Chris D. Cotton

Indiana's statehouse just signed two bills that cannot survive being read in the same sentence. The first: public universities must now accept the Classic Learning Test for admissions. The CLT draws its questions from classical texts. Plato. Augustine. Cicero. Shakespeare. The argument is that these works represent the intellectual foundation of Western civilization and self-government. The second: public colleges must eliminate programs deemed to produce "low earning" graduates. No carve-out for humanities. No protection for the programs where students actually read and wrestle with those classical authors the first bill just elevated. Fort Wayne's Redeemer Classical School sent a representative to the statehouse to champion the CLT. Their students read Homer and Euclid. Their graduates will now test into universities that are legally required to accept their scores and simultaneously required to shut down the departments built around the tradition those scores are supposed to measure. You cannot champion the classics as a signal of intellectual seriousness and then eliminate the classrooms that make the ideas real. That is not education reform. That is a credential without a curriculum.

After President Trump claimed to reporters twice today that he had recently spoken to a former president who praised his actions in Iran, saying: “I wish I did what you did.” Aides to all four living presidents, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, have issued statements to CNN, saying there is no record of any communications between them and President Trump.

Doocy: You said: they hit Qatar, Saudi Arabia UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait nobody expected that. We were shocked. Are you surprised that nobody briefed you ahead of time that that might be their retaliation? Trump: Nobody. Nobody. No no no no. The greatest experts—nobody thought they were going hit…

Less than 25 years apart