This piece is part of MI x DW, a collaboration that brings Daily Wire readers exclusive commentary and research from the Manhattan Institute’s world-class team of scholars.
In this piece, an exclusive excerpt from a forthcoming City Journal piece, Heather Mac Donald exposes the absurdity of climate litigation, showing how plaintiffs can blame companies around the world for alleged environmental distress. In addition to shining light on these pseudoscientific lawsuits, Mac Donald warns that allowing these cases to continue could seriously undermine the rule of law.
***
While the Trump administration has ended for now the federal regulatory war on traditional energy, a litigation war has quietly gathered force. Cities and states are suing American fossil fuel companies for the alleged climate harms those jurisdictions claim to suffer.
The first multibillion-dollar judgment against the industry could unleash a cascade of similar rulings. Leading climate litigator Benjamin Franta estimates that the potential liability runs into the trillions of dollars.
The effect on the American economy would be dire. But equally catastrophic, from a philosophical standpoint, would be the damage to rationality itself. The causal claims behind the climate-change lawsuits insult reason, repudiating the hard-won gains of the Western empirical tradition.
The plaintiffs in the more than three dozen climate suits filed in the United States read like an honor roll of progressive localities: San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Maine, Minnesota, and Massachusetts, among others. Their targets include some of the great industrial concerns of the modern age — ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, and Shell.
So far, the cases have turned on questions of jurisdiction. The defendant oil and gas companies have argued that the city and state plaintiffs are violating the constitutional limits on their power, since they are trying to regulate economic activity outside of their borders. For a while, this argument worked. Judges in Delaware, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and elsewhere tossed climate-change suits out of court on the grounds of federal preemption. But then the defensive wall was breached. Several federal appeals courts and the state supreme courts of Colorado and Hawaii ruled that the global warming suits could continue. Once those trials begin, the plaintiffs’ causal claims will come to the fore.
Every suit blames a particular set of companies for a particular set of climate harms in a particular locality. But one can accept the broad outlines of climate change theory and still reject the plaintiffs’ core causal claims.
Global warming allegedly results from a century and a half of cumulative CO₂ emissions from industrial activity. When trillions of CO₂ molecules accumulate in the upper atmosphere, they affect how heat escapes into space. That means the planet’s atmospheric energy balance is global, not set by any one city or state’s emissions. One CO₂ molecule is indistinguishable from another and cannot be traced to its point of origin.
Yet the climate suits are startlingly precise in pinning responsibility for a locality’s purported climate disasters. An international case provides an almost parodic version of the logic in climate litigation. In 2015, a farmer in the Peruvian Andes sued Germany’s largest electric utility provider for allegedly causing the glacier outside the farmer’s village to melt. We were meant to believe that CO₂ emitted from the utility’s German facilities could be identified and tied to a particular diminishing ice pack in Peru.
While a German court ultimately threw out the case on jurisdictional grounds, it allowed the causal illogic to stand, and it has since been widely replicated. In 2020, 16 Montana youths, aged five to 22, sued the state of Montana, claiming that it had destroyed their prospects for a normal adult life and had inflicted climate-related trauma on them.
Because Montana licensed fossil fuel operations without considering their global warming impacts, argued the plaintiffs, additional CO₂ was emitted in the state. That local incremental CO₂, in turn, caused global warming in Montana, which harmed the 16 children and young adults. In 2023, the judge in Held v. Montana found the state liable for the plaintiffs’ alleged injuries, which included, the judge declared, the increased risk of dying, chronic despair, damage to the liver and kidneys, impaired physical and cognitive development, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and broken bones.
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The causal claim in Held v. Montana is absurd. Global warming is not a local phenomenon. Moreover, even if the extra CO₂ purportedly generated by Montana’s regulatory negligence could be geotagged and traced to the state, it would be trivial compared with the cumulative emissions of every other global source over decades.
The climate bar has adopted an additional causal claim. Oil and gas companies allegedly concealed what they knew about climate change, the plaintiff cities and states assert, and that concealment — amounting to corporate fraud and deception — caused heat waves and forest fires in their jurisdictions.
