The Portland Museum of Art does another important Homer show, but it’s still stuck in fake oppression ideology.

As senator, El-Sayed could serve on committees that would give him access to sensitive national security information.

Democrats may find a receptive audience in an administration that has already demonstrated an appetite for manipulating market forces for medicine.

How parenting, culture, and genetics combined to create one of the most annoying young women on the planet.

A Department of Energy analysis found that faster permitting alone could more than double geothermal capacity by 2050.

A Singapore-flagged container ship has sunk near the Strait of Hormuz after being hit by a projectile, while a dry bulk carrier damaged in an earlier attack has also sunk, maritime security sources said. Pakistan's National Hydrographic Office, which monitors maritime ...

Camas School District superintendent John Anzalone says girls who walked off the cross country starting line in protest will face no repercussions.

‘President Trump will always stand with the heroes’

A former youth gymnastics coach who secretly recorded his young female charges undressing and using the bathroom at a Mississippi gym was sentenced to 90 years in prison Wednesday in a case that reaches to the very pinnacle of the sport.

The post Ex-Coach Who Secretly Recorded Young Gymnasts Undressing Gets 90 Years in Prison appeared first on Breitbart.

Christa Pike's survival of lethal injection could raise double jeopardy and disability claims that may block Tennessee from executing her again.

North Dakota tops Truth in Accounting's state finances ranking with a $72,300 taxpayer surplus, while 24 states can't cover all their bills.

Belly fat and visceral fat are linked to serious health issues. A doctor shares how lean protein, fruits and vegetables, and healthy fats can help reduce stomach fat.

Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., clashed with Dem Cait Conley over ICE enforcement, sanctuary cities, and bail reform in a fiery debate for New York's swing district.

Americans are being told that restricting legal immigration would rig the competition for jobs and college seats. Apparently, allowing citizens to compete with the entire planet is “meritocracy,” while giving them preference in their own country is “discrimination.”

The argument has gained force as scrutiny moves from illegal crossings to work visas and foreign student admissions. Employers use H-1B visas to recruit skilled workers, and public universities often collect higher tuition from students who live outside their states. Critics of tighter visa rules portray any preference for Americans as a kind of affirmative action for the native-born.

A nation is its people, not an economic zone meant for optimization. Even if a global meritocracy were possible, it would be immoral to subject your nation to it.

The claim assumes something remarkable: America exists chiefly to administer a worldwide talent contest. Its citizens have no special claim on the institutions, industries, and opportunities their country built.

Even on its own terms, the global meritocracy argument collapses under scrutiny. It’s a myth.

Merit requires standards, judges, and rules. A perfect score wins in bowling; a low score wins in golf. Hit the pins with a golf ball on a bowling lane and nobody objects. Roll that same ball across a putting green with your hand and you have cheated. What counts as skill depends on the rules of the game. Standards require a recognized authority too.

University admissions present a far harder problem. Americans argue endlessly about standardized tests, grades, extracurricular activities, and what a degree should prove. Colleges that abandoned entrance exams are now restoring them, while others still refuse to consider scores. Even within one country, administrators cannot agree on what qualifies an applicant.

Now expand that disagreement worldwide.

Some countries place extraordinary pressure on students to excel in examinations that determine their educational futures. Others rely more heavily on interviews, recommendations, or years of coursework. Each system rewards different habits. More importantly, credentials are only as reliable as the institutions that issue them and the people who verify their authenticity.

Academic fraud also complicates the picture. Cheating and plagiarism plague American schools, and universities abroad confront their own scandals. Cheating and plagiarism are endemic in China and India. India’s University Grants Commission maintains a public list of institutions that lack authority to award degrees, but diploma mills where credentials are manufactured at scale remain rampant.

An American diploma hardly guarantees competence, either. Universities have diluted requirements, expanded administrative bureaucracies, and sold credentials whose value employers increasingly question. Yet the remedy for weak standards is honest verification, not faith that a global marketplace will somehow discover merit on its own.

RELATED: The real power of college has nothing to do with the classroom

Blaze Media Illustration

Culture adds another complication. Americans generally expect a posted store price to apply to every customer. In markets where bargaining is customary, skill can mean negotiating the lowest price through patience, personal relationships, and persistence. The same conduct can be admired in one setting and treated as manipulation in another.

Importing large numbers of people also imports habits, expectations, and assumptions about fairness. A country that refuses to acknowledge this invites conflict over the rules by which everyone is expected to live.

We have our own contradictions. Universities and employers spent years elevating diversity goals alongside measures of achievement. Courts and lawmakers have pushed back against some of those practices. On paper, federal law prohibits hiring discrimination based on race, sex, and national origin. Still, anyone who watched institutions defend racial preferences should be skeptical when those same institutions suddenly invoke neutral merit as an unquestionable principle.

