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Book Review: So you think the culture wars are new? Shakespeare expert James Shapiro begs to differ - The Caledonian-Record

Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker made national headlines earlier this month because of a press hostile to traditional values, according to Michele Tafoya, an award-winning former NFL sideline reporter.

After about three decades working in sports media, Tafoya traded her decorated role as an NFL sideline reporter for NBC Sports in 2022 for greater freedom to speak on issues she is passionate about. Tafoya will appear as a guest host on The Daily Wires news podcast Morning Wire this week.

Tafoya said the reaction to Butker was motivated by an antipathy toward traditional, religious values.

People are very ready to have knee-jerk reactions to everything that everyone says these days, and particularly traditional people, Tafoya told The Daily Wire. I dont know why traditional values are so despised, but they seem to be really something that people are ready to cancel you for.

Butker, a practicing Catholic, delivered his controversial remarks during a commencement ceremony at Benedictine College in Kansas. In the ceremonys keynote, the Chiefs kicker emphasized the importance of the Catholic faith and its values, such as its opposition to homosexuality and transgenderism. Butker also promoted the importance of motherhood.

I want to speak directly to you briefly because I think it is you, the women, who have had the most diabolical lies told to you, how many of you are sitting here now about to cross the stage, and are thinking about all the promotions and titles youre going to get in your career, Butker said. Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world. But I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world.

I can tell you that my beautiful wife Isabelle would be the first to say that her life truly started when she began living her vocation as a wife and as a mother, he continued.

The reaction to Butkers May 11 speech continues to carry headlines weeks later. The speech has been amplified by media that wants to use it, as well as Butkers platform as a Super Bowl-winning NFL player, to attack traditional values, according to Tafoya.

Lets be honest, if some unknown Catholic professor or academician or priest had given the speech, no one would have batted an eye, Tafoya said. This was a way to bring it into the mainstream because were talking about a Super Bowl-winning kicker who represents a team that has been very popular.

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The Kansas City Chiefs defending Super Bowl champs, the team that Taylor Swift follows, you know, all of those things. So, Harrison Butker being part of that team made this story that much bigger, or more easy to attack, she continued.

Tafoya also said that the reaction to Butker is a sign of how polarized the country has become. Many Americans get caught up in the latest outrage and give fuel to stories such as Butkers a religious Catholic talking about Catholic values at a Catholic colleges commencement address.

The culture wars are running deep, she said. There are signs to be optimistic about the national conversation, however, she added.

I think we have more room now to be on the other side, to say, Why cant you just accept this man for who he is? I think there was a time maybe 10-20 years ago where we would have all had to just shut our mouths and let the progressive side have the last say. I dont think thats happening anymore. I think people are starting to speak up a little more, Tafoya said.

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Michele Tafoya Breaks Down The Butker Brouhaha: 'The Culture Wars Are Running Deep' - The Daily Wire

As lawmakers locked in $12 billion in spending late in the recently-concluded legislative session, they discovered education retirees.

These are the teachers and support staff who spent 20 or 30 years or more educating you and your children. They ensured the kids in their charge were fed, sheltered and taught as best as local resources allowed.

They havent seen a cost-of-living increase in their benefits since 2007.

Theres a reason for that: its expensive. A 1% increase for retirees would cost the Education Trust Fund (ETF) about $200 million. For comparison, the University of South Alabama, with about 14,000 students, will get $161.4 million from the budget next year.

To get around this, the Legislature in 2021 created a trust fund for retirees. It wont provide a COLA. Instead, it will pay retirees bonuses.

But legislators will decide each year whether bonuses are paid. Nothing will come out of the trust fund until it contains $100 million. And lawmakers cant fill it with ETF money.

So in the dusk of the 2024 session, the Senate used a supplemental spending bill to put $5 million into the fund. The House stripped it out.

Senators werent happy.

Next year, the education budget is going to start out in this chamber, and you bet your bottom dollar were going to have a deposit into that retiree trust fund for our retired state educators, said Sen. Arthur Orr, R-Decatur, the chair of the Senates education budget committee.

Orrs House counterpart, Rep. Danny Garrett, R-Trussville, later noted that $5 million wouldnt come close to addressing the retirees needs. The House, he said, put the money where it could have a more immediate impact.

Im sympathetic, he said. Im trying to be practical to tell you that the solution that was put in the supplemental did not address or come anywhere near addressing the problem.

Its hard not to be sympathetic to retirees. And its not easy to shift money around in our heavily-earmarked tax system.

But if lawmakers cared about this issue, couldnt they have worked on it at the start of the session?

Instead of all the terrible legislation they rushed through those first few weeks?

