“Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies subject to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future and crimes from society.”
– Benjamin Franklin

How close was Iran to the bomb, and how far has Israel pushed it back?

A version of this Editor’s Note was sent out earlier Wednesday in ToI’s weekly update email to members of the Times of Israel Community. To receive these Editor’s Notes as they’re released, join the ToI Community here.

How close was Iran to the bomb, and how far has Israel now pushed it off?

Rafael Grossi, the head of the UN’s nuclear weapons watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, warned a few weeks ago that “they’re not far off,” and also cautioned that Tehran’s obstruction of his agency’s inspectors has meant that the IAEA has not been able to keep track of recent progress by the regime on the various aspects of its program.

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In the 22 years I had a dealer FFL, I was inspected only twice, and both were during the first 10 years.

Department of Justice Plans to Cut Two-Thirds of ATF’s IOI Firearm Inspectors.

The Justice Department plans to slash the number of inspectors who monitor federally licensed gun dealers by two-thirds, sharply limiting the government’s already crimped capacity to identify businesses that sell guns to criminals, according to budget documents.

The move, part of the Trump administration’s effort to defang and downsize the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, comes as the department considers merging the A.T.F. and the Drug Enforcement Administration. It follows a rollback of Biden-era regulations aimed at stemming the spread of deadly homemade firearms, along with other gun control measures.

The department plans to eliminate 541 of the estimated 800 investigators responsible for determining whether federal dealers are following federal law and regulations intended to keep guns away from traffickers, straw purchasers, criminals and those found to have severe mental illness, according to a budget summary quietly circulated last week.

Department officials estimated the reductions would reduce “A.T.F.’s capacity to regulate the firearms and explosives industries by approximately 40 percent” in the fiscal year starting in November — even though the staff cuts represent two-thirds of the inspection work force. The cuts are needed to meet the White House demand that A.T.F. cut nearly a third from its budget of $1.6 billion.

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Mexico Parrots Democrat Lawfare Despite SCOTUS PLCAA Rejection

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that anti-Second Amendment groups run by the Democrat party have been working closely with Mexican officials to attack American gun rights and subvert the U.S. Constitution. This collusion with a foreign government recently set the stage for the Supreme Court’s rejection of our southern neighbor’s $10 billion lawsuit which aimed to cripple the American firearms industry by seeking an outrageous judgement against Smith & Wesson and other U.S. gun manufacturers. But Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, ever willing to blame her own country’s abject failure and corruption on others, another strategy on loan from Democrat cohorts, has decided to push forward with an almost identical lawsuit, this time targeting gun dealers and distributors in Arizona.

Nobody knows more about abusing the U.S. judicial system than Democrats, and all the big names came out to bat for Mexico in its failed Supreme Court challenge of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), a federal law enacted in 2005 providing firearms and ammunition manufacturers, distributors, dealers, and importers broad immunity from civil lawsuits arising from criminal or unlawful misuse of their products. In both cases, the Mexican government, aka the legal arm of the narco-terrorist drug cartels, claims its damages stem from the illegal trafficking of firearms by the same cartels they work with and take bribes from under their normal course of business.

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Cynical Publius

In the future, the current practice of mutilating young children to feed their parents’ egos will be looked upon with the same disgust as we now view the Tuskegee Experiment and the lobotomization of sexually active young women in bygone decades.

But at the moment there are still sentient beings–including, sadly, three SCOTUS justices–who believe that destroying the lives of young children is a worthy political cause.

Shameful.

@SCOTUSblog
NEW: In U.S. v. Skrmetti, a closely watched case on a Tennessee law barring certain medical care for transgender minors, the court holds that Tennessee’s law can remain in place.

Japan Releases Bombshell Vax vs. Unvax Data on 18 Million People

The data speaks for itself—and the 3 to 4 month spike is impossible to ignore.

A COVID vaccine database covering 18 million citizens has just been released for the first time.

After reviewing the data, a top professor warned: “The more doses you get, the sooner you’re likely to die.”

