Think More: Friday, May 15, 2026
Voegeli on the Democratic center that cannot hold, Chalk on the Greek inheritance of America 250, the Justice Department finds Yale Medical discriminated by race, and six more pieces worth reading.
Night of the Living Woke
William Voegeli • The American Mind
Excerpted from the Spring 2026 issue of the Claremont Review of Books. Voegeli, a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, reads Ross Douthat and Ezra Klein converging on the same diagnosis: Democrats lost in 2024 because they moved sharply left on every issue from 2012 to 2024. Mamdani in New York and Wilson in Seattle are not anomalies. An August 2025 Gallup poll found 66 percent of Democrats now hold a positive image of socialism.
Without the Ancient Greeks, We Would Have No America 250
Chalk, a senior contributor at The Federalist, reads Adrian Goldsworthy’s new book Athens and Sparta alongside Jefferson and Federalist No. 2 to argue that the semiquincentennial belongs to the Greeks. The Athenian reforms of Cleisthenes around 508 B.C. placed the demos at the center of public life. Aristocrats had to persuade. Military leaders were chosen by martial ability, not blood.
The Federal Pincer Closes on the Liberal Dark Money Network
Steven Richards • Just the News
The House Oversight Committee subpoenaed the Sixteen Thirty Fund over the Chorus program, which paid Democratic-aligned social-media influencers up to $8,000 a month without disclosure. The Southern Poverty Law Center was indicted for funneling $3 million from 2014 to 2023 to individuals tied to the Aryan Nations and the Ku Klux Klan. The IRS is being pressed on the Neville Roy Singham People’s Forum network.
Yale Medical School Discriminated by Race in Admissions
U.S. Department of Justice • Office of Public Affairs
The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division found that Yale Medical School intentionally selected applicants by race. Yale’s own documents reveal the school studied how to use racial proxies to circumvent Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023). Black and Hispanic applicants are admitted at much higher rates than white or Asian applicants with the same test scores.
Yale and UCLA Show the Grip Woke Has on Academia
Morrissey pairs the Yale Medical finding with the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, also charged by Civil Rights Division Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon. The Department of Justice has opened similar investigations at Stanford, Ohio State, and the University of California, San Diego. Jonathan Turley warns that academia will not yield until resistance becomes very expensive.
Schools Use Copyright to Hide Intrusive Surveys From Parents
Kentucky mother Miranda Stovall, represented by the Southeastern Legal Foundation, has petitioned the Supreme Court to decide which courts hear parental challenges when school districts invoke federal copyright law to defeat public records requests. Jefferson County Public Schools refused to release Pearson’s Behavior and Emotional Screening System on the ground that the publisher could sue the district for copyright infringement.
The Times Strikes Again
Nicholas Kristof’s New York Times column reports allegations that Israeli police dogs are being trained to rape Palestinian prisoners. Israeli Ambassador Yechiel Leiter responded directly on X. Israeli journalist Haviv Rettig Gur called the column journalistic malpractice. The same week, Israel’s Civil Commission on Crimes by Hamas Against Women and Children released a 300-page report documenting Hamas’s systematic sexual violence on October 7.
Sterling on H-1B Visa Holders and 97 Percent FHA Loans
Sterling reports that under the Biden Administration, H-1B visa holders were buying houses with 97 to 100 percent financing through Federal Housing Administration loans and state first-time home-buyer programs. The non-permanent resident share of FHA mortgage locks grew from 0.5 percent in 2018 to 6 percent at the 2024 peak. After President Trump’s executive actions, the share collapsed to 0.1 percent.
Hoover Maps the Architecture of Delegation
Patrick A. McLaughlin and colleagues • Hoover Institution
McLaughlin and a Hoover Institution team have built an artificial-intelligence-curated database that connects every congressional delegation of regulatory authority to the agency rules promulgated under it. The architecture distinguishes general delegations (“the agency shall regulate in the public interest”) from specific ones with bounded scope. The inventory is the spine of any serious effort to reclaim Article I.
