NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Trying To Figure Out How Much Of The Government Grants Goes To Left-Wing Causes And Propaganda Francis Menton

Posted By on April 17th, 2025

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2025-4-15-trying-to-figure-out-how-much-of-the-government-grants-goes-to-left-wing-causes-and-propaganda

Back on February 14, I had a post titled “How Much Of This Has Been Paid For By The U.S. Taxpayer?” The post asked that question about a sample of issues held dear by the Left: migrant caravans, services in the U.S. to illegal aliens, DEI and climate alarm.

Over the intervening weeks it has become clear that the general answer is “a lot of it,” but the details will be slow to emerge. For example, you can go to the website of DOGE and get an endless list of hundreds of contracts and grants that have been reduced or canceled. But they all seem to have legitimate headlines or titles, even if they were wasteful. How much of this money was getting diverted to an NGO, and from there to another NGO and then another until it ended up funding migrant caravans or pro-Palestinian propaganda or some other such cause. There is very little indication.

Certainly, you can count on the biggest left-wing grant recipients to be less than honest in defending their fiefdoms. Consider, for example, Harvard University. It’s been big news the past couple of days that Harvard has refused to knuckle under to President Trump’s demands that it rein in anti-semitism, in order to retain its many hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars of annual federal funding. Harvard President Alan Garber defended the university’s position in an email addressed to the “Harvard Community” that is publicly available here. Here’s how it starts out:

For three-quarters of a century, the federal government has awarded grants and contracts to Harvard and other universities to help pay for work that, along with investments by the universities themselves, has led to groundbreaking innovations across a wide range of medical, engineering, and scientific fields. These innovations have made countless people in our country and throughout the world healthier and safer. . . . These partnerships are among the most productive and beneficial in American history. New frontiers beckon us with the prospect of life-changing advances—from treatments for diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and diabetes, to breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, quantum science and engineering, and numerous other areas of possibility. For the government to retreat from these partnerships now risks not only the health and well-being of millions of individuals but also the economic security and vitality of our nation.

It all looks like mis-direction to me. How much of Harvard’s federal funding goes to the widely-supported subjects that Garber lists — Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, diabetes, AI, quantum science and engineering? Clearly a small minority.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

This Week Today Current Events from Israel Rabbi Ben Packer

Posted By on April 17th, 2025

https://mailchi.mp/dd9d88d97a17/israel-current-events

EXCERPTS

Gaza/Hostage Situation Update
While we were burning our chometz last week, the IDF was busy scorching parts of Gaza, both above and below ground. Most of the ground activity is happening in the southern strip in the area now referred to as the Morag Corridor and also in the northern strip. Both sides seem to be avoiding confrontation for the most part. In instances where terrorists did appear, Israeli Air Force planes eliminated them before they could pose a significant threat to the nearby IDF soldiers. Meanwhile, the planes also spent their time eliminating terrorist leaders in the central areas of Gaza that the ground troops are currently avoiding. 

Negotiations are continuing toward renewing a ceasefire that would see about 10 Israeli hostages freed in exchange for the release of hundreds of terrorists and the resumption of aid. As of now, Hamas is still insisting on guarantees that the war will be ended before any more hostages are freed. The Israeli Government continues to insist that increased military pressure is what has led to previous hostage deals and is the only thing that will lead to future ones as well. Former hostages and family members of current hostages continue to compete to see who can say the most retarded, non-sensible thing about how the remaining hostages should be freed. It’s getting quite annoying. For some reason folks seem to think that these people are beyond criticism, but their incredible lack of sensitivity to the families of the hundreds of soldiers killed and to those wounded and still fighting certainly qualify them for a nice helping of vitriol. Everyone wants the hostages freed, but performing national suicide shouldn’t really be on the negotiating table. 

A new trend started this week where folks who think they are important are signing petitions that say that the war should be ended in order for all the hostages to be freed – basically what Hamas has demanded from the very beginning of the current conflict. They threaten that they will no longer appear for reserve duty and/or work. So far, the Chief of Staff has removed some of them from reserve duty altogether. This is definitely the correct way going forward. US President Ronald Reagan and the air traffic controllers all over again. Some British people also joined in as well. Lol. That imperial ship sank a long time ago. There is nothing like British self-righteous arrogance. So much better done than their food.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

John Tierney New York City’s Composting Delusion It is the most nonsensical form of municipal recycling—delivering little, if any, environmental benefit at the highest cost.

