EDUCATION Comments turned off

University of North Carolina Board Slashes DEI Funding, Diverts Money to Campus Police By Caroline Downey

Posted By on May 14th, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/university-of-north-carolina-board-slashes-dei-funding-diverts-money-to-campus-police/

The Board of Trustees for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on Monday slashed funding for diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in next year’s budget, diverting the money to public safety and policing instead.

The measure, which the board unanimously approved, redirects $2.3 million of diversity funding to campus security, possibly precipitating the collapse of the office of diversity and inclusion. The vote, reported by the local Fox8 station, comes amid disruptive anti-Israel protests that have roiled UNC and other college campuses in recent weeks. The board passed the measure after it first cleared the budget committee.

Budget committee vice-chair Marty Kotis said law enforcement needs more investment to counteract the demonstrations disrupting the functioning and stability of the school.

“It’s important to consider the needs of all 30,000 students, not just the 100 or so that may want to disrupt the university’s operations,” Kotis said, according to Fox8.

UNC’s 24-member Board of Governors, which includes the Board of Trustees and is the school’s governing body, is expected to vote next week on changing the school’s diversity policy.

Before UNC voted to cut DEI funding, the University of Florida in March closed its diversity department, fired all of its DEI staff, and canceled DEI contracts with outside vendors to comply with a Florida Board of Governor’s regulation that prohibits funding of such programs. As a result of the policy, the college shut down the Office of the Chief Diversity Officer and eliminated DEI positions and administrative appointments.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Lawyer Cohen Testifies about Covertly Recording Client Trump Andrew McCarthy

Posted By on May 14th, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/lawyer-cohen-testifies-about-covertly-recording-client-trump/

In Manhattan criminal court today, Michael Cohen testified about a recording the jury had already heard in the criminal trial of former president Donald Trump. It was a recording of a conversation between Cohen and Trump on September 6, 2016 (about two months before Election Day). At the time, Cohen was a lawyer working for Trump and the Trump organization. (He has since been disbarred following his sundry convictions for perjury and fraud.)

It is ethically dicey, to say the least, for a lawyer secretly to record a client. An attorney has a duty of fealty to the client — one that continues even after the representation ends. It would obviously be preferable for a lawyer to inform his client that he is recording their conversation; for such recording to be proper, with or without notice given to the client, the recording would have to be in the service of the client’s interests — the legitimate purpose of the attorney–client relationship. It could not be done to undermine the client, such as to have something to hold over the client.

Cohen has testified that Trump was unaware he was being recorded on Cohen’s iPhone as Cohen sat across from him. In the conversation, they discussed the need for Trump to reimburse David Pecker, then the CEO of American Media Inc., after AMI (which then owned the National Enquirer) had laid out $150,000 for the exclusive rights to Playboy model Karen McDougal’s story about a 2006 affair with Trump.

Cohen claims that he made the recording to keep Pecker “loyal” to Trump by easing his mind that Trump did plan to reimburse him. In the accounts I’ve read of today’s testimony, it’s not clear to me that Cohen ever played the recording for Pecker, just that he now says that’s why he recorded it. It seems to me at least equally likely that Cohen wanted some protection for himself in case Trump later tried to stiff him — i.e., that Cohen, a highly self-interested operator, recorded the conversation for his own benefit, not for Pecker’s and certainly not for Trump’s.

This demonstrates in small compass the weirdness of this case.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

FT-Michigan Ross poll: Biden’s election hopes fall as prices rise again Persistent inflation means American voters do not see evidence of an improving economy

Posted By on May 14th, 2024

The recent uptick in US inflation appears to have reversed any progress President Joe Biden has made in convincing voters he can do a better job of managing the economy than Donald Trump. The poll, conducted between May 2 and May 6, finds that — after a slight uplift in April — Biden’s approval ratings on the economy fell back to levels that will make for depressing reading among the White House’s incumbents. That comes after price data showed US inflation might prove stickier than anticipated at the start of the year. The findings add to the sense that the Biden administration’s messaging on the economy — much of which has been focused on gains US workers have seen to their wages — is not convincing voters.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Scientist Or Activist? With Climate, It’s Often Hard To Tell The Difference

Posted By on May 14th, 2024

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/05/14/scientist-or-activist-with-climate-its-often-hard-to-tell-the-difference/

Last week, Nature magazine allotted space to a researcher who wrote about “​​the importance of distinguishing climate science from climate activism.” While surprising, it is nonetheless encouraging. It’s well past the time the zealots in white coats were outed for who they are.

Ulf Büntgen, affiliated with multiple universities, wrote that he is “concerned by climate scientists becoming climate activists,” and is also “worried about activists who pretend to be scientists,” because doing so “can be a misleading form of instrumentalization.”