An ongoing case in Hawaii, Honolulu v. Sunoco, illustrates the reasoning behind this consumer fraud gambit. According to the city and county of Honolulu, over a dozen fossil-fuel producers and marketers caused flooding and erosion in Honolulu by failing to disclose what they allegedly knew about climate change. “But for Defendants’ conduct” in withholding that knowledge, claim the plaintiffs, “the City would have suffered no or far fewer serious injuries and harms than it has endured.”
We will leave aside, for the moment, the truth of the claim that the defendants possessed secret knowledge about global warming. We will also set aside the suspension of disbelief required to accept the argument that a failure to communicate something was the “but-for cause” of rising sea levels. 
Even on its own terms, Honolulu’s argument is fantastical. Here, one must reintroduce the concealed causal link (CO₂) whose absence in the complaint is merely a verbal trick. Data on Honolulu’s energy-related greenhouse-gas emissions are not readily available, but Hawaii’s were about 18 million metric tons in 2021; Honolulu’s share would be maybe half that. The International Energy Agency estimates that fossil fuel combustion produced about 36.3 billion metric tons of CO₂ globally in 2021. Hawaii’s emissions thus represented about 0.05% of the global total; Honolulu’s, maybe 0.025% of the global total.
Yet we are to believe that a 0.025% reduction in global emissions — the result of a hypothetical cessation of Honolulu’s fossil fuel consumption — would have prevented the city’s alleged global warming injuries.
If the causal claims strain credulity, the factual premises are scarcely stronger. The consumer fraud suits now underway all assert that oil and gas companies possessed early, unique knowledge about climate change, which they concealed from an ignorant public and policymaking class for decades. Instead of warning the world about the dangers of fossil fuels, the firms stressed uncertainties in climate models and funded research that critically examined what the New York Times calls the “settled science of climate change.”
But the fuel industry had no monopoly on climate speculations. The federal government has been reporting on anthropogenic global warming since 1965. Since then, warnings in the media about CO₂ emissions have only grown more dire, without having the slightest effect on consumer behavior.
The use of smartphones and AI, jet travel to conferences and vacations, routine reliance on Amazon Prime and food delivery apps, heat in winter and air conditioning in summer, the near-universal consumption of bottled water — all these accoutrements of modern life show no sign of abating in Honolulu or in any of the other communities now suing the sources of their lavish consumer lifestyles.
The explosion of climate litigation is about expropriation and hatred. These lawsuits do nothing to advance the cause of arresting anthropogenic climate change. Sixteen of the top 20 CO₂ emitters in 2023 were state-owned foreign companies, with China dominating. Seven of the top 20 were coal companies — six of them Chinese, with the seventh in India. Private American oil and gas companies account for only a small share of global emissions.
The litigation war on the oil and gas industry reflects the parasitism, entitlement, and ingratitude that now characterize modern Western societies. The Rockefeller Brothers Fund is emblematic. Its billion-dollar philanthropic portfolio exists because of John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil. Rockefeller’s advances in refining, pipelines, transport engineering, and petroleum chemistry transformed the world. Yet today, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund bankrolls efforts to sue Standard Oil’s corporate descendants into submission, if not bankruptcy.
The alternatives to fossil fuels championed by climate litigators are not viable replacements today and will not be for the foreseeable future. Solar and wind power were largely irrelevant during the deadly snow and ice storm that struck a 2,000-mile swath of the United States in January 2026. Without coal, natural gas, and nuclear power, millions more Americans would have lost heat and running water. The crisis in the Strait of Hormuz is a reminder of how essential oil and gas are to nearly every aspect of the world economy.
The Western concept of impersonal causation once undergirded both experimental science and Anglo-American tort law. The belief that causation was regular and measurable enabled the rational control of nature. The legal requirement that a defendant’s unreasonable act actually caused a plaintiff’s injury restrained the human impulse toward vengeance. In the 20th century, however, tort law increasingly shifted from assigning liability for fault to extracting wealth for redistribution by loosening traditional causation standards and weakening the idea of personal responsibility.
Climate litigation takes that earlier erosion of causation to a new level. If judgments against Big Oil are allowed to stand, they will set precedents for wider assaults on private enterprise and the rule of law.
For now, the best hope for halting the raid on Big Oil’s social and economic capital lies in an appeal before the Supreme Court challenging a climate suit out of Boulder, Colorado. At the heart of every such climate case lies a philosophical travesty that reflects a deeper decline in rational thought.
Heather Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal, and a New York Times bestselling author.