The most terrifying finding was a deadly spike just 3 to 4 months after the final shot.

Let’s break down the data.

On June 15th, a group of brave Japanese truth seekers did what their government wouldn’t—they released a bombshell broadcast exposing vaccine data from over 18 million people.

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Federal Appeals Court Upholds Gun Free School Zones Law

The federal government may legally disarm at least some gun owners on or near school property.

That was the unanimous holding of a three-judge Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals panel on Monday. The panel upheld the conviction of a man charged with violating the Federal Gun Free School Zones Act by possessing an AR-15 in a vehicle he was living in 40 feet from a private catholic school. It ruled that the modern buffer zone around schools comported with historical analogues dating back nearly 700 years in England that prohibited possessing firearms in a manner that might “terrify the People.”

“The ‘why and how’ of 18 U.S.C. § 922(q)(2)(A), as applied to Allam, are ‘consistent with the principles that underpin our regulatory tradition,’” Judge Cory T. Wilson wrote in US v. Allam. “Put differently, ‘taken together,’ the historical analogues offered by the Government ‘establish that our tradition of firearm regulation supports the application of [§ 922(q)(2)(A)] to [Allam].’”

The ruling leaves intact one of the most expansive “sensitive places” restrictions for firearm possession in all of federal law. It deals a blow to Second Amendment advocates who have long felt that the law’s 1000-foot buffer zone around school property unduly infringes upon gun-carry rights. At the same time, the panel’s narrow ruling tailored to the specific fact pattern of the case may mitigate the fallout for gun-rights advocates.

The panel’s decision focused entirely on defendant Ahmed Abdalla Allam’s conduct surrounding his arrest.

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Supreme Court Delivers a Crushing Blow to Trans Agenda

In a resounding victory for parental rights and child protection, the Supreme Court delivered a 6-3 decision Wednesday that upholds Tennessee’s ban on so-called “gender-affirming care” for minors. This landmark ruling represents a triumph of common sense over radical gender ideology that has been targeting America’s children for far too long.

As you could have guessed, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, while the conservative majority on the court correctly recognized what Tennessee and 24 other states have already figured out: Children deserve protection from irreversible medical experiments masquerading as healthcare.

The ACLU and its allies tried to dress up this radical agenda in constitutional language, claiming that banning these dangerous treatments for gender dysphoria while allowing the same medications for legitimate medical conditions somehow violated “equal protection.” What a joke. There’s nothing “equal” about subjecting confused children to experimental treatments that could sterilize them and cause lifelong health problems.

And thankfully, a majority of the court disagreed with the ACLU. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said that such policy decisions are best left to voters and their elected officials, not the courts.

In her dissent, Sotomayor accused the court of retreating “from meaningful judicial review exactly where it matters most,” and “abandon[ing] transgender children and their families to political whims.”

The medical establishment’s endorsement of these treatments is hardly the slam-dunk argument the left thinks it is. The same organizations pushing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones have been captured by woke ideology and are more interested in political correctness than protecting children.

Meanwhile, as we’ve previously reported here at PJ Media, European countries that have been dealing with this gender madness longer than we have are now pulling back because they’re finally acknowledging what many of us have been saying all along: the risks far outweigh any supposed benefits. Various studies have supported this conclusion.

This Supreme Court decision is a massive win for the 25 states that have had the courage to stand up to the transgender lobby and put children’s welfare first. It’s a vindication of basic common sense in an age when saying that boys are boys and girls are girls can get you labeled a bigot.

Of course, the fight isn’t over. The radical left won’t give up its crusade to confuse and mutilate America’s children just because the Supreme Court dealt them a major blow. There are still battles to fight in schools, sports, and countless other institutions that this gender ideology has infected.

The Court has yet to address the broader questions of parental rights and the scope of state authority to protect children from harmful medical interventions. But Wednesday’s ruling is a crucial step toward restoring sanity to American healthcare and protecting our most vulnerable citizens from ideologically driven medical abuse.