Spectator Life

Once upon a time, there was a hugely successful children’s author named Robert Munsch. His books (more than 70!) sold in many, many copies; he became famous, and people gave him top awards like the Juno and the Order of Canada. They even named schools after him. More gloriously yet, he became the most stolen author in the Toronto Public Library. He was in high demand as a storyteller, and children from everywhere used to write him letters. And he would write back, often with personalized stories (which they loved) featuring them and their classmates. Like all of us, he had his sorrows. He and his wife lost two children, which led him to write one of his best-known works, Love You Forever. Eventually they became adoptive parents of three.

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul and recently-fired CDC director Susan Monarez exchanged “testy” words about vaccines in a Senate hearing today. That should come as little surprise. Paul has long been a vaccine skeptic, if not an outright opponent. The day started with Monarez telling Congress that RFK Jr. tried to get the White House to fire her because she refused to “rubber-stamp” approve a schedule of HHS vaccinations. “He just wanted blanket approval,” Monarez said. “If I could not commit to blanket approval to each of the recommendations I would need to resign.

It seems that every few years America rediscovers that its children can’t read. In 2024, only 30-31 percent of eighth graders were deemed proficient in reading, and our numbers in history and math are even worse. Since 2020, no state has reported improvement across subject areas.It’s tempting to blame “the pandemic” for these declines, but in reality, Covid only accelerated trends that were already underway. For decades before 2020, US students were struggling to reach proficiency, and the truth is that the problem isn’t today’s culture-war skirmishes over pronouns, politics and school closures. It’s the more mundane question of how children are taught to read, to count and to remember.Let’s take phonics, for example.

If, as Shakespeare observed, “all the world is a stage, and all its men and women merely players,” no place is that truer than the modern American university. In the first study of its kind, 88 percent of Northwestern and University of Michigan students admitted they “have pretended to hold more progressive views than [they] truly endorse to succeed socially or academically.” While the phenomenon of college students pretending to be more liberal than they actually are to make life easier for them as they attend these hotbeds of radicalism is not surprising, the true scale of it is. But how have we got here? If you’re looking for a single explanation, I’m sorry to disappoint you. The modern college environment is a perfect storm of several factors working together.

Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s quest to prove himself President Donald Trump’s most destructive Cabinet member continues apace.  On Wednesday, the Department of Health and Human Services abruptly announced that “Susan Monarez is no longer director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.” She had been nominated to the key post in March, and actually served in it for less than a month. Shortly after that, Monarez’s lawyers issued a fiery statement asserting that she had neither been fired, nor resigned, and was being targeted by Kennedy for refusing to “rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives,” and help him weaponize “public health for political gain.

A terrifying thing appeared on my Twitter feed this morning. Secretary of Health and Human Services and bear-fighter Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that he’s “teamed up” with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for the “Pete & Bobby Challenge.” This, unfortunately, is a fitness challenge. Even more unfortunately, it involves doing 100 push-ups and 50 pull-ups. Most unfortunately of all, they want us to do it all in five minutes or less. You might take heart that in the gym-based, sweat-soaked motivational video that accompanies the Tweet, RFK Jr. takes a whole five minutes and 25 seconds to complete this challenge. However, keep in mind that he’s in his seventies, and does the entire challenge in jeans.

Dear God, please help me. The winged monkeys of incel outrage have mobilized in their millions. Basement warriors have exerted more sputum and energy than the average American would find imaginable. And all because of a 27-year-old actress, best known for starring in a romcom with Glen Powell, who, when I last checked, was spared such opprobrium. But we are in a different age, and if you are a woman, you’re fair game. In the Fifties, there might have been an outraged headline. “Pretty young blonde woman wears denim jeans to promote a product!” But in 2025, Sydney Sweeney is less a thespian and more a product in her own right. In the great carnival of modern celebrity, where every gesture is dissected and every utterance weaponized, she’s a moving target. For the uninitiated, Ms.

 The President is usually set on "winning," but he has settled this week for a draw. Columbia University and the administration reached a settlement yesterday that, in theory, brings a months-long battle between the academics and politicos to an end.On the face of it, Columbia has still pulled the short straw. The university will pay a $200 million fine over three years to address the allegations that it was in breach of anti-discrimination laws, specifically in regards to the safety of Jewish students on campus.Moreover, Columbia has agreed to a "jointly selected independent monitor" that will watch over the university’s actions as it implements new student assessments and hiring policies.

In the annals of stupid and poorly run schemes, the California High-Speed Rail project ranks among the worst. Its future, even a dramatically scaled down one, has become ever more precarious since the Trump administration’s Department of Transportation rescinded $4 billion in funds already granted the project. Governor Newsom has already filed a suit to reverse the action, but he can’t legislate away the reality that this project is an abject embarrassment. When voters approved $9 billion for the plan in 2008, the California High-Speed Rail Authority estimated that it would cost $33 billion and start running by 2020 – and that was just for the San Joaquin Valley portion. The cost has since ballooned to $130 billion, and no stretch is operational.

The big education news this week is a court ruling that allows the Trump administration to begin cutting jobs at the Department of Education. A cascade of familiar voices can be heard lamenting that ruling. That’s the angry, unified message from Democrats, the Washington Blob and their Media buddies. Woe betide the students, they wail. Damn this President. They are not just wrong. They are 180 degrees wrong. Why? First, they are wrong for democratic reasons. Donald Trump campaigned on a pledge to demolish the Department of Education. He’s carrying out that pledge, not backpedaling. That’s what citizens should expect from elected leaders in a constitutional democracy. They seldom receive it. Trump is not only right democratically, he’s right educationally.