TOPSHOT-KENYA-CLIMATE-DEMO

The Climate Litigation Swindle

Climate Change

Heather Mac Donald

Lawsuit

MI x DW

Author and crime expert <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/heather-mac-donald" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Heather Mac Donald</a> said during an interview Tuesday night that recent acts of mass lawlessness in inner cities that have gone viral on social media are the direct result of the political Left&#8217;s demonization of law enforcement as &#8220;racist.&#8221;
Mac Donald made the remarks during an interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson where she also discussed her new <a href="https://www.amazon.com/When-Race-Trumps-Merit-Sacrifices/dp/1956007164" target="_blank" rel="noopener">book</a>, “When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives,” which is published by <a href="https://store.dailywire.com/collections/dw-books-1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">DW Books</a> and came out on Tuesday.
&#8220;So it does seem like these outbreaks of lawlessness and mob rule are the easiest kinds of crimes to stop,&#8221; Carlson said.
&#8220;Well, that would depend on believing in the police&#8217;s authority, and the elites have done everything they can possibly do to discredit legitimate police authority by calling it &#8216;racist,’” Mac Donald responded. &#8220;We are seeing civilization break down in front of our eyes. It&#8217;s a willed and voluntary break down, and it will continue and worsen until we stand up against the phony charge of racism, whether directed at the police, at medicine, or the arts, and start defending America&#8217;s civilizational inheritance.&#8221;
Mac Donald mocked the political Left&#8217;s claim that the lawlessness was the product of &#8220;starvation or deprivation or poverty.&#8221;
&#8220;These mobs are all organized on social media, the participants all have smartphones, that&#8217;s not my idea of starvation or deprivation,&#8221; she said.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
.<a href="https://twitter.com/HMDatMI?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@HMDatMI</a> to <a href="https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@TuckerCarlson</a>: “We are seeing civilization break down in front of our eyes&#8230;It will continue and worsen until we stand up against the phony charge of racism, whether directed at the police, medicine, or the arts, and&#8230;stop capitulating to the racial hustle.” <a href="https://t.co/HygB7aIj0e">pic.twitter.com/HygB7aIj0e</a>
&mdash; Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDailyWire/status/1648486727789735937?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 19, 2023</a></blockquote>
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When asked by Carlson why it seemed to be so hard for politicians to clean up the streets, Mac Donald said it&#8217;s because a lot of them are intimidated of being labeled a racist.
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&#8220;It&#8217;s very odd, because the Left says there&#8217;s no racial disparities in crime,&#8221; she said. &#8220;And yet, if somebody talks about crime, they&#8217;ll be accused sotto voce of being racist. So the Left actually knows something that it&#8217;s not letting on.&#8221;
&#8220;The fact is, is that law enforcement is not racist for having a disparate impact on black criminals,&#8221; she continued. &#8220;It has a disparate impact on black criminals, when it&#8217;s enforced in a color blind manner, because the black crime rate is so high. Who suffers from that black crime? Overwhelmingly black victims, and yet we&#8217;re not allowed to talk about those black victims because doing so means talking about black crime, and America turns its eyes away from the pathological inner city culture that gives us these mobs, that gives us these barbaric drive-by shootings, and that will tear down everything unless we stop capitulating to the racial hustle.&#8221;

Heather Mac Donald On Mass Acts Of Lawlessness: This Is What Happens When Leftists Call Police ‘Racist’

Crime

Law Enforcement

Tucker Carlson

U.S.

