Feds Refer Letitia James to DOJ for Criminal Prosecution Paula Bolyard

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.”

Multiplication, Biden-Style: School Bias Cases Doubled Trump moves to dismantle the Education Department’s civil rights arm, slashing investigations as critics warn it threatens protections for millions of U.S. students. By James Varney

https://amgreatness.com/2025/04/16/multiplication-biden-style-school-bias-cases-doubled/

This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.

While limiting strings-attached grants and curbing federal regulation, President Trump’s efforts to dismantle the Department of Education also take aim at a key tool bureaucrats use to oversee schools in all 50 states: civil rights investigations.

Probes handled by the department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) against public schools, colleges, and universities roughly doubled during the Biden administration, topping 20,000 last year. Investigations by hundreds of OCR lawyers and staff members – and responses to them by untold numbers of school officials and administrators – touched on everything from allegations of sexual violence and disability accommodations to website compatibility.

Defenders of the office say it has been an invaluable protector of civil rights for America’s nearly 70 million students. They say eliminating or even downsizing the office, which has already begun, would kneecap thousands of ongoing investigations while abolishing a prime instrument of justice.

“This reckless action strips students of vital resources and tears down statutorily mandated functions that are essential to addressing racial and economic inequality in education,” the ACLU declared last month. Trump, it said, has put “millions of students’ education and civil rights at risk.”

Advocates for handicapped students, who until recent years accounted for half of all complaints, are concerned they might get the short shrift in the Trump administration and have gone to court to block cuts. “We have many members who file complaints, and it has left many of them in limbo, or distraught, thinking there will be no accountability,” said Selene A. Almazan, legal director of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, plaintiffs in a suit filed March 14.

But backers of Trump’s effort to eliminate the Department of Education counter that the Office for Civil Rights is a symbol of how the federal government has expanded its reach into what they describe as chiefly local matters. They say its investigative arm has been designed to make it as easy as possible for the department to maximize its influence and oversight through investigations.

Ivory Tower Hypocrite: Wake Forest University Administrators coddle pro-Hamas demonstrators yet cancel IDF soldier’s speech. by Sara Dogan

https://www.frontpagemag.com/ivory-tower-hypocrite-wake-forest-university/

Wake Forest University, located in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, waxes eloquently about the importance of freedom of expression in its policies and promotional materials.  But the prestigious university is guilty of a double standard when it comes to deciding who truly deserves free speech on campus.

In late April of 2024, a student group calling itself Free Palestine established an illegal 3-day encampment on Hearn Plaza on campus. Demonstrators chalked genocidal and Jew-hating messages on the sidewalk reading “From the river to the sea” (a call to destroy the totality of Israel as a Jewish homeland) and “F*** Israel.” The Amcha Institute, an anti-Semitism watchdog group, reports that “several university faculty and staff members volunteered to watch over the protesters in shifts” and that “one faculty member tried to prevent a student from pouring water out on the antisemitic chalk messages, while another confronted students for taking videos of the huddled group.”  When “One student said that they were bothered by the protesters’ presence on their campus…a faculty member replied that the student could go back to their room.”

Instead of immediately shutting down this illegal pro-Hamas rally, Wake Forest administrators instead negotiated with the agitators. “Throughout the evening, our shared goal was to keep everyone safe and avoid disruption of our academic mission and planned campus activities. It was a priority to seek a peaceful outcome. Administrators and the organizers of the demonstration remained in dialogue throughout the evening, night and early morning, and reached an agreement shortly after 9 a.m. that led to students agreeing to take down the tents in the encampment,” explained a statement from administrators that was emailed to the full university community.

Sanity Returns To The Appliance Aisle

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/04/16/sanity-returns-to-the-appliance-aisle/

Acting to please a constituency that prefers scarcity over abundance, Joe Biden ordered up a list of federal rules that restricted consumer choice. Given the exhaustive White House agenda that began when Donald Trump took office on Jan. 20, it would have been unsurprising had he waited to unwind the Biden regulatory knot. But to his credit, Trump has been moving on that, too.

Ignoring the left’s constant “we’re running out of everything” screeching, Trump restored “shower freedom” earlier this month with an executive order “to end the Obama-Biden war on water pressure.” The new rule rescinds “the overly complicated federal rule that redefined ‘showerhead’ under Obama and Biden,” says the administration.

The previous rule, which burned through 13,000 words to define “showerhead,” restricted multi-nozzle showerheads to 2.5 gallons of water per minute. The new rule allows each nozzle in a showerhead to pump out 2.5 gallons of water per minute.