That Nature would allow something bordering on blasphemy in the climate cult to appear in its pages is rather remarkable. We thought the publication had hopelessly and forever been lost to wokeness and global warming fanaticism, that objective science had been abandoned in exchange for following the progressive agenda.

Not that anyone would consider Büntgen to be a “climate denier,” an ugly label the media, activists and politicians attach to skeptics of the global warming narrative. He references “the many threats anthropogenic global warming is likely to pose on natural and societal systems” and seems troubled about “the continuous inability of an international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to tackle global warming, despite an alarming recent rise in surface temperatures and associated hydroclimatic extremes.”

Yet he is evenhanded enough to point out a “​​quasi-religious belief” instead of an “understanding of the complex causes and consequences of climate and environmental changes undermines academic principles.” He suggests that “climate science and climate activism should be separated conceptually and practically,” and insists that “the latter should not be confused with science communication and public engagement.”

EDUCATION Comments turned off

$10 MILLION FROM THE ‘STATE OF PALESTINE’ FLOWED TO HARVARD, BROWN & MORE

Posted By on May 14th, 2024

Troubling gifts and grants from the ‘State of Palestine’ funded anti-Israel curriculums, professorships, and tuition at top U.S. universities. 

Even more troubling, the ‘State of Palestine,’ as a nation, doesn’t exist. 

Neither the U.S. State Department nor the United Nations recognize the ‘State of Palestine.’ 

Airing across FOX Business last night and this weekend, Maria Bartiromo hosted me for an interview on her program “Wall Street” to break down all the details.

Columbia, Harvard, Yale and other elite universities are turning out graduates who believe that open antisemitism and the championing of terrorism are forms of “social justice.”

Congress should convene hearings to preserve our top schools as unabashedly “American” institutions. 

ISRAEL Comments turned off

‘I am as my people are’-Ruthie Blum

Posted By on May 14th, 2024

https://www.jns.org/i-am-as-my-people-are/

One lesson Israelis should have internalized by now is that things can always get worse. As we moved on Monday night from mourning to celebration—when Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terrorism abruptly transitioned into Independence Day—we’d have done well to remember what we were complaining about last year at this time.

In the wake of the Oct. 7 massacre, it’s impossible to believe that Israelis of all walks of life were treating judicial reform like a matter of life and death. Though it’s an issue that warrants serious debate under normal circumstances (whatever that means in the ever-besieged Jewish state), retrospect has a way of rendering previous concerns ridiculous. 

While duking it out over the selection of judges and the power of the Supreme Court, Hamas was deep in the throes of the genocidal plan it would carry out a mere few months later. Breaking down the border fence, the Iranian-backed terrorists, joined by gleeful Gazan civilians, committed atrocities impossible for any human being with half a soul to fathom.

Initially, the shock and horror of the that Black Sabbath—families snuffed out; babies burned; women and girls raped; young men beheaded; bodies left mutilated beyond recognition; and 250 people of all ages violently abducted to tunnel dungeons in Gaza—brought the nation together in grief and anger.

How, we asked, could the authorities have allowed this to happen? Where was the attention of the security services and government while Hamas was carefully plotting and training for its mass assault? Why did it take the Israel Defense Forces hours upon hours to come to the rescue of the victims, so many of whom perished while waiting?

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Why the White House turned on Israel The rift is all about the U.S. State Department’s desire to reassert control. David Wurmser

Posted By on May 14th, 2024

https://www.jns.org/why-the-white-house-turned-on-israel/

The chattering class in Israel is struggling to understand American behavior. They ask: How did the United States go from supporting Israel in the first days of the war with Hamas in Gaza to essentially shielding the terror organization? The Israeli right asks: What happened to the Americans? The left asks: What has Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu done to destroy U.S.-Israel relations?

I believe I have some insight into this. I held a senior policy position at the U.S. State Department for several years. Afterwards, I was a senior advisor to the vice president from 2001 to 2007 and then to the Trump administration’s National Security Advisor John Bolton. I also served a decade in the Pentagon as a senior intelligence officer. I have learned a great deal about the mentality of these bureaucracies.

It is important to understand that the U.S. State Department is not a foreign ministry. It is a super-bureaucracy with domestic as well as foreign functions. Its power over foreign policy far outstrips that of other countries’ foreign ministries.

The Biden administration’s National Security Council is ultimately a political body, but it is not opposed to State Department policy, which is increasingly pushed by younger staffers and senior figures aligned with progressive ideology. There are also the professional foreign service officers who have invested their entire careers advancing foreign policy paradigms that are now collapsing.

The NSC lacks a vast bureaucracy of its own. So, it outsources the drafting of policy to relevant bureaus. On foreign policy, this is almost always the State Department. As in any large organization, the person tasked with drafting the policy defines the policy. Everything that follows is a reactive revision, not a reset.