Heather Mac Donald ripped into how the media covers crime on The Ben Shapiro Show on Tuesday as she discussed her new book on equity.
Mac Donald&#8217;s <a href="https://www.amazon.com/When-Race-Trumps-Merit-Sacrifices/dp/1956007164" target="_blank" rel="noopener">book</a>, titled &#8220;When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives,” is published by <a href="https://store.dailywire.com/collections/dw-books-1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">DW Books</a> and came out on Tuesday.
Mac Donald&#8217;s book addresses the &#8220;elephant in the room,&#8221; arguing that dysfunctional inner-city culture, not &#8220;systemic racism&#8221; is what is hindering the progress of black Americans.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
.<a href="https://twitter.com/HMDatMI?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@HMDatMI</a>: “The media doesn’t give a damn about most black victims.”
Heather Mac Donald joins <a href="https://twitter.com/benshapiro?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@benshapiro</a> to discuss her brand new book, &quot;When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives.” <a href="https://t.co/8M1TYDnT2a">pic.twitter.com/8M1TYDnT2a</a>
&mdash; Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDailyWire/status/1648440305807421441?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 18, 2023</a></blockquote>
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&#8220;That culture belittles academic achievement as ‘acting white,'&#8221; Mac Donald writes. &#8220;America turns its eyes away from this pathological culture and blames itself for phantom racism. We pretend that the reason for the lack of proportional representation in institution after institution is racist measures of achievement rather than vast academic and behavioral gaps. As a remedy for this alleged racism, we create double standards of accomplishment and behavior. But double standards help no one. They are condescending, and they are lethal.&#8221;
Shapiro and Mac Donald discussed Thursday&#8217;s shooting of Ralph Yarl, a 16-year-old black teenager shot and injured by an 84-year-old white man after ringing the doorbell of the wrong house in Kansas City. Yarl was trying to pick up his twin younger brothers but went to the wrong home.
The shooter has been charged with the equivalent of attempted murder. The district attorney said there was a &#8220;racial component&#8221; to the shooting. The shooter faces up to life in prison if convicted.
&#8220;This is a horrible shooting. The man should face some sort of criminal accountability, but it is not the way that black people die,&#8221; Mac Donald told Shapiro.
&#8220;Black people almost never die at the hands of whites. They die at the hands of other blacks, and the media doesn&#8217;t give a damn about that. It doesn&#8217;t give a damn about most black victims because it&#8217;s not willing to talk about black criminals,&#8221; the attorney and author continued.
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&#8220;Blacks, sadly, and this is a difficult thing to talk about, but they commit crime at vastly higher rates than any other group,&#8221; Mac Donald said.
The result of the criminal justice system often not enforcing the law against black Americans is &#8220;more black lives being lost,&#8221; she said.
Mac Donald also addressed the broader issue of the West &#8220;canceling itself&#8221; because of its &#8220;demographic past,&#8221; its traditions of music, art, science, and mathematics that came from white Europeans.
&#8220;Get over it. That&#8217;s not racist,&#8221; she said.
George Floyd&#8217;s death and the riots that followed during the summer of 2020 brought racism once again to the forefront of the political debate. Protesters were upset about police brutality but also &#8220;systemic racism,&#8221; the idea that America has widespread discrimination poisoning the ability of black Americans to be successful.
The &#8220;disparate impact&#8221; theory has been used to invalidate school discipline policies, bank lending standards, and written tests for first responders.
Now, however, Mac Donald&#8217;s book shows that &#8220;disparate-impact thinking is jeopardizing scientific progress, destroying public order, and poisoning the appreciation of art and culture. And the crusade against standards is based on a lie,&#8221; according to a press release promoting the release.

Heather Mac Donald on The Ben Shapiro Show

‘The Media Doesn’t Give A Damn About Most Black Victims’: Heather Mac Donald Talks New Equity Book On Ben Shapiro Show