Like SB 1, sponsored by Sen. Garlan Gudger, R-Cullman, which criminalized certain forms of assistance with absentee ballots. The law itself is bad enough, but supporters justified it by pointing to mostly poor, mostly rural and mostly Black counties having higher-than-average use of absentee ballots. Which is not a crime, and could reflect a larger number of sick or elderly people, two groups that can cross the states high bar for voting absentee.

Or SB 129, sponsored by Sen. Will Barfoot, R-Pike Road, which banned public funding of diversity, equity and inclusion programs. It also gave the most brittle among us the power to subject educators to professional harassment for teaching accurate history.

Or HB 129, sponsored by Garrett. When fully implemented, that will siphon at least $100 million out of the ETF to dole out tax credits for nonpublic education purposes (including private school tuition).

Notice that $100 million is what you need to start paying bonuses to retirees? I do. $100 million also gets you halfway to a small retiree COLA, or a 2% pay raise for current education employees (on top of what lawmakers approved this year).

Instead, those taxpayer dollars will flow out of the ETF and into private entities. After 2027, theres no means-testing for the tax credits. In the eyes of the law, a family that can spend almost $30,000 a year at Indian Springs School or $25,000 a year at Randolph School in Huntsville is just as needy as a kid in a Black Belt district struggling to attract teachers. Were taking money from public schools that need the help and giving it to private schools that dont.

I could go on. The Legislature approved a bill forcing employers to prolong labor strife. They passed a tinfoil hat resolution denouncing the World Health Organization. They almost enacted a law that could have led to the arrests of librarians. (Lawmakers didnt pass other anti-LGBTQ+ laws bills this this year. But dont congratulate them for shifting the Overton Window on human decency to a partially-torn, sun-bleached photograph of Jesse Helms.)

Lawmakers did nothing about the mounting horrors in our state prisons. Or Alabamas rampant gun violence (still higher than New Yorks). They couldnt even ban organ harvesting without a familys permission.

Sure, they did some helpful things. Legislators voted to allow victims of abuse in the Boy Scouts to pursue justice. They authorized $10 million to feed children in the summer of 2025. They made our terrible open records law more workable.

The Republican-dominated Legislature erected (shaky) protections for in vitro fertilization after the Alabama Supreme Court tossed IVF providers into legal jeopardy. They shut down Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allens ham-handed effort to throw President Joe Biden off the state ballot.

So a few ounces of productivity in the scale. But they dont elevate the nine tons of ugliness on the other side of the fulcrum bills that made voting harder; education less equal and history instruction fraught with peril.

Nor does a half-baked, last-minute effort to address the problems of retirees, whose issues predate the Great Recession.

Im genuinely sorry for all those people who worked to improve our childrens lives. They deserve better.

But theyre never going to be on the top of the agenda. In the Alabama Legislature, cruelty and nonsense trump all.

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In the Alabama Legislature, it's culture wars first, retirees second Alabama Reflector - Alabama Reflector

Credit: Michael Brooks / Alamy Stock Photo

4 min read23 May

Move more in 2024 thats my plan so far. Coupled with a dramatic decrease in ultra-processed foods, its working well. The combination of considered inputs and more regular, energetic outputs has certainly contributed to a newly invigorated, two stone lighter, physically and mentally stronger, generally happier me!

My job, like most in todays Western world, is pretty sedentary. We must find other opportunities to keep moving. Combining exercise with your commute is perfect for fitting it into a busy life. The rewards for putting some effort in walking or cycling the commute, the school run or just for fun last for so much longer than the journey. Immediately afterwards our bodies experience mood-boosting effects thanks to the release of endorphins, giving us motivation to keep going.

The trick is to create an environment where active travel becomes an easier habit for more people. To do that requires many mini-habits or actions that eventually culminate in a healthier lifestyle. We cant let this vital action be ignored as too difficult because of the short-term backlash we might get. The UK has the third-highest European population living with obesity, with an estimated associated cost of 58bn annually. Creating healthier places isnt easy; itll take compromise and political risk. But its the right thing to do.

I encourage every candidate standing at the next election to include walking or cycling on their leaflets

And this shouldnt be seen as a war between left and right. Weve come far under Conservative governments, mayors and councils. Some of our cities are unrecognisable from ten years ago. Roads on which only those without other options would have cycled now serve thousands a day.

When I was active travel minister in the Department for Transport, I was delighted to sign off on the inspiring new agency Active Travel England, and to appoint its chief executive Danny Williams and the national commissioner for walking and cycling Chris Boardman MBE. They work with councils to spread this progress across the whole country, finding solutions which work for the area. Their role is important, because making walking easier can often be lost within a department as big as DfT.

