BIDEN’S AMERICA: Macy’s Closing 150 Stores Nationwide – San Francisco Store Says Rampant Shoplifting to Blame for Closing

by | Feb 28, 2024 | Aggregate

Macy’s announced this week that they are closing 150 stores across the country. It’s just another feather in Joe Biden’s cap that this is happening on his watch.

Bidenomics is not working out well for retailers – or customers.

From WECT News:

Macy’s to close 150 stores over 3 years as sales slip

Macy’s will close 150 unproductive namesake stores over the next three years including 50 by year-end, the department store operator said Tuesday after posting a fourth-quarter loss and declining sales.

As part of the strategy, Macy’s aims to upgrade its remaining 350 stores, with plans to add more salespeople to fitting areas and shoe departments, while adding more visual displays like mannequins. At the same time, the company signaled a pivot to luxury, which has fared better overall. It said it would open 15 of its higher end Bloomingdale’s stores and 30 of its luxury Bluemercury cosmetics locations.

The Macy’s stores set to close account for 25% of overall square footage but less than 10% of its sales, the company said.

In San Francisco, the flagship store is closing and as usual, theft was a big reason.

From the San Francisco Standard:

Macy’s Union Square workers say rampant shoplifting to blame for closure

“It happens every day,” employee Steve Dalisay said.

Hanging up blazers in the Macy’s sixth-floor men’s department, Dalisay said blazers, wallets and boxer briefs are the items most frequently stolen from his department. He said thieves take at least four blazers every day, adding that he typically sees about 10 wallets and 20 briefs stolen daily…

In the fourth-floor women’s department, another employee who has been working at the Union Square Macy’s for more than 10 years insisted that theft and lower sales were the driving forces behind the closure.

“It’s the theft, and that people aren’t coming in,” said the worker, who did not want to be identified because employees aren’t allowed to speak to reporters. “Basically, the same thing that happened to the Nordstrom is happening to us.”

In this video, Mayor London Breed flat out denies that theft was a problem.

San Francisco is going to be a ghost town if it continues down this road.

The post BIDEN’S AMERICA: Macy’s Closing 150 Stores Nationwide – San Francisco Store Says Rampant Shoplifting to Blame for Closing appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Victor Davis Hanson: Biden is Melting Down While Trump is Having Greatest Political Recovery Since Nixon (VIDEO)

by | Feb 28, 2024 | Aggregate

Conservative historian and scholar Victor Davis Hanson appeared on the Laura Ingraham show last night to comment on the state of the 2024 race.

Hanson suggested that Democrats want to get rid of Joe Biden but that they don’t know how or when to do it.

He also pointed out that while Biden is in near total meltdown, Trump is surging in a political recovery that looks historic.

Transcript via Real Clear Politics:

LAURA INGRAHAM: Joining me now, Chris Bedford, senior contributor at The Federalist. And Victor Davis Hanson, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. Victor, we’re seeing a lot of division on the left. Obviously, there’s division on the right as well. But just how big of a problem is this going to be for the Biden campaign as reality begins to set in as they get closer to the general?

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON, HOOVER INSTITUTION SENIOR FELLOW: Yeah, I think we’re getting to a point of no return, Laura, with the corruption issue, the cognitive issue, and the unpopularity and disaster of his agenda, and now this defection within the Democratic Party. It’s more of a question of not if they’re going to try to remove him, but when and how, and I don’t think they have the answers to either one.

It’s really the most remarkable meltdown of a president we’ve seen in our modern era, and it’s juxtaposed with probably the greatest political recovery of Donald Trump since Richard Nixon in 1962. And Donald Trump, the more they try to demonize and incarcerate him or use lawfare against him, the more popular he becomes. So, it’s bizarre how things have just flipped since 2021.

It’s remarkable. I think they’re in a dilemma and they don’t — they know what they have to do, but they don’t know how to do it and when to do it…

Hanson goes on to say that he is still concerned about mail-in ballots. Watch the whole thing:

Hanson’s points are well made. The GOP had better get its act together.

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Coach at Christian School Banned After It Refused Game Against Opponent with Trans Player Defends Decision

by | Feb 28, 2024 | Aggregate

A basketball coach at a Vermont private school that was banned by the state’s schools association after it forfeited a game last year to avoid playing against a boy who claims to be a girl is defending his actions despite the extreme punishment by ultra-woke school officials.