Heather Mac Donald Talks New Equity Book On Ben Shapiro Show

Ben Shapiro

Media

Politics

Race

The Ben Shapiro Show

The following excerpt is taken from Heather Mac Donald&#8217;s new book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/When-Race-Trumps-Merit-Sacrifices/dp/1956007164/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1O8S3UD04SV6E&amp;keywords=heather+mac+donald&amp;qid=1681832109&amp;s=books&amp;sprefix=heather+mac+donald%2Cstripbooks%2C115&amp;sr=1-1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">When Race Trumps Merit</a> now available from <a href="https://store.dailywire.com/products/when-race-trumps-merit-by-heather-mac-donald" target="_blank" rel="noopener">DW Books</a>.
<h2>Medicine’s Racial Reckoning</h2>
The a priori truth that health disparities are necessarily the product of systemic racism has devalued basic science and encumbered medical research with red tape. The fight against cancer has been particularly affected.
Cancer grant applications must now specify who, among a lab’s staff, will enforce diversity mandates and how the lab plans to recruit underrepresented researchers and promote their careers. White and Asian oncologists are assumed to be part of the problem of black cancer mortality, not its solution, absent corrective measures. According to the NIH, leadership of cancer labs should match national or local demographics, whichever has a higher percentage of minorities. In Baltimore, which is over 60 percent black, only 10 percent of black eighth graders can read proficiently. Should Johns Hopkins’s comprehensive cancer center nevertheless have 60 percent black physician-administrators? 
Grant applicants seek the services of the burgeoning diversity-consulting profession to make sure that their proposals sound the right diversity notes. As with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Freeman Hrabowski scholarships, an insufficiently robust diversity plan means that a cancer research proposal will be rejected, regardless of its scientific merit. Discussions about how to beef up the diversity section of a grant proposal have become more important than discussions about tumor biology, reports a physician-scientist. “It is not easy summarizing how your work on cell signaling in nematodes applies to minorities currently living in your lab’s vicinity,” the researcher says. Mental energy spent solving that conundrum is mental energy not spent on science, he laments, since “thinking is always a zero-sum game.”
A lab’s diversity gauntlet has just begun, however. The NIH insists that participants in drug trials must also match national or local demographics. If a cancer center is in an area with few minorities, the lab must nevertheless present a plan for recruiting them into its study, regardless of their local unavailability. Genentech, the creator of lifesaving cancer drugs, held a national conference call with oncologists in April 2022 to discuss products in the research pipeline. Half of the call was spent on the problem of achieving diverse clinical trial enrollments, a participant reported. Genentech admitted to having run out of ideas.
There is no evidence that racist researchers are excluding minorities from drug trials on nonmedical grounds, nor has anyone presented a theory as to why they would. The barriers to such drug trial diversity include a higher incidence among blacks of disqualifying comorbidities, more challenging personal lives, and a suspicion of the medical profession (which that same profession constantly amplifies with its drumbeat about racism). Those barriers to drug-trial diversity are not recognized by grant evaluators, however.
In May 2022, a physician-scientist lost her NIH funding for a drug trial because the trial population did not contain enough blacks. The drug under review was for a type of cancer that blacks rarely get. So there were almost no black patients with that disease to enroll in the trial in the first place. It’s better, however, to foreclose development of a therapy that might help predominantly white cancer patients than to conduct a drug trial without black participants.
The diversity-driven requirement of racial proportionality in drug trials is perplexing, since diversity advocates insist that race is a social construct, without biological reality. Suggesting that genetic differences exist between racial groups will brand you a racist. The AMA’s Organizational Strategic Plan to Embed Racial Justice and Advance Health Equity sneers that “much of medicine still looks for cultural, behavioral or even genetic explanations” to explain racial gaps in life expectancy. Such a focus rests on “discredited and racist ideas about biological differences between racial groups,” according to the AMA. In May 2022, the American Association of Pediatrics announced that it was eliminating “race-based” medicine, defined as including a patient’s race in assessments of some health risks. If race does not exist, as received wisdom now has it, then the racial makeup of clinical trials should not matter.
The idea that race is merely a social construct is anti-scientific, however. DNA analyses show that there are at least five distinguishable races. The refusal to acknowledge race is also anti-health. Blacks with sub-Saharan roots have a high rate of kidney disease, for example, thanks in part to a more frequent genetic mutation. Drug companies have sought a treatment for that mutation. The reaction to that research has been unhinged. A lecturer in ethics at Columbia University and author of the book Medical Apartheid told the New York Times in May 2022 that knowledge about the genetic variant might drive the medical establishment toward “a blame-the-victim approach signaling an inherent flaw in African Americans.” This is fictional. No one thinks that possessing a genetic mutation means that the possessor is inherently flawed.” The activists are terrified, however, that work in basic science will supplant the political crusade against white supremacy. They would rather stop medical progress than improve blacks’ quality of life, if doing the latter acknowledges biological reality.
Biological reality comes into play in another kidney-related area. A common blood test for kidney health understates healthy kidney function in black patients. Nephrologists therefore adjusted the test results for black patients to estimate their kidney function with greater accuracy. Then the activists showed up, arguing that this correction must be abolished. The American Society of Nephrology and the National Kidney Foundation announced that they no longer supported the separate reporting of the kidney function measure for black patients. The University of Pennsylvania health system, among others, proudly presented its changed reporting protocol as part of the fight against medical racism. A more complicated diagnostic formula was widely adopted. But no patient was damaged by the original, more straightforward formula, nor was that original formula based on racism.
This is an excerpt taken from Heather Mac Donald&#8217;s new book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/When-Race-Trumps-Merit-Sacrifices/dp/1956007164/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1O8S3UD04SV6E&amp;keywords=heather+mac+donald&amp;qid=1681832109&amp;s=books&amp;sprefix=heather+mac+donald%2Cstripbooks%2C115&amp;sr=1-1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">When Race Trumps Merit</a> now available from <a href="https://store.dailywire.com/products/when-race-trumps-merit-by-heather-mac-donald" target="_blank" rel="noopener">DW Books</a>. Used with permission. 
Heather Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal, and a New York Times bestselling author. She is a recipient of the 2005 Bradley Prize. Her writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, and The New Criterion.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
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Heather Mac Donald Examines The Dangers Of Diversity Mandates In Medicine In New Book