The H-1B debate raises a separate problem. Federal rules require employers to pay visa workers at least the applicable prevailing wage or the wage paid to comparable employees, whichever is higher. The program was not written as permission to hire foreign workers at half price. But wage safeguards are only as good as enforcement, and employers can still gain leverage when a worker’s legal status depends heavily on keeping a particular job.

That dependency can hurt both the foreign employee and the American applicant. An employer may prefer the worker who has fewer options. Calling the resulting arrangement a free and fair contest does not make it one.

Even a perfect ranking of talent would not answer who America's schools and employers ought to serve. An American need not prove superior intelligence or virtue to claim a privileged place in his own country.

RELATED: Stop ‘owning the libs’ and start owning institutions

Blaze Media Illustration

The case against the feasibility of a global meritocracy is sound, but the most important argument against the practice is one of ownership. A nation is its people, not an economic zone meant for optimization. Even if a global meritocracy were possible, it would be immoral to subject your nation to it.

The opportunities inside a country do not emerge from the ether. Americans inherit institutions built through generations of work, investment, and sacrifice. They finance schools, build infrastructure, defend borders, and bear the cost of political failure. The inheritance carries a moral claim, just as children have a claim to their parents’ estate.

Americans may welcome foreign talent when it serves their interests. They can debate which visas advance national purposes and how many to grant. They are not obligated to treat every qualified applicant on earth as equally entitled to the opportunities their country provides. Citizenship must carry a claim that a temporary visa cannot erase.

Calling visa restrictions “DEI for Americans” turns national obligation into an accusation of unfairness. Advocates of limitless competition insist that any preference for Americans violates meritocracy, even while relying on institutions that cannot agree on merit's meaning or enforce its rules. Their supposedly neutral standard disguises a political demand.

A nation that treats its people as interchangeable bidders in a global labor auction has surrendered its purpose. America was not built to supply corporations with cheap labor or universities with tuition-paying students. Americans have every right to prefer their own people, especially in employment and college admissions. Their future should not be sacrificed on the altar of economic ideology.

Golden State Warriors center Kristaps Porzingis called out internet trolls speculating about HIV or AIDS as he works with doctors on his health.

A 47-year-old man was arrested after his elderly grandmother and his aunt were found gruesomely killed at their home in Mobile, Alabama.

Court transcripts reveal that a frantic call for help was made to police on Monday about Thomas Steele's erratic statements and behavior.

'He's doing some bizarre things, and I don't know if that's, uh ... good or. ... He says he’s just going to live for God.'

Christy Deloach, 65, called 911 about 11 a.m., according to records obtained by WALA-TV.

Deloach said in the call that her nephew was "off his medication for lithium, and I'm not sure who to call or contact."

"He gave away his phone ... and giving his car away. Um, he's doing some bizarre things, and I don't know if that's, uh ... good or," she added. "He says he's just going to live for God and not going to have any kind of electronics."

The dispatcher asked Deloach if she needed medical help.

"It's in his mind. He's following God," she responded.

"I just needed to figure out what to do. ... He's calm! He's not violent or anything. So, I guess I'll just let it play itself out," she added.

The dispatcher gave Deloach the number for the police department, and the call ended.

About two hours later, police were called to the home on Carolina Court and reported finding the bodies of Deloach and 85-year-old Dora Boone, the grandmother of Steele.

They were decapitated with a chainsaw.

Police said Steele was standing outside the home. He was arrested and booked into the Mobile County Metro Jail on two charges of murder.

RELATED: Wife and son helped father dismember man's body with a chainsaw after a lethal poker game, police say

He was denied bond on Tuesday, according to a WKRG-TV report, and the judge ordered a competency examination for the suspect.

Steele was told a public defender would be appointed for him, and he gave a bizarre response.

"No, kill him," he said.

Deloach's boss at the hair salon where she worked for 15 years said she had mentioned that her nephew was bipolar.

"She was one of the first employees we had when we took over. And just a real sweet girl. Beautiful person. I considered her a friend," Lenny Zanghi said.

"I'm just going to miss her and think about her every day," Zanghi continued.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

The British economy appears to no longer prioritise British workers, with a think tank finding that four in five jobs created over the past decade have been given to foreigners, as the number of Britons shifted onto the welfare rolls soared.

The post Four Out of Five New Jobs Taken by Migrants in Britain over Past Decade: Report appeared first on Breitbart.

Marco Rubio's diplomatic sweep from Panama to Iceland aims to secure critical sea lanes and box out China's threat to United States interests.

Press freedom groups that have condemned Trump's treatment of journalists are now comparing outspoken Trump critic Wes Moore's media practices to those of the president.