It’s the second time Trump changed the rule. The first time was in 2020. Of course Biden dropped that order after he took office and the government reverted to the Obama restrictions.

Trump’s change make sense. The Democrats’ limitations don’t. It should be obvious that people would have to take longer showers when the water flow is restricted, same as they also have to often flush multiple times to get the job done when per-flush water flow in toilets is capped. In the end, nothing is saved.

Heather Mac Donald The White House’s Clumsy Attack on Harvard The Trump administration’s crusade against the university is unquestionably justified, but its methods may not pass muster in court.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/trump-harvard-funding-freeze-anti-semitism-race-dei

“The administration is growing ever bolder in its crusade against the institutions responsible for left-wing ideology—whether elite law firms or universities. That crusade is unquestionably justified. Its targets deserve little sympathy. But a question arises: Is the administration more interested in maximal disruption or in achieving its long-term goals? The two aims may not be compatible.”

The Trump administration’s war on higher education has entered its hottest phase yet. On April 14, the administration froze $2.26 billion in federal funding for Harvard University, in response to Harvard’s rejection of administration demands for reform. News of the university’s defiance ricocheted around the globe. The fate of the White House’s academic reform efforts depends heavily on how the coming showdown concludes.

The present conflict began in on April 11, when representatives of the Trump administration’s Joint Anti-Semitism Task Force sent a demand letter to the Harvard president and the head of the Harvard Corporation (the university’s equivalent of a board of trustees). The April 11 mandate is much more sweeping and detailed than the task force’s March 13 demand letter to Columbia University.

Christopher F. Rufo The Right Is Winning the Battle Over Higher Education President Trump has ensured that the civil-rights regime will no longer be a one-way lever to embed left-wing ideologies in elite institutions.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/higher-education-ivy-league-universities-funding-trump-civil-rights

Several years ago, the author Christopher Caldwell changed the conversation with his book The Age of Entitlement. The book argued that the civil-rights regime established in the 1960s marked a fundamental departure from America’s constitutional tradition. Though launched with the noble intention of stopping racial discrimination, Caldwell argued, the Civil Rights Act–and the bureaucracy it spawned–gradually consumed core American freedoms and became a vehicle for entrenching left-wing racialist ideology throughout American institutions.

In the decades that followed, the Right’s response was marked by ambivalence. Some libertarians called for repealing the Civil Rights Act, but—like many libertarian proposals—this was never a political possibility, given the Act’s broad public support. The establishment Right, meanwhile, largely suppressed its private misgivings. Republicans repeatedly voted to expand the civil-rights regime, further embedding dubious concepts like disparate-impact theory into law.

Now, all of this has changed. After mounting a successful fight against DEI, the political Right has come to accept that if there must be a civil-rights regime, it should be one of its own making. Rather than continue to defer to left-wing interpretations of civil-rights law, the Right can now advance a framework grounded in colorblind equality, not racialist ideology.

The first field of battle is higher education. The Trump administration has set its sights on the Ivy League universities, which have not only advanced the ideologies of left-wing racialism but made them administrative policy.

Arson attack suspect cited what Jewish gov ‘wants to do to Palestinian people’

https://www.jns.org/arson-attack-suspect-cited-what-jewish-gov-wants-to-do-to-palestinian-people/?utm_campaign=

Cody Balmer told police that Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro must know that he “will not take part in his plans for what he wants to do to the Palestinian people,” per a warrant.

Cody A. Balmer, 38, of Harrisburg, Pa., who called authorities on Sunday at 2:50 a.m. and admitted to firebombing the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion less than an hour prior, told 911 operators that he wanted Gov. Josh Shapiro to know that he “will not take part in his plans for what he wants to do to the Palestinian people,” per a search warrant obtained by Penn Live.

The suspect also told 911 operators that he had to “stop having my friends killed” and “our people have been put through too much by that monster,” per the warrant. Penn Live noted that the document suggests that “Balmer’s intonation and cadence sounded like he was possibly reading from a script.”

“You all know where to find me. I’m not hiding, and I will confess to everything that I had done,” the suspect said, per the warrant.

“Dauphin County District Attorney Fran Chardo, who is prosecuting the case, said he has not decided yet whether he will charge Balmer with ‘ethnic intimidation’—Pennsylvania’s hate crime statute—but said he will argue Balmer’s motives should make his sentencing more severe if he is convicted,” Penn Live reported.