Books

Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI)

Doctors

Racism

Readers Pass

Systemic Racism

Heather Mac Donald told <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/megyn-kelly">Megyn Kelly</a> that &#8220;whites have to stop apologizing&#8221; and warned that merit-based institutions are in jeopardy because of unfounded claims the country is racist.
During the Sirius XM &#8220;The Megyn Kelly Show&#8221; <a href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/3VFIs4ZC4KWCoRErPY0IrG?si=mqMM0IVbSMqj_JihFFeHyQ">podcast</a> on Monday, the author of &#8220;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/When-Race-Trumps-Merit-Sacrifices/dp/1956007164">When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives</a>,&#8221; which is published by <a href="https://store.dailywire.com/collections/dw-books-1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">DW Books</a>, said the U.S. is committing &#8220;civilization suicide&#8221; by tearing itself apart over the &#8220;phony charge of racism.&#8221;
&#8220;The problem is a vast academic skills gap,&#8221; Mac Donald said, adding that imposing standards in education is not racist.
&#8220;And the elites in this country are terrified that this skills gap is never going to close and they make it taboo to discuss it,&#8221; she added. &#8220;America is tearing down every meritocratic institution on the phony charge of racism. It has to end.&#8221;
WATCH:
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&#8220;The culture in those [black] communities has to change,&#8221; Mac Donald said. &#8220;There&#8217;s a very terrible, destructive, self-destructive ideology in black communities that says that academic effort is acting white. So, if you are a black student who is studying, who is paying attention in class, you will be demeaned as somehow betraying your race.&#8221;
When asked about claims by race activists that these steps are necessary because of the injustice of the past and slavery in America, the author said she&#8217;s done her homework and is &#8220;absolutely heartbroken and appalled&#8221; by how &#8220;ugly America&#8217;s past was.&#8221;
&#8220;That is not our reality today,&#8221; Mac Donald said. &#8220;&#8230; We are a different country and racism is not the problem. Here&#8217;s the reality Megyn, black privilege. It&#8217;s not white privilege, it&#8217;s black privilege. The reality is being black today, in any mainstream institution confers an enormous advantage.&#8221;
&#8220;There is not a single law firm, a single bank, a single tech lab in Silicon Valley, a single science lab that&#8217;s not twisting itself into knots to try to find, hire and promote as many as remotely qualified blacks as possible,&#8221; she added. &#8220;White heterosexual males, it&#8217;s over for them. They are at the bottom of the heap.&#8221;
&#8220;As bad as our country was,&#8221; Mac Donald said, no one alive today owned slaves, and most white people yearn to be &#8220;post racial.&#8221;
&#8220;We are not systematically racist,&#8221; Mac Donald said. &#8220;But today there&#8217;s nothing that the outside world can do to make them [blacks] competitively qualified. You have to do the reading yourself. The only person who can put knowledge of arithmetics in your head is yourself.&#8221;
&#8220;There&#8217;s no amount of compensatory transfers or trying to pull white people down that is going to make you able to read better,&#8221; she added. &#8220;The effort has to come from within that home. And right now, whites have to stop apologizing, Megyn, it is all coming down &#8230; there is not a single meritocratic institution above all in the sciences and medicine that is not in the crosshairs.&#8221;
&#8220;Any institution that is not proportionally black is now vulnerable,&#8221; she added. And said this &#8220;absurd disparate impact&#8221; and canceling of things like advancement placement/honors classes is &#8220;civilization suicide.&#8221;
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/defund-the-police-movement-leading-to-increase-in-black-deaths-report-says">&#8216;DEFUND THE POLICE&#8217; Movement Leading To Increase In Black Deaths, Report Says</a>

Kelly-Mac Donald at 1.23.39 PM

‘Whites Have To Stop Apologizing’: Heather Mac Donald Tells Megyn Kelly Our Institutions Are ‘All Coming Down’

'Whites Have To Stop Apologizing': Heather Mac Donald Tells Megyn Kelly Our Institutions Are 'All Coming Down'