Intelligence agencies control and distribute information, including the information made available to the president. Thus, they also exercise significant power. But ever since the tenure of George Tenet as CIA director, the intelligence agencies have become active in the implementation of policy as well.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Debra Heine: Coalition of 22 State AGs Call on Biden to Reject Treaty Drastically Expanding WHO Authority

Posted By on May 13th, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/05/09/coalition-of-22-state-ags-call-on-biden-to-reject-treaty-drastically-expanding-who-authority/

A coalition of 22 state attorneys general have sent a letter to Joe Biden voicing their opposition to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) proposed pandemic treaty and amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR).

Attorneys general from Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and West Virginia, led by Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen, raised concerns that the proposed agreement threatens U.S. sovereignty by giving the WHO “unprecedented and unconstitutional powers over the people of the United States.”

Critics say that the proposed “pandemic accord” and IHR amendments would give the WHO sweeping new powers over national governments and public health authorities in the event of a new pandemic, and would help set up a global system of “digital health passports.”

In a press release Wednesday, Knudsen asserted that the proposed amendments would give the organization “authority over United States public health policy after failing to hold the Chinese Communist Party accountable for its lies during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

SOS: Stop the World Health Organization’s Tyrannical May 27 Power Grab by Robert Williams

Posted By on May 13th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20637/who-tyrannical-power-grab

The proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations give the WHO Director General the authority to declare not just an actual but a potential international public health emergency and set out binding recommendations on how to address it, whether individual states agree with him or not.

Worse, no criticism of the new WHO regime and its decisions to declare potential or actual pandemics, lockdowns and treatment, including vaccines, will be allowed under the amended IHR… In other words, the government lies, obfuscations and cover-ups that so dominated the last pandemic will become normalized, and all criticism outlawed.

Already, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (not a medical doctor) has castigated critics of the planned amendments and new Pandemic Treaty as conspiracy theorists who spread “fake news, lies and conspiracy theories.”

Since the UN claims that to “owns the science,” it is now brainwashing the public into believing that “climate change” threatens global health. This view makes it likely that you will one day find yourself in a WHO-mandated lockdown to mitigate the effects of the “climate crisis,” along with limits on where you go, how you may get there, what you do, and what you can own.

The US is already seeing forerunners of this in the Biden administration’s unconstitutional executive orders, possibly including his attempts to ban internal combustion engine vehicles and gas stoves; mandating dishwashing machines that may need repeated cycles to clean dishes, and new stricter regulations on air conditioners, washing machines, refrigerators, and even leaf-blowers — and this is only the beginning.

The WHO is not elected, has no democratic legitimacy, is not accountable to anyone and has no control mechanisms to restrain its reach. After the horrifying failures of the WHO during Covid-19, the answer is not to give the organization more power, but to disengage from it entirely.

The UN and the WHO evidently want unlimited control. If they are not stopped right now by national governments that refuse to approve the new Pandemic Treaty and proposed International Health Regulations amendments, unlimited control is what they will have — and it is we who will have given it to them.

EDUCATION, ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Trump Promises to ‘Immediately Deport’ Foreign Students Involved in Anti-Israel Protests By Caroline Downey

Posted By on May 13th, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/trump-promises-to-immediately-deport-foreign-students-involved-in-anti-israel-protests/

Former president Donald Trump, at a Sunday rally in Democratic-heavy New Jersey, promised to “immediately deport” foreign students who participate in anti-Israel protests amid recent chaotic campus demonstrations disrupting academia.

“When I’m president, we will not allow our colleges to be taken over by violent radicals,” he said. “If you come here from another country and try to bring jihadism or anti-Americanism or antisemitism to campuses, we will immediately deport you. You’ll be out of that school.”

After protests erupted on college campuses in the weeks following Hamas’s brutal invasion of Israel on October 7, House Republicans sent a letter to the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security demanding that foreign students who participated in rallies in support of Hamas be deported.

“We are concerned by recent reports of demonstrations on U.S. soil, including student demonstrations, in support of Hamas, a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization, following the shocking terrorist attacks by Hamas on our closest ally in the Middle East, Israel. These demonstrations potentially involve student visa holders,” Representatives Jim Banks (R., Ind.) and Jeff Duncan (R., S.C.) wrote in a letter addressed to Secretaries Antony Blinken and Alejandro Mayorkas.

The letter noted the many Students for Justice in Palestine chapters have issued statements praising Hamas terrorists as freedom fighters or martyrs and justifying their onslaught as necessary for the liberation of the Palestinian people.

Signed by more than a dozen House Republicans, the letter demanded that the State Department and DHS investigate whether non–immigrant visa holders “have been rendered ineligible as a result of ‘endorsing or espousing’ terrorist activity by Hamas?”

Many prominent GOP lawmakers have for months called for the expulsion of foreign students engaged in such inflammatory behavior. Senator Tom Cotton has urged for aliens on student visas who have endorsed or espoused terrorist activity to be deported.