACLU, having the two statues as the sole adornments on the building’s facade “would undermine religious pluralism in Quincy and violate the Massachusetts Constitution’s long-standing requirement that the government remain neutral in matters of religion.”

‘Let Quincy pay tribute to its firefighters and police.’

The ensuing legal battle has reached the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, which heard oral arguments on Wednesday in the case Fitzmaurice v. City of Quincy.

The defendants’ thesis, as outlined in their opening brief to the court, is that symbolism on government property should not become “illegal simply because some citizens perceive it to have religious meaning.”

Some of the court’s justices, Democrat-appointee Gabrielle Wolohojian in particular, did not appear to be entirely buying what the attorney for the city from the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty was selling at the outset despite considering his arguments in a city already replete with public art evoking persons, symbols, and themes of religious significance, including multiple statues of Moses.

RELATED: Young men flocking to Christianity in record numbers

Education Images/Universal Images Group/Getty Image

The court proved particularly fixated on whether Florian and Michael’s special recognition as saints by the Catholic Church was actually an issue in this case and raised as possibly relevant in a lower court’s insinuation that the statues’ primary champion, Quincy Mayor Thomas Koch, was untrustworthy and had worked clandestinely to get the statues funded and installed.

The court was not, however, overly receptive to the ACLU’s arguments in favor of denying Quincy first responders their statues, which have been defended in recent months by a plethora of organizations, including the nation’s largest firefighter and police unions, various faith groups, and esteemed constitutional scholars.

One justice questioned whether:

such legal concern-mongering constitutes a “heckler’s veto” that is here at risk of being normalized; the plaintiffs were effectively asking the state’s high court to “provide less protection than the Supreme Court on free exercise,” or “allow more hostility to religion than the Supreme Court would tolerate”; and the statues endorsed a particular religion — an especially dubious claim given Florian’s secular, historical significance and the archangel Michael’s significance in multiple distinct faiths as well as in popular culture and literature.

Tom Bowes, president of Quincy’s Firefighters Local 792, said in a statement, “For generations, Florian’s legacy has inspired the brave men and women who run toward danger when others need help. We hope the court allows Quincy to honor that tradition and the first responders who live it every day.”

Joseph Davis, senior counsel at Becket and an attorney for the city, said, “In this country, public art doesn’t become off-limits just because it may make some people think about religion. We’re confident the justices will apply that commonsense rule here and let Quincy pay tribute to its firefighters and police.”

Eric Rassbach, another attorney at Becket, said in the wake of the hearing on Wednesday that the ACLU’s argument largely “relied on the supposedly dead legal standard known as the Lemon test, which SCOTUS abrogated.”

“For decades, the unusuable Lemon test produced confusion and split decisions in cases involving religious symbols,” continued Rassbach. “That changed in 2019, when SCOTUS ruled 7-2 in [American Legion v. American Humanist Association] that the First Amendment does not require removing a WWI memorial cross and made clear that Lemon no longer applies.”

While the Supreme Court rejected the relevance of the test articulated by SCOTUS in its 1971 Lemon v. Kurtzman ruling as a way of guiding the court in identifying Establishment Clause violations, Norfolk Superior Court Judge William Sullivan previously leaned heavily on it in the Quincy case.

“It would be a bizarre move for Massachusetts to revive a test that failed so badly at the federal level, especially since Lemon has no grounding in the Commonwealth’s Constitution,” wrote Rassbach. “That document takes a different approach: It recognizes the vital role of religion in public life while guaranteeing equal protection for all religious denominations. That’s a far cry from forcing cities to scrub anything that smacks of the religious from all public property.”

The court is expected to deliver its decision sometime this fall.

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