Kerby Anderson
David Bernhardt reveals that “The Deep State Is All Too Real.” He should know since he has worked in the government as a cabinet secretary and writes about it in his new book. He says we have “two competing conceptions of American governance: the version students are taught in the classroom, and the one that exists in the real world.” Unfortunately, more and more rules and regulations are being made by the administrative deep state rather than by Congress.
Much of this began in the 1930s when Congress delegated much of its lawmaking authority to the executive branch. Federal agencies issue regulations that have the force and effect of law. And to make matters worse, the Supreme Court’s Chevron doctrine encourages courts to defer to executive branch interpretations of the law.
You might then reasonably ask, where is any accountability? He reminds us that the federal government has 2.2 million civilian employees, but only 4,000 of them are political appointees the president can remove. In other words, career bureaucrats (who were not elected by the American people nor appointed by the president) make major policy decisions.
In my booklet, A Biblical View of the Deep State, I dismiss the idea that the federal bureaucracy is like a military unit (where every order is routinely obeyed). Instead, the bureaucracy is often more like a university faculty (where many have their own ideas about what should be done).
David Bernhardt does provide some hope. In 2020, President Trump issued an executive order that would let the president remove certain federal employees in the bureaucracy. The Supreme Court will hear arguments for a case that would force the judges to reconsider Chevron defense.
These two actions might return the American government back to some necessary checks and balances.

Penna Dexter
During her senior year swimming for the University of Kentucky, Riley Gaines learned something about feminism’s identity crisis. She says she never considered herself a feminist. She told FOX News, “It almost goes against the co-dependency that I believe the sexes should have.”
Then, last spring, Riley tied for fifth place in the NCAA 200-meter freestyle finals with the University of Pennsylvania transgender swimmer Lia Thomas, who for 3 years, had been swimming, as William Thomas, for the men’s team. Riley and her teammates were also subjected to Thomas in all his undressed glory in the women’s locker room.
Riley told FOX News: “The feminist movement has gone two directions,” She says she resonates with one of those branches and it’s not the one that’s “fighting for male inclusion in women’s sports, women’s spaces.”
Lia Thomas says of the criticism from female teammates, “They’re using the guise of feminism to sort of push transphobic beliefs.”
Laura Favaro is also a feminist and a sociologist at City University of London. Like Riley Gaines, she believes in just two biological sexes. She conducted research, she says, “to investigate the disputes around sex and gender that have escalated dramatically since the 2010’s.” Her plan, as described in The Telegraph and by Daily Signal writer Nicole Russell, was to conduct “the first taxpayer-funded study into ‘whether social scientists at universities feel censored over their views on transgender issues.’” Laura interviewed 50 feminists who worked in gender studies departments and surveyed 650 social scientists.
Scholars who were open about their traditional views of sex and gender reported they had experienced threats and smears from colleagues. They sometimes feared for their jobs. These findings were deemed “dangerous’ by Laura Favaro’s bosses at City. Eventually, administrators denied her access to her email account and demanded she give up her material and findings. She ultimately lost her job.
Riley and Laura are learning what it costs to be the wrong kind of feminist.

Kerby Anderson
Economist Stephen Moore wonders if the goal of President Biden and his administration is to turn out all the lights. His climate change agenda is forcing us to buy a certain type of lightbulb and to use a certain kind of energy. In the end, we may not have enough electricity to keep the lights on or to keep electric cars moving.
A few weeks ago, the Biden Administration proposed limits on tailpipe emissions that would essentially require two thirds (67%) of all new vehicles sold in the US by 2032 to be all-electric. But the latest polls show that nearly half of all Americans don’t want an electric car and only 6 percent of drivers are buying them.
Stephen Moore says “that was child’s play compared to the latest Biden scheme to shut down as many as half of our electric power plants across the country. These are the plants that charge those Tesla batteries and cellphones. They also keep the lights on in our factories, schools, hospitals, stores, and homes and power the internet.”
On one hand, the administration is working to force more Americans to drive electric cars. On the other hand, the same administration is pushing a plan that would shut down most of the nation’s gas-fired and coal-fired plants that provide electricity. Stephen Moore asks, “Where are we going to get the electric power to charge 150 million EVs every night? From windmills?”
We need more power plants to generate electricity, not fewer. Even if these power plants do not shut down, the administration says they will have to pay for carbon offsets to justify any carbon emissions. Guess who will pay for that? You, the consumer, will pay for that with higher utility bills.
I believe these administration policies will turn the lights out on our economy.