Think More: Tuesday, May 12, 2026
Fortgang on Turley's case against perpetual revolution, Wallsten on DEI displacing civics in higher education, Barone on the young and violent political left, and six more pieces worth reading.
Turley on the Unfinished American Revolution
Tal Fortgang • Washington Free Beacon
Law professor Jonathan Turley’s Rage and the Republic (Simon & Schuster, 448 pp.) warns against the seductions of perpetual revolution on the eve of the American 250th. Fortgang of the Manhattan Institute reads it through Saturn devouring her children and the near execution of Thomas Paine by the Jacobins. Edmund Burke saw it. Lincoln saw it in his 1838 Lyceum Address. Americans should too.
In Higher Education, the Constitution Is Optional
Of the 120 prominent colleges and universities ranked by City Journal, none require a course in economics, fifteen percent require U.S. government or American history, and fifty-one percent mandate coursework organized around diversity, equity, and inclusion. Wallsten, of California State University, Long Beach, shows the institutions that produce the country’s lawyers, judges, and senior civil servants have made DEI a graduation requirement and the Constitution a footnote.
Replacing the Failed Schools of Education
Kate Bierly and Thibaut Delloue • The American Mind
Two recent graduates of Stanford’s Graduate School of Education report that they were assigned Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and never taught the science of reading. The National Council on Teacher Quality found only one in eight teacher-prep programs dedicates sufficient time to fundamental math content. Florida’s alternate-certification program, Tennessee’s Job-Embedded Practitioner Licensure, and Arizona’s Alternate Teaching certificate offer a way out.
Barone on the Young, Violent Political Left
Michael Barone • North State Journal
A Manhattan Institute survey of Democratic voters found that 46 percent believed the July 2024 assassination attempt against Donald Trump was probably or definitely staged by his own supporters. After Charlie Kirk’s killing, a YouGov survey found 25 percent of self-described very liberal respondents thought political violence “can sometimes be justified.” Barone, of the American Enterprise Institute, reaches for the Weimar parallel.
Postmodern Politics and the Staging Polls
A NewsGuard survey of 1,000 American adults conducted by YouGov from April 28 to May 4 found that 24 percent believe the Washington Hilton shooting was staged and another 32 percent are unsure. Roughly one in three Democratic respondents called the event staged, against one in eight Republicans. Hinderaker reaches for the only word that captures the data: postmodern.
Hammer on Why Obama Will Not Go Away
Josh Hammer • The American Spectator
Hammer reads the Obamas’ choice to remain in the Kalorama neighborhood after 2017 as a deliberate continuation of Woodrow Wilson’s example: the 44th president declaring that he is still here and is not going anywhere. The March video endorsing Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger’s 10-1 redistricting effort came from the same man who, in 2020, called gerrymandering a practice that “warped our representative government.”
The Democrats’ Virginia Gamble Collapses
Steven Richards • Just the News
After the Supreme Court of Virginia struck down the commonwealth’s 10-1 congressional gerrymander, Cook Political Report estimated Republican pickups of six to seven House seats heading into the midterms, with a high-end scenario of thirteen. The Virginia ruling followed the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais (2025) striking down the use of race in drawing congressional districts. Florida and Tennessee have already redrawn their maps.
Gabbard Opens an Investigation Into 120 Foreign Biolabs
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has opened an investigation into more than 120 biological laboratories operating in over thirty countries on American taxpayer funding, including more than forty in Ukraine. The probe follows President Trump’s executive order on gain-of-function research. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the previous administration funded the labs and “deliberately hid it from the American people.”
The Ringer Reads Anthropic’s Mythos Announcement
Anthropic announced that its new Claude Mythos model is too dangerous to release because it can locate zero-day vulnerabilities in every major operating system and web browser. Project Glasswing grants preview access to roughly four dozen organizations including Apple, Google, Microsoft, and JPMorganChase. Phillips notes the company’s $900 billion funding round arrives within weeks. He reads Mythos as a sales pitch, not a superweapon.