Celebrities

Education

Entertainment

George Floyd

Megyn Kelly

The Daily Wire

Efforts to demonize and defund law and order in America have led to an increase in crime in major cities across America, including an increase in deaths among African-Americans.
Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute and author of the 2016 best-seller “The War On Cops,” has looked at police data and news reports in major cities such as Chicago and New York and written <a href="https://www.city-journal.org/ferguson-effect-inner-cities">a report</a> detailing how violent crime has risen in the wake of racial protests.
Mac Donald wrote in 2014 about what she called the Ferguson Effect, an increase in violent crime following a wave of protests after the police shooting of Michael Brown. Back then, protests also denounced police across the country as racist en masse – and media and social elites supported the narrative. In 2015 and 2016, a spike in violent crime led to an additional 2,000 black homicide victims.
Mac Donald says the trend has started much quicker following the current round of protests and riots. “In Minneapolis,” she wrote, “shootings have more than doubled this year compared to last. Nearly half of all those shootings have occurred since George Floyd’s death, according to a Minneapolis Star Tribune <a href="https://www.startribune.com/surge-in-gun-violence-tests-minneapolis-leaders/571524202/">analysis</a>.”
Chicago and New York City have seen some of the worst increases in violent crime, according to Mac Donald:
<blockquote>In Chicago, 18 people were killed and 47 wounded in drive- and walk-by shootings <a href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2020/6/28/21305237/chicago-weekend-shootings-gun-violence-june-26-29-2020">last weekend</a>. The fatalities included a one-year-old boy riding in a car with his mother (the gunman drove up alongside and emptied his gun into the vehicle) and a 10-year-old girl struck in the head inside her home; a group of youth on the street outside her house had started shooting at another group of youth nearby. The previous weekend in Chicago, <a href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2020/6/20/21297470/chicago-fathers-day-weekend-shootings-homicide-gun-violence-june-19-22-104-shot">104 people were shot, 15 fatally</a>. The deceased included a three-year-old boy riding in a car with his father on Father’s Day—his gangbanger father was the intended victim—and a 13-year-old girl shot in her head in her home.
New York City’s homicide rate is at a <a href="https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/nycs-criminal-justice-system-is-imploding-nypd-boss-says-as-homicides-hit-5-year-high/2483376/">five-year high</a>; the number of shooting victims was up over 42 percent through June 21 compared with the same period in 2019. The number of shootings in the first three weeks of June was over twice that of the same period in 2019, making this June the city’s bloodiest in nearly a quarter century, according to the New York Times. At 4 A.M. last Sunday, a 30-year-old woman was shot in the head in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, at a house party. On Saturday afternoon, a man and a woman were shot to death outside a Brooklyn home. Early Friday morning, a 19-year-old girl was shot to death in the heart of Manhattan, near Madison Square Park, on East 26th Street.</blockquote>
Milwaukee, Mac Donald reported, has seen homicide increase by 132% and “more people have been killed in Baltimore than at this point in 2019, which ended with the highest homicide rate on record for that city.” Further, 78% of the homicide victims in Chicago are black, even though blacks make up less than a third of the city’s population.
Meanwhile, a handful of people in these cities have been killed by police, most of whom were shot after attacking or threatening police with guns or knives. Yet all over the country, police morale is down as protests and politicians continue to call for defunding departments, with some cities even introducing bills to do just that.
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Crime Scene

