A former paid scribe for an Iranian state-affiliated newspaper now works for a U.S. media watchdog group that produces a controversial “media bias” chart that consistently rates liberal outlets as more reliable than conservative ones, the Free Beacon’s Alana Goodman reports. Universities like Cornell and journalism nonprofits like Poynter have cited and praised the media bias ratings of this organization, Ad Fontes Media, like it’s a neutral third party.

Meet Meisam Zamanabadi, an Ad Fontes Media analyst who was raised in Iran and served as an editor at Hamshahri, an Iranian newspaper owned and operated by Tehran’s municipal government that has been associated with hardline politicians and drew international condemnation after holding a Holocaust denial cartoon contest in 2006. Posts from his blog indicate that Zamanabadi worked at the paper in 