Society's ChildS


Dollars

White House to offer buyouts to 2 million federal workers who won't return to office

Donald Trump, Mike Johnson
© Getty ImagesPresident Trump is offering a golden handshake to workers who don’t want to return to the office.
The "golden age" of America now comes with a golden parachute.

The White House is offering buyouts to federal workers who don't want to return to the office pursuant to President Trump's orders, The Post has confirmed.

The offer, contained in an email sent Tuesday, could significantly pare down the federal workforce as Trump terminates COVID-19-era policies that let many workers to do their jobs remotely.

"This email is being sent to more than TWO MILLION federal employees," Katie Miller, who serves on an advisory board to the Department of Government Efficiency, wrote on X.

The offers come on the heels of Trump's freeze on federal aid and attempt to pause disbursement of grant money, which was held up Tuesday evening by a federal judge.

White House aides expect between 5% and 10% of federal workers to take the deal — which is projected to save taxpayers $100 billion a year, according to Axios, which first reported on the plan.

Bizarro Earth

US-backed Syrian authorities conduct dozens of sectarian executions

HTS in syria
© AP
Alawites, Christians, and members of other minority groups have been systematically targeted by Syria's new government since it came to power

Syria's government forces executed five Alawites in the countryside of the central governorate of Hama on 27 January and dozens of others in the past few days, according to the director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).

SOHR director Rami Abdul Rahman told Al-Hurra TV in an interview on Monday that "35 people were executed in the field during the past few days, and today, five others from the Alawite sect were executed by an armed group in the northern Hama countryside."

The perpetrators belonged to groups under the command of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham-led (HTS) Military Operations Department - which has been waging an indiscriminate crackdown on elements of the former Syrian Arab Army (SAA) since the new government came to power last month.

Comment: So an actual terrorist organization has overrun a democratically elected government in Syria - and gets a helping hand from the geniuses at the EU. But don't worry, HTS is "inclusive".


Jet3

F-35 fighter jet crashes at Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska, pilot taken to hospital

F-35 fighter jet
© Andrej Tarfila/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty ImagesFILE - An F-35 fighter jet crashed on Tuesday at Eielson Air Force Base in Fairbanks, Alaska. The pilot ejected and survived the ordeal.
An Air Force fighter pilot is in the hospital after an F-35 jet crashed at Eielson Air Force Base in Fairbanks, Alaska.

The F-35 fighter jet crashed Tuesday at 12:49 p.m. local time, causing "significant aircraft damage," according to a statement from the Air Force base.

The pilot, who has not yet been identified, safely ejected and has been transported to Bassett Army Hospital for further evaluation, according to the statement.

The pilot is in stable condition.

"Our people are our most important resource, and we are committed [to] ensuring their safety and security," said Col. Paul Townsend, commander of the 354th Fighter Wing.

Townsend added the base will work to prevent similar incidents in the future.

"I can assure you the United States Air Force will conduct a thorough investigation in hopes to minimize the chances of such occurrences from happening again," he said.

Comment: The F-35 has a long history of issues and malfunctions. Here's the video of this latest crash:


Meanwhile: China's two new stealth fighters should send shockwaves through Pentagon


2 + 2 = 4

U.S. kids' reading, math skills still buffeted by pandemic-era losses, "nation's report card" shows

students in masks
America's children have continued to lose ground on reading skills in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and have made little improvement in math, according to the latest results of an exam known as the nation's report card.

The findings are yet another setback for U.S. schools and reflect the myriad challenges that have upended education, from pandemic school closures to a youth mental health crisis and high rates of chronic absenteeism. The national exam results also show growing inequality: While the highest-performing students have started to regain lost ground, lower-performing students are falling further behind.

Given every two years to a sample of America's children, the National Assessment of Educational Progress is considered one of the best gauges of the academic progress of the U.S. school system. The most recent exam was administered in early 2024 in every state, testing fourth- and eighth-grade students on math and reading.

"The news is not good," said Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which oversees the assessment. "We are not seeing the progress we need to regain the ground our students lost during the pandemic."

Among the few bright spots was an improvement in fourth grade math, where the average score ticked up 2 points on a scale of 500. It's still 3 points lower than the 2019 pre-pandemic average, yet some states and districts made significant strides, including in Washington, D.C., where the average score increased 10 points.

For the most part, however, American schools haven't yet begun to make progress.

Dollars

Zombie foundations threaten the nation and all of creation

big money in Washington
The bloated nonprofit sector exploits American wealth and freedoms to erode liberty and prosperity — it's time for reform and accountability before it consumes us.

As the tide of totalitarian wokeness recedes from the swamp, some of its ugliest and most toxic creatures will find refuge as employees or grantees of tax-exempt nonprofits. In our pluralist and democratic society, we must, to some degree, tolerate organizations with intolerant, inhuman, or wicked purposes, not least because we should have the intellectual humility not to judge every cause on our present knowledge. Who knows what valuable chemotherapy will come from the poison mushroom the Sierra Club is fighting to save?