‘DEFUND THE POLICE’ Movement Leading To Increase In Black Deaths, Report Says

Police

In the latest edition of &#8220;The Rubin Report&#8221; podcast, two people I adore, Dave Rubin and Heather Mac Donald, dialogue about some of the great issues facing America. Interestingly, though both are secular, Dave opened the interview asking Heather about God and religion.
She began by saying that she is not conservative because of religion but because of her commitment to empirical truth. It is empirical truth that leads her to affirm, for example, &#8220;the necessity of the two-parent family&#8221; and &#8220;most traditional values.&#8221;
Heather is right that one cannot be committed to empirical truth and be a leftist (though one can be a conservative or a liberal). Left-wing assertions that men give birth; that America was founded in 1619 (when the first enslaved black was brought to the American colonies); that people can be lifted from poverty on a mass scale without capitalism; that there are no innate differences between men and women; that America is a racist nation; that women are paid less than men for the same type and amount of work because they are women; and innumerable other leftist assertions are all false.
But while a secular conservative may be committed to the two-parent family because of empirical truth, marriage and family are not &#8220;empirical truths&#8221; nearly as much as they are religious values. Few secular arguments to get married and/or have children are as compelling as religious ones. That&#8217;s why religious people are so much more likely to get married and have children.
Mac Donald said: &#8220;(P)eople who I respect enormously &#8230; whether it&#8217;s Dennis Prager or Michael Medved &#8230; are making the argument that you cannot have a moral society without a foundation of religious belief.&#8221;
That is precisely the argument nearly every founder of America made. Not all were Christ-centered Christians, but virtually every one believed that inalienable rights come from the Creator, and only from the Creator. And none (except perhaps Thomas Paine) believed that America could endure if it were to become a godless society.
Mac Donald: &#8220;Part of my resistance to this is simply I don&#8217;t find claims of petitionary prayer and the idea of a personal loving God consistent with what I see — what I call the daily massacre of the innocents. To me it&#8217;s a very hard claim to make that I should expect God to pay attention to my well-being when He&#8217;s willing to allow horrific things to happen to people far more deserving and innocent than I am. So, for me, it&#8217;s partly just a truth value. I cannot stomach what appears to me to be a patently false claim about a personal loving God.&#8221;
I agree with Heather&#8217;s premises but not with her conclusion. I have never believed that God has any reason to pay more attention to me than to any other innocent human being. And I, too, &#8220;cannot stomach&#8221; the &#8220;daily massacre of the innocents&#8221; — so much so that I have written how I find the commandment to love God the hardest commandment in the Bible.
But what I also cannot stomach is the thought of a universe in which the horrible suffering of innocents is never compensated by a good and just God: The good and the evil all die; the former receive no reward and the latter no punishment.
The problem of unjust suffering troubles every thinking believer. But the Jewish theologian Milton Steinberg offered a powerful response: &#8220;The believer in God has to account for unjust suffering; the atheist has to account for everything else.&#8221; Between the two, I would argue that the atheist&#8217;s burden is infinitely greater. And insurmountable.
Mac Donald: &#8220;(T)he idea of what started the universe — we can&#8217;t really answer that. I think to say, &#8216;God&#8217; — that&#8217;s just a placeholder for ignorance. That doesn&#8217;t help.&#8221;
Maybe we really can&#8217;t answer what started the universe. But, as Charles Krauthammer, a great secular conservative, said, &#8220;The idea that this universe always existed, that it created itself ex nihilo — I mean, talk about the violation of human rationality. That, to me, is off the charts.&#8221; God, therefore, is not &#8220;just a placeholder for ignorance.&#8221; Since science can never and will never answer the question &#8220;Why is there anything?&#8221; attributing the origins of the universe to an intelligent force (which we call &#8220;God&#8221;) strikes me as the most rational explanation.
Rubin: &#8220;I might have to get you in here with Prager.&#8221;
Mac Donald: &#8220;I&#8217;d love to.&#8221;
I&#8217;d love to, too.
Mac Donald: &#8220;Where are we all headed? What is the meaning of life? To me, anybody who claims &#8230; he doesn&#8217;t find meaning in life when there is Mozart and Haydn — to invoke a Dennis Prager favorite — or Beethoven or John Milton or Aeschylus or Anthony Trollope —&#8221;
Rubin: &#8220;Or just waking up with purpose for whatever you do.&#8221;
Mac Donald: &#8220;Exactly &#8230; trying to do the best you can do. I don&#8217;t find life meaningless for one second.&#8221;
Haydn began every manuscript with the Latin words &#8220;in nomine Domini,&#8221; &#8220;in the name of the Lord,&#8221; and ended his manuscripts with the words &#8220;Lauds Deo,&#8221; &#8220;Praise be to God.&#8221; I would ask Heather and other secular conservatives: Do you or don&#8217;t you identify the steep deterioration of the arts with the death of God and religion? Is a secular society capable of achieving artistic achievement equal to that which was accomplished in tribute to God?
As for meaning, you — and I — may find meaning every day in trying to do the best we can do, or in great works of art. But, as I know you will agree, that does not mean life has any ultimate meaning. If there is no God, we are nothing more than self-conscious stellar dust. And stellar dust has no meaning.
We really need to continue this dialogue. In the meantime, for what it&#8217;s worth, I want to say to both of you, who do so much for our country, God bless you.
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His latest book, published by Regnery in May 2019, is &#8220;The Rational Bible,&#8221; a commentary on the book of Genesis. His film, &#8220;No Safe Spaces,&#8221; came to theaters fall 2019. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

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