Chris Goodwin, coach of the girls basketball team for Mid-Vermont Christian School in White River Junction, Vermont, decided his team would not play in a Feb. 21, 2023, state playoff game.

Goodwin made the decision because the opponent had a boy playing on its team who claimed to be a transgender girl. Goodwin said it was both unfair and unsafe for his girls to play.

At the time, Mid-Vermont Christian Head of School Vicky Fogg wrote in an email to the Valley News newspaper, which covers the White River Junction area, that Goodwin forfeited the game because the transgender player “jeopardizes the fairness of the game and the safety of our players.”

“Allowing biological males to participate in women’s sports sets a bad precedent for the future of women’s sports in general,” Fogg wrote.

But the school was soon set upon by the Vermont Principals Association, which accused Mid-Vermont Christian of violating state laws that demand that schools allow transgender athletes to pick whatever team they feel most comfortable playing for at any given time.

The principals association banned Mid-Vermont Christian from participating in all VPA-sanctioned activities, which include not only athletics but also extracurricular competitions such as drama and debate competitions and science and math fairs.

Mid-Vermont Christian, in turn, has filed a lawsuit against the association, claiming “unconstitutional religious discrimination and hostility.” In addition to the Vermont Principals Association, defendants named by the lawsuit include the leaders of the Vermont Agency of Education and the state Board of Education.

The lawsuit claims the ban prevents Mid-Vermont Christian from participation in the state’s “tuitioning” program — a form of school vouchers that pays student tuition at private schools — and the state dual enrollment program, which allows high school students to take earn college credits.

The stakes, in other words, are higher than a basketball game.

Goodwin appeared on “Fox & Friends” on Monday to talk about his experience and to defend his actions.

“I’ve got four daughters. I’ve coached them all at one point in their careers playing high school basketball,” Goodwin said as he criticized the idea of boys playing as girls.

“I’ve also filled in for the boys’ coach when he can’t make a practice, and I run those practices, and boys just play at a different speed, a different force … than the girls play. It’s a different game.”

Goodwin explained that he felt it would be “irresponsible” to let his girls team play against a male and added that it would be “asking for an injury” from the stronger and faster male player.

No school should be punished for believing in biology.

Chris Goodwin, client and girls coach for Mid Vermont Christian School, shares the story | @FoxNews pic.twitter.com/5sWcVhHvxT

— Alliance Defending Freedom (@ADFLegal) February 26, 2024

In a brusque, March 13, 2023, memo to Mid-Vermont Christian, the principals’ association said the school did not meet the group’s commitment to “racial,” “gender-fair” and “gender identity” policies.

“Thus, Mid-Vermont Christian school is ineligible to participate in VPA activities going forward,” the memo states.

In a statement to CNN after Mid-Vermont Christian filed its lawsuit in November, the governing body said the school “has every right to teach its beliefs to its own students. It cannot, however, impose those beliefs on students from other public and private schools; deny students from other schools the opportunity to play; or hurt students from other schools because of who those students are.”

In its lawsuit, Mid-Vermont Christian argues it has been “irreparably harmed by being denied participation” in state sports competitions and is “losing out on playing competitive sports as well as academic competition.”

“The VPA won’t even allow the School and its students to participate in co-ed academic competitions like the Geo-Bee, Science and Math Fair, and Debate and Forensics League-all because the School believes biological boys are boys and cannot affirm otherwise,” the lawsuit states.

“The State is entitled to its own views,” it argues, “but it is not entitled, nor is it constitutional, to force private, religious schools across the state to follow that orthodoxy as a condition to participating in Vermont’s tuitioning program and the State’s athletic association.”

Goodwin is unrepentant over the forfeiture.

“After discussions with the administration and our players and parents, we decided that instead of going against our religious beliefs that … there are differences between male and female, we are created differently, we decided to forfeit that game and withdraw from the tournament,” he told “Fox & Friends.”

Ryan Tucker, an attorney with Alliance Defending Freedom who is representing Mid-Vermont Christian, accused the principals association of trying to silence dissent.

“The state is basically attempting to purge individuals like Chris and other family members in the state, from public discourse, from the ability … to speak out … on issues of significant, public concern,” he said on “Fox & Friends.”

He accused the state of failing to consider “the biological reality” and the health and safety risks to female athletes.

“We’re very confident that we’re going to prevail,” he said.

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.

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