Harvard’s ‘resistance’ to Trump isn’t about science or academic freedom The school would rather lose $9 billion in federal funding than offend the left and give up woke indoctrination policies that enable and encourage antisemitism. Jonathan Tobin

https://www.jns.org/harvards-resistance-to-trump-isnt-about-science-or-academic-freedom/?utm_campaign=

It’s nice to know that the school that is widely considered to be the most prestigious institution of higher education in the United States is willing to stand up for its principles. Unfortunately, the main principle for which Harvard University is standing up—and earning deafening applause from liberal elites in politics and the media—is the right to go on enabling and encouraging the hatred of Jews.

Of course, that’s not the way the political left is spinning the announcement that Harvard would defy the demands of the Trump administration to cease its tacit support of the surge of antisemitism since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

For Trump’s “progressive” opponents who have acquired near-total control of higher education in the United States, the demands are unacceptable. They would rather lose federal funding, which is crucial to their survival, than end discrimination in admissions and hiring rooted in the woke catechism of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) that creates viewpoint uniformity that excludes conservatives and supporters of Israel. They also refuse to adopt disciplinary policies against those who advocate for Jewish genocide and harass Jewish students, or prevent the pro-Hamas mobs on their campuses from wearing masks while they commit their acts of intimidation and violence.

For the far left, their refusal to treat antisemites the way they would bigots who threatened African-Americans or Hispanics is a heroic act of “resistance.”

China’s Cybersecurity ‘Pearl Harbor’ Against America: ‘Everything, Everywhere, All at Once’ by Lawrence A. Franklin

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21550/china-cyber-war-against-america

For decades, Communist China’s spies, hackers and businessmen have feasted on the forced transfer of technology from vulnerable US corporate enterprises drawn to the vast Chinese market. Little has been accomplished to reduce this massive theft of intellectual property. US businesses seem to have resigned themselves to such unfair practices as the price of doing business in China.

In the last two years, however, the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) cyber-attacks against America have undergone a deadly shift that seriously threatens the US’s capability to prevail in any open conflict with China.

The second revolutionary advance in China’s offensive cyber-warfare capabilities that target US interests is more deadly. It threatens a Pearl Harbor-magnitude attack on America. “Volt Typhoon,” aka “Vanguard Panda,” involves the stealthy insertion of potentially debilitating malware into the computer systems that control critical nodes of US infrastructure.

“[W]e have been, over the years, trying to play better and better defense when it comes to cyber. We need to start going on offense and start imposing, I think, higher costs and consequences to private actors and nation state actors that continue to steal our data, that continue to spy on us, and that even worse, with the Volt Typhoon penetration, that are literally putting cyber time bombs on our infrastructure, our water systems, our grids, even our ports.” — Mike Waltz, shortly before he was appointed National Security Adviser, CBS News, December 15, 2024.

Trump might also convene a cabinet meeting to assure that all aspects of American public and private capabilities should be mobilized to build resiliency in critical national infrastructure, while simultaneously examining US cyberspace vulnerabilities.

The US also might also go on the offense and target China’s critical national infrastructure, perhaps starting with the Cyberspace Administration of China?

China’s multidimensional war against US interests is already underway and well-documented. One underappreciated dimension of its attack on American primacy, however, is the arena of cybersecurity.

Harvard, Has $53B, Still Wants Billions in Fed Funding Americans are supposed to feel privileged to give Harvard their money. by Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/harvard-has-53b-still-wants-billions-in-fed-funding/

Harvard has an endowment of over $53 billion. Despite that it’s fighting Trump administration demands for reform in order to extract around $9 billion in federal funding.

The Trump administration had asked Harvard for such things as merit-based hiring, promotion and admission, empowering tenured faculty over activist groups, and viewpoint diversity. It also called for an end to DEI and antisemitism.

It warned that “Harvard must adopt a new policy on student groups or clubs that forbids the recognition and funding of, or provision of accommodations to, any student group or club that endorses or promotes criminal activity, illegal violence, or illegal harassment” and “permanently expelling the students involved in the October 18 assault of an Israeli Harvard Business School student”.

Finally, Harvard “must also, to the satisfaction of the federal government, disclose the source and purpose of all foreign funds”.

Harvard predictably said “no”. President Alan Garber declared that “no government—regardless of which party is in power—should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.”

The trouble is that governments have been doing this for quite a while. And if Harvard doesn’t like it, it can stop taking federal money.

Instead, the Harvard president argues that “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.”