Posted By on April 17th, 2025

https://www.city-journal.org/article/new-york-city-composting-recycling

After forcing New Yorkers to spend billions of dollars for the privilege of sorting their garbage into recycling bins, municipal officials have found an even costlier—and grubbier—way for residents to spend their time in the kitchen. They must now separate food waste into compost bins or face new fines imposed by the city’s garbage police, who will be digging through trash looking for verboten coffee grounds and onion peels.

Composting is the most nonsensical form of municipal recycling: it delivers little, if any, environmental benefit at the highest cost. In addition to wasting people’s time, it attracts rats to compost facilities, puts more fuel-burning trucks on the road, and diverts tax dollars from what was once a core priority of the Department of Sanitation—keeping the streets clean. Whatever its appeal to suburbanites with yards and gardens, composting is absurdly impractical in a city—especially one facing a massive budget deficit.

Where are New York apartment dwellers supposed to find space in their tiny kitchens for yet another waste bin? It’s bad enough that elderly residents must schlep their newspapers and bottles to basement recycling bins instead of simply using the trash chute—now they’re expected to haul bags of rotting food, too. (New Yorkers have long been denied another convenient option, garbage disposals, because the city’s onerous plumbing regulations have prevented most buildings from installing them in kitchen sinks.) Under the new rules, landlords are on the hook: fines of up to $300 will be imposed if their buildings don’t comply with composting requirements. But how are they and the superintendents of large buildings supposed to enforce the law? Unlike the city’s inspectors, they never signed up to be trash detectives, much less dumpster divers.

BOOKS, EDUCATION Comments turned off

Daniel Shuchman Richard Bernstein Warned Us About DEI The late New York Times journalist was troubled by university leaders’ weak commitment to free expression and intellectual diversity.

Posted By on April 17th, 2025

https://www.city-journal.org/article/richard-bernstein-dei-universities-dictatorship-of-virtue

Decades before terms like “virtue signaling,” “anti-racism,” and “diversity, equity, and inclusion” became ubiquitous, one author foresaw how they would come to dominate American universities and other elite institutions. Richard Bernstein, an esteemed New York Times journalist whose career spanned assignments from Europe to China, died last month at 80.

Among his books was Dictatorship of Virtue: How Multiculturalism is Reshaping Our Schools, Our Country, Our Lives (1994, updated 1995). In it, Bernstein identified these concepts in their early stages. He acknowledged the appeal of these ideas, which could sound like aspirations for “a fuller realization of American pluralism.” But over time, he argued, they evolved into an intolerant political program which makes people afraid to say what they truly think. Bernstein predicted that this political movement, which he called the “new consciousness,” would reshape American culture, deepen polarization, and ultimately spark a fierce backlash—one with its own potential perils.

As Bernstein’s reporting makes clear, feckless leadership and rigid quasi-religious ideologies are nothing new at American universities. While his focus in Dictatorship of Virtue is the University of Pennsylvania, Bernstein insists that Penn was “fairly typical” of other elite universities, where “diversity training [had become] an exercise in the advancement of radical political ideology.”

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Will Harvard Go Full Hillsdale? Harvard risks $2.2B in federal funds as it defies anti-discrimination mandates, drawing comparisons to Hillsdale’s stand-alone model of rejecting government strings. By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on April 17th, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/04/17/will-harvard-go-full-hillsdale/

Harvard University has rejected various demands of a presidential commission on anti-Semitism.

The task force wants to persuade Harvard to ensure Jewish students on its campus are no longer harassed, or else lose its federal funding.

Harvard retorts that it won’t be bullied by Washington.

Among its other requirements, the Trump administration also warned Harvard to cease using race as a criterion in its admissions, hiring, and promotion, contrary to law.

And it also directed the campus to ban the use of masks that, in the post-COVID era of protests, have emboldened violent demonstrators with anonymity.

The administration’s order to stop race-based bias was in accordance with civil rights statutes, and a recent Supreme Court decision specifically banning affirmative action at Harvard and elsewhere.

No matter. Harvard claimed that the Trump administration infringed upon its First Amendment rights.

So, it has temporarily rejected the administration’s orders. At least for now, Harvard has lost its annual $2.2 billion grant of federal funds.

Former President Barack Obama, among others, lauded Harvard’s rejection of the demands of the administration’s anti-Semitism task force. He claimed the Trump administration’s efforts were ham-handed.

But what academic freedom are Harvard and Obama talking about? The freedom to discriminate and segregate by race in hiring, admissions, dorms, and graduations?

