President-elect Donald Trump joined the conversation on the ongoing sightings of mysterious unidentified drones and called for the government to “shoot them down.”

In a post on Truth Social, Trump questioned if the drone sightings could be “happening without” the government’s knowledge and added that the government should provide the public with answers.

“Mystery Drone sightings all over the Country,” Trump wrote in his post. “Can this really be happening without our government’s knowledge. I don’t think so! Let the public know, and now. Otherwise, shoot them down!!! DJT.”

Trump’s post comes as people have reportedly seen unidentified drones in the sky in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, and Maryland, among other states.

Lawmakers such as New Jersey state Sen. Jon Bramnick (R), Rep. Thomas Kean Jr. (R-NJ), and former Gov. Larry Hogan (R-MD) have called for the government to take action on the alleged drone sightings.

In a joint statement from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), both agencies stated they have “no evidence at this time that the reported drone sightings pose a national security or public safety threat or have a foreign nexus.”

“The FBI, DHS and our federal partners, in close coordination with the New Jersey State Police, continue to deploy personnel and technology to investigate this situation and confirm whether the reported drone flights are actually drones or are instead manned aircraft or otherwise inaccurate sightings,” the FBI and DHS added in the statement.

The Pentagon has also previously denied New Jersey Rep. Jeff Van Drew’s (R) claim that the drones are coming from an Iranian mothership located off the East Coast of the United States.

“At this time, we have no evidence that these activities are coming from a foreign entity or the work of an adversary,” Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said. “We’re going to continue to monitor what is happening, but at no point were our installations threatened when this activity was occurring.”

Disparate Impact Thinking Is Destroying Our Civilization

Heather Mac Donald

Manhattan Institute

Heather Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. She earned a B.A. from Yale University, an M.A. in English from Cambridge University, and a J.D. from Stanford Law School. She writes for several newspapers and periodicals, including The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and The New Criterion, and is the author of several books, including The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe and When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives.

The following is adapted from a talk delivered on February 15, 2024, at a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar in Naples, Florida.

The most consequential falsehood in American public policy today is the idea that any racial disparity in any institution is by definition the result of racial discrimination.

If a cancer research lab, for example, does not have 13 percent black oncologists—the black share of the national population—it is by definition a racist lab that discriminates against competitively qualified black oncologists; if an airline company doesn’t have 13 percent black pilots, it is by definition a racist airline company that discriminates against competitively qualified black pilots; and if a prison population contains more than 13 percent black prisoners, our law enforcement system is racist.

The claim that racial disparities are proof of racial discrimination has been percolating in academia and the media for a long time. After the George Floyd race riots of 2020, however, it was adopted by America’s most elite institutions, from big law and big business to big finance. Even museums and orchestras took up the cry.

Many thought that STEM—the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—would escape the diversity sledgehammer. They were wrong. The American Medical Association today insists that medicine is characterized by white supremacy. Nature magazine declares that science manifests one of “humankind’s worst excesses”: racism. The Smithsonian Institution announces that “emphasis on the scientific method” and an interest in “cause and effect relationships” are part of totalitarian whiteness.

As a result of this falsehood, we are eviscerating meritocratic and behavioral standards in accordance with what is known as “disparate impact analysis.”

Consider medicine. Step One of the medical licensing exam, taken during or after the second year of medical school, tests medical students’ knowledge of anatomy, physiology, and pathology. On average, black students score lower on the grading curve, making it harder for them to land their preferred residencies. Step One, in other words, has a “disparate impact” on black medical students. The solution, implemented last year, was to eliminate the Step One grading disparity by instituting a pass–fail system. Hospitals choosing residents can no longer distinguish between high and low achieving students—and that is precisely the point!

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• Many have reflected on the fact that Big Pharma has a perverse incentive to promote ill health, as its financial bottom line depends on it. But few understand just how elaborate its efforts to that end are
• American podcaster and former professor of evolutionary biology Bret Weinstein describes the pharmaceutical industry as an intellectual property racket. Big Pharma patents molecules, compounds and technologies, and then looks for diseases against which their patents can be applied
• Pharma is engaged in a continuous effort to portray its intellectual properties as more useful and safer than they are, and to persuade the medical establishment, journals, medical societies, hospitals and government to direct people toward drugs they wouldn’t otherwise be taking. So, when COVID-19 happened, the industry was more than prepared to take advantage of it
• The introduction of the mRNA platform technology was central to the entire COVID response. The technology has a lethal flaw that would prevent it from getting to the market under normal circumstances. The COVID pandemic allowed Pharma to bypass this obstacle and deploy this incredibly lucrative technology
• By way of amendments to the International Health Regulations and the pandemic treaty, the World Health Organization seeks to achieve global dominion and total control of the masses under the guise of public health