We also mustnt make it an argument between rural and urban areas. My Copeland constituency is blessed with lakes, rivers, fells and mountains, being situated within the English Lake District. But just as importantly, people and communities are connected by miles of public paths and bridleways, quiet lanes, coastal routes, and the start of the Coast to Coast, soon to become the 17th National Trail, which I completed with my husband last summer.

We proudly boast the UKs most popular challenge cycle route, Sustrans Sea to Sea (or C2C) from the Irish Sea at Whitehaven to the North Sea at Sunderland, some 138 miles. These networks provide huge financial and social boosts, bringing visitors and business to the area, and are also relied upon by locals for everyday journeys and escaping into nature.

It is often assumed that cycling is divisive. But the recently published, independently researched Sustrans walking and cycling index shows that people want to live in healthier places.

Most people use all modes of transport depending on the journey. Sustrans found that 58 per cent of people support more cycle paths protected from traffic and 62 per cent would like more low-traffic neighbourhoods, while 24 per cent say they want to drive less, with 50 per cent wanting to walk more, and 43 per cent to cycle more. This should reassure us to use the systems set up across government to help more people to change gear and get active.

Lets be brave and take cycling out of the culture wars. I encourage every candidate standing at the next election to include walking or cycling on their leaflets; it might just attract people who dont currently feel spoken to. People want to cycle more. We just need to help them do it.

Trudy Harrison, Conservative MP for Copeland

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Let's take cycling out of the culture wars - PoliticsHome

In the year of our Lord 2024, is there any topic at all that cant become fodder for the culture wars? Apparently not. Case in point: The dumb-as-hell fracas thats broken out on X about the cryptographic integrity of two messaging apps, Telegram and Signal. The debate boils down to which apps technical standards are more likely to protect user privacya topic you would think is an empirical one to be decided by math nerds. Alas, this simple but important issue has, like a bystander caught by a stray bullet, been dragged into a larger culture war fight between Elon Musk, the public broadcaster NPR, and each sides respective groupies.

The messaging app turned culture war debate has been raging for a while now in niche circles (I tweeted about it a week ago in the context of crypto), but got pushed into the mainstream when the Guardian published a closer look at the forces driving it. In an essay published this weekend, a Stanford researcher describes how, after a longtime editor decided to rage quit over NPRs left-wing politics, conservatives began gunning for the broadcasters CEO. In the ensuing fight, some loudmouth discovered that the CEO sat on the board of the Signal Foundation, and began making insinuations that Signal was somehow compromised because of this. And Musk, being who he is, piled on and began hinting without any evidence that a conspiracy was afoot.

If youre wondering, my own politics are centrist. I find there is excellent reportingand plenty of bias and bad stuff, tooto be found in publications across the political spectrum. (And as someone who toils in media, Ill add I get frustrated with the lefts refusal to acknowledge its own bias. While someone at Fox News is likely to say Yeah, were right wingso what? the liberal high priests at the New York Times or Columbia Journalism School will tell you, We dont have an agenda. We perform JOURNALISM.) But thats getting beyond the topic at hand, which is whether the NPR presidents slight involvement with Signal should lead us to distrust the app. The short answer is: Thats ridiculous.

Whether or not an NPR person is on its board, Signal is open-source and encrypted, which is what you want if you care about security. Meanwhile, the consensus among cryptographers Ive metwho dont strike me as raging leftistsis that Signals tech is first-rate. It also doesnt hurt that the app was built by an American who is a hard-core privacy fanatic. Contrast that with Telegram, which lacks end-to-end encryption (even Mark Zuckerbergs WhatsApp has this!) and is broadly suspected of being back-doored by the Kremlin. For me, this is an easy decision that has nothing to do with culture war stuff and everything to do with technology. Signal is the one I trust for privacy but, as they say, you do you.

An earlier version of this newsletter incorrectly stated Telegram has servers in Russia.

Jeff John Roberts jeff.roberts@fortune.com @jeffjohnroberts

Sullivan & Cromwell and the founder of consulting firm Forensic Risk Alliance are the respective choices of the DOJ and Treasury to act as monitors in the Binance settlement. (WSJ)

Coinbase shares dropped nearly 8% on news the CME may soon start offering spot Bitcoin trading. (CoinDesk)

A bankruptcy court gave final approval for Genesis to return $3 billion in cash and crypto to customers, rejecting objections from DCG, which will get nothing from the deal. (Reuters)

Controversial crypto firm Prometheum launched custody for Ethereum, a key step in its jerry-rigged plan to offer popular tokens as securities under existing law. (Fortune)

The SEC's deadline to rule on VanEck's Ethereum ETF application is this week, though there is wide consensus the agency will deny the bid. (Bloomberg)

Golfer Scottie Scheffler's arrest already a crypto meme:

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Elon Musk and the Signal vs. Telegram debate - Fortune