EDUCATION Comments turned off

The Nazi Skeletons in Wesleyan U.’s Closet by Rafael Medoff

Posted By on April 17th, 2025

https://jewishjournal.com/commentary/opinion/380765/the-nazi-skeletons-in-wesleyan-u-s-closet/

 The president of Wesleyan University claimed, in a recent New York Times op-ed, that the Trump administration and the Republican Party are teeming with secret or aspiring Nazis. But how did the Wesleyan administration relate to the actual Nazis and Nazi supporters on its Connecticut campus in the 1930s?

    In February 1934, Wesleyan invited Dr. Friedrich Auhagen, a representative of Nazi Germany’s consulate in New York City, to address the student body. That was more a year after Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany. A year of the Nazi regime boycotting Jewish-owned businesses, of nationwide book-burnings, of Nazi takeovers of German universities, of mass firings of Jews from most professions, and of sporadic anti-Jewish violence.  Yet none of that deterred the Wesleyan administration from inviting a Nazi official to campus.

    In his remarks to the Wesleyan students, Auhagen railed against “excessive Jewish control” in Germany, claimed that reports of antisemitism were “widely exaggerated,” and declared that Jews who did not like living under Nazism should “go settle in certain regions of Russia.”

    Hitler had some fans on the Wesleyan campus. The most enthusiastic was Paul H. Curts, a longtime professor of German. He was so sympathetic to the Nazis that he was cheering for them even before they rose to power. In a May 1932 speech, eight months before Hitler became chancellor of Germany, Prof. Curts declared that supporters of the Nazi Party generally were “staid, sober Germans.”

    After Hitler and the Nazis became Germany’s rulers, Prof. Curts served as their lead apologist at Wesleyan. He made multiple trips to Germany in the 1930s, each time returning brimming with enthusiasm. After one such trip in 1934, Prof. Curts addressed the entire student body and told them Hitler was “the only man who could offer to Germany what it needed at present.” 

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Texas Recognizes “Pakistan Day” As Pakistan Destroys Human Rights by Uzay Bulut

Posted By on April 16th, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21551/texas-recognizes-pakistan-day

The problem is that at the same time as Texas was celebrating “Pakistan Day”, in Pakistan, Christian citizens were being arrested and sentenced to death for “blasphemy,” and Muslims were abducting young Christian girls to sexually abuse, forcibly “marry,” and coerce into converting to Islam.

Pakistan’s national and provincial parliaments have given their consent to these atrocities…. Christians, Hindus and other non-Muslim communities in Pakistan have been enduring increased levels of violence and persecution….

Under Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, anyone found guilty of insulting Islam, its prophet or other religious figures can be imprisoned and sentenced to death…. The police are often biased and refuse to file reports from Christians and Hindus.

The Texas House of Representatives might instead have dedicated March 23 to Pakistan’s abduction victims and abused children.

“The introduction of a ‘Single National Curriculum’ in schools denigrates religious minorities and enforces the teaching of the Quran and subjects like Mathematics and Science in an Islamized manner. Thus, religion is permeating school education… Radical Islamic groups are flourishing… Such groups are innumerable and even a ban will only make them re-organize, re-brand and re-emerge. The default option for dealing with radical Islamic movements (who are able to mobilize millions for street demonstrations) is appeasement and even accommodation…” — Open Doors, December 2024.

“Occupations that are deemed low, dirty, and degrading—such as cleaning sewers or working in brick kilns—are reserved for Christians by the authorities. Many believers are referred to as ‘chura’, a derogatory term meaning ‘filthy’. Christians are also vulnerable to being trapped in bonded labor.” — Open Doors, 2024.

Have Pakistani Texans done anything to help the victims of these horrific human rights abuses in Pakistan or raised awareness of them in any way while in the US? In what areas have they effectively cooperated with the US government? Have they used their resources to fight Islamic terror groups; if so, to what extent? Has Pakistan been a great US ally? What has the government of Pakistan actually done to deserve being celebrated with an official day by the Texas House of Representatives?

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Liz Peek: Cory Booker’s latest stunt could embarrass Democrats

Posted By on April 16th, 2025

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/liz-peek-cory-bookers-latest-stunt-could-embarrass-democrats

Cory Booker, fresh off demonstrating that he is capable of going 25 hours without a bathroom break, is “demanding” an investigation into alleged insider trading at the Trump White House. 

Booker contends that when the president announced a reprieve from the imposition of draconian tariffs, which set stocks soaring by record amounts, Trump or his White House colleagues likely traded on the news, illicitly reaping gains from the markets’ big moves.

The New Jersey senator has not one iota of proof that anyone in the Trump camp bought stocks ahead of the big announcement, but Booker, rapidly morphing into the P. T. Barnum of Democrat politics, is searching for showstoppers – facts be damned.

