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No, Beyoncé’s New Album Is Not Country Music

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Since its release on April 1, Beyoncé’s newest album, “Cowboy Carter,” has ignited debates, questions, and skepticism about the country music genre and its future. In this 27-track album, Beyoncé explores her Texas roots, delighting fans with blends of country, folk, Americana, and hip-hop styles.

This cavalier approach to sound and style has performed well on the Billboard charts, with Beyoncé topping 18 different lists, including Top Country Album and Hot Country Song. Yet the discussion surrounding the album has mainly centered on its genre. Is “Cowboy Carter” — and Beyoncé, for that matter — considered country music?

For that answer, we need to understand the context surrounding the album’s release and examine the content within.

‘Born Out of an Experience’

Beyoncé’s fifth studio album was first announced on a Verizon commercial aired during the 2024 Super Bowl. In an attempt to “break the internet,” Beyoncé announced her new country album, complete with billboards of her wearing a cowboy hat and boots.

The album’s first single, “Texas Hold ‘Em,” is a song meant for line dancing in sticky-floored bars. Complete with whistles, hand claps, and talks of tornadoes and liquor, this single immediately topped the country charts and paved the way for a true country album.

In an Instagram post announcing the larger work, Beyoncé revealed the album’s origin was from a poor and unwelcoming experience she had with country music and its fans.

“It was born out of an experience that I had years ago where I did not

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Republicans’ ‘Antisemitism’ Bill Merely Gives Feds More Power To Trample Free Speech

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Republicans in Congress are pushing legislation that would formally adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism as a basis for prosecuting federal antidiscrimination statutes — a move that critics such as Wyoming Rep. Harriet Hageman say “provides no actual relief for terrorized Jewish students and infringes on the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.”

Islamists and radical leftists have been rioting on college campuses in support of the terrorist organization Hamas and its sympathizers just months after Hamas brutally slaughtered innocent Jews and others in October.

New York Republican Rep. Mike Lawler, alongside other colleagues, originally introduced the Antisemitism Awareness Act weeks after the barbaric attack. The House passed the legislation Wednesday. The legislation would formally adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism, and direct the Department of Education to “take [it] into consideration” when “reviewing, investigating, or deciding whether there has been a violation of title VI of the Civil Rights Act.”

The IHRA defines antisemitism as “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” This definition was already formally adopted by the State Department in 2016 and includes several examples of “manifestations” that “might include the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity.”

“Calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist

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Election Integrity Group Sues Minnesota, Wisconsin To End NVRA Transparency Exemption

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Neighbor states Minnesota and Wisconsin received exemptions from the National Voter Registration Act’s public disclosure provision with the passage of the NVRA more than 30 years ago. The special treatment has gone on long enough, according to federal lawsuits filed Wednesday by the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF). 

A smug response from Wisconsin’s top election official in an email chain unwittingly sent to a PILF researcher underscores why ending the exemption is long overdue. 

The lawsuits allege the carveouts for Minnesota and Wisconsin violate the principle of equal state sovereignty and should be declared invalid. 

‘For Public Inspection’

As PILF notes in the complaints, Congress passed the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, also known as the Motor Voter Act, to make it easier for Americans to register to vote and to stay registered. It requires states to “make available for public inspection and, where available, photocopying at a reasonable cost, all records concerning the implementation of programs and activities conducted for the purpose of ensuring the accuracy and currency of official lists of eligible voters.” The idea is to make sure the public can review the state’s voter roll maintenance activities, a key safeguard in election integrity. 

The NVRA is “a complex superstructure of federal regulation atop state voter-registration systems,” the U.S. Supreme Court stated in its 2013 ruling in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona

But Congress exempted Minnesota, Wisconsin, Idaho, New Hampshire, Maine, and Wyoming from the NVRA because they offered same-day voter registration. North Dakota, too,

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To Be Happy, Women Must Do The Opposite Of Everything Secular Western Culture Tells Them

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Everyone wants to talk about what’s wrong with men, whether it’s “toxic masculinity,” “men without work,” “the end of men,” the longhouse, or the need for men to “clean their rooms.” Not so many people, however, want to talk about what’s wrong with women. Even the longhouse complaint is that women are too successful:

As of 2022, women held 52 percent of professional-managerial roles in the U.S. Women earn more than 57 percent of bachelor degrees, 61 percent of master’s degrees, and 54 percent of doctoral degrees. And because they are overrepresented in professions, such as human resource management (73 percent) and compliance officers (57 percent), that determine workplace behavioral norms, they have an outsized influence on professional culture, which itself has an outsized influence on American culture more generally.

The bureaucracy that controls Western life is feminized, the longhouse argument goes; implying that women have won. But is that true? Is it “winning” for women to wield power at the expense of their sexual counterparts, the other half of humanity, without which there is no humanity? Are women happier ostensibly being in charge? It seems obvious the answer to that is a resounding no.

Our society offers very few generally accepted successful strategies for helping both men and women achieve happiness through maturity. The women might look better on their resumes, but they’re also a skyrocketing majority of antidepressant and other pharmaceutical users. And it sure doesn’t satisfy women that they can kick tail in the office if their apartments are

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