True, we need, or at any rate must suffer, the plague of foundations — for fear of an unhealthy political monoculture in which our own miscues and misdeeds go unchallenged. That does not mean these foundations' current powers and privileges should go unscrutinized. The Ford Foundation was set up in 1936 and now controls about $17 billion in assets, and long since passed out of the effective control of the Ford family. The Rockefeller Foundation controls a mere $6 billion but is so alienated from its roots in Standard Oil money that it is divesting from fossil fuels.

Fish

Newsom's governmental eco-fraud: Fake wetland restorations killed California's delta smelt

delta smelt Point Buckler Island
Point Buckler Island, California
The Delta Smelt, a tiny fish teetering on the edge of extinction, has suffered despite billions invested in wetland restoration projects.

Shocking new evidence uncovers that these supposed efforts were based on fraudulent permits and fabricated reports.

This deception not only jeopardizes a key species but also exposes serious flaws in California's environmental governance, making it a critical issue for anyone concerned about ecological integrity and responsible stewardship of natural resources.

However, newly uncovered documents reveal that these restoration projects, purportedly designed to save the Delta Smelt — a cornerstone species on the brink of extinction — were nothing more than well-crafted reports and fraudulent permits.

Passport

Deep dive: How Joe Biden's deputies smuggled Indian migrants into US jobs

Ambassador Eric Garcetti india
© U.S. Mission IndiaUnited States Ambassador to India Eric Garcetti presented his credentials to Indian President Droupadi Murmu, May 11, 2023
President Joe Biden's ambassador to India approved more than two million visitor visas for Indians in 2023 and 2024 — so allowing a huge wave of job-seeking Indians to take off-the-books, untaxed, illegal jobs in the United States.

But President Donald Trump's Secretary of State is now directing officials at the Department of State to reverse the various policies that help illegal migration into the United States.

"This department will no longer undertake any activities that facilitate or encourage it," Secretary Marco Rubio said in a memo to the top officials in the department. The task is "the most consequential issue of our time," Rubio wrote, according to a January 21 report in RealClear Politics.com.

Ambassador Gil Garcetti exposed the scale of the Indian labor export in a self-congratulatory speech to an Indian audience in New Delhi on January 13.

Pistol

US Border Patrol and Mexican cartel members trade gunfire at southern border: report

border protection
© James KeivomA US Customs and Border Protection officer briefs US soldiers at Gate 40 of the US-Mexico border wall on Monday, Jan. 27, 2025, in El Paso, Texas.
Suspected Mexican cartel members were caught on video opening fire on US Border Patrol agents near the southern border Monday - just as a group of migrants reportedly tried to enter the US illegally, authorities said.

The dramatic attack unfolded at about 1:30 p.m. near Fronton, Texas, Customs and Border Protection said in a statement

The apparent cartel members had started firing as the group of migrants were trying to cross the Rio Grande, Border Patrol sources told The Post.

Comment: See the footage below:



NPC

Police officers are told not to say 'blacklisted' or 'black sheep' over fears of racism

police uk
Bedfordshire Police and Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire constabularies have created a diversity, equality and inclusion reference guide for their officers and staff
Police have been told not to use terms such as 'black sheep' and 'blacklisted' in case it causes offence.

Bedfordshire Police and Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire constabularies have created a diversity, equality and inclusion reference guide for their officers and staff.

The nine-page document, which was published online last year and reported last night by The Telegraph - also stated that 'black mark' was no longer deemed acceptable as part of expressions that use 'black in a negative way'.

Comment: Will the UK follow in the footsteps of the US and dial back their deranged diversity initiatives?


Star of David

Auschwitz survivors warn against rise of global antisemitism on Holocaust Remembrance Day

Andrzej Duda, Auschwitz-Burkenau, concentration camp.
© APPolish President Andrzej Duda walking through the remains of the Auschwitz-Burkenau concentration camp.
Auschwitz survivors warned against increasing antisemitism across the globe while they gathered with world leaders at the site of the Polish death camp for the 80th anniversary of their liberation.

Monday's event at Auschwitz, where Nazi German forces murdered an estimated 1.1 million Jews, was attended by 56 survivors — including 98-year-old Marian Turski, who called on those gathered to remember the slews of Holocaust victims who will always outnumber those who made it out alive.

"We have always been a tiny minority," Turski said. "And now only a handful remain."

Comment: Perhaps there wouldn't be so much animosity towards the Jewish people if these survivors had done something to protest the Israeli treatment of Palestinians, the Mossad's involvement in global terror, and the rise of actual neo-Nazism in Ukraine.