Asked on NBC News’ Meet the Press if Democrats had any evidence of wrongdoing, Booker first dodged the question and then said, “There is enough of an offense here, there’s enough smoke here that should demand congressional hearings.” So, actually no. 

Let’s be honest: Booker and his Democrat compatriots were furious that markets boomed in response to the temporary tariff hiatus. They and their media allies have worked overtime to scare voters, predicting that Trump’s trade moves will torpedo our economy; plunging markets fed their narrative. Not only has Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer et al promised that Trump will drive us into recession, they also suggest that his efforts to make global trading more favorable to U.S. firms will undermine the U.S. dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency.

Democrats are not afraid that Trump will fail; they are panicked that he might actually succeed.

Booker most recently made headlines by breaking a fellow Democrat’s record for staging the longest-ever senate filibuster.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

A Young Socialist Wants to Run NYC. Could He Win?By Olivia Reingold

Posted By on April 16th, 2025

https://www.thefp.com/p/socialist-mayor-new-york-zohran-mamdani?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Zohran Mamdani vows to spend billions subsidizing buses, housing, and grocery stores. He says he’ll arrest the Israeli PM if he ever steps foot in NYC. And he’s surging in the polls.

Unless you follow New York politics like a hawk, chances are you’ve never heard of Zohran Kwame Mamdani. The 33-year-old socialist is one of the youngest candidates to ever seek the mayorship of New York City. If he wins, he wants to turn the Big Apple into a Havana on the Hudson with free buses, government-run grocery stores, and no more rent hikes for millions.

“It is socialism that we are fighting for,” he told an online audience in 2021.

In a city where 61 percent of residents say they’re struggling to meet their basic needs, Mamdani is gaining traction by vowing to “lower the cost of living” in New York City. His housing plan, one of his ideas on how to make New York more affordable, costs $100 billion, only slightly less than the entire size of this year’s city budget. That’s on top of the $7 billion his other agenda items would cost, including $800 million for free buses, $1.1 billion to build a new Department of Community Safety, and $5 billion funding free childcare for all kids ages 6 weeks to 5 years.

Mamdani is also a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), a group that advocates abolishing prisons, granting voting rights to some “noncitizens,” ending “Israeli apartheid,” and establishing “a democratic secular state, from the river to the sea.” He has even said he would arrest Benjamin Netanyahu if the Israeli prime minister ever stepped foot in New York to prove “our values are in line with international law.”

Mamdani has also attended rallies held by Within Our Lifetime, a radical anti-Israel group that has been denounced by other progressives, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for protesting an exhibit dedicated to victims of October 7, 2023, the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel that left 1,200 dead. As the group reportedly chanted “kill another Zionist now” outside the exhibit, survivors inside gave testimony about the horror.

When asked twice to clarify his relationship to the group, the Mamdani campaign did not provide comment to The Free Press.

Six years ago, Mamdani was a total unknown, working as a foreclosure prevention counselor for Chhaya, a nonprofit focused on the “well-being of South Asian and Indo-Caribbean communities in New York City.” That year, only one year after moving to Astoria, Queens, from the Upper West Side, he decided to run in the 2020 election for his new neighborhood’s seat in the New York State Assembly.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Feds Refer Letitia James to DOJ for Criminal Prosecution Paula Bolyard

Posted By on April 16th, 2025

https://pjmedia.com/paula-bolyard/2025/04/15/boom-feds-refer-letitia-james-to-doj-for-prosecution-n4938940

In a Monday night letter, William J. Pulter, director of the U.S. Federal Housing Agency (FHFA), referred New York Attorney General Letitia James to the Department of Justice for prosecution of mortgage fraud. 

My colleague Athena Thorne wrote over the weekend: 

We’re talking about Letitia “No one is above the law” James, a poster child for the weaponized justice system that tried to sandbag and impoverish Donald Trump and put him away for the rest of his life. As they say, if you’re going to take a shot at the king, you better not miss. Or, in this case, you better not have an apparent pattern of fraudulent real estate transactions.

Now, it appears, James’s chickens are coming home to roost. 

“Pursuant to my authority as Director of the U.S. Federal Housing Finance Agency (“U.S.Federal Housing” or “FHFA”), I am referring the matter below,” Pulter wrote. “As regulator of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Home Loan Banks, we take very seriously allegations of mortgage fraud or other criminal activity. Such misconduct jeopardizes the safety and soundness of FHFA’s regulated entities and the security and stability of the U.S. mortgage market.” 

Pulter said the agency has “identified matters that are appropriate for referral to the U.S. Department of Justice for consideration of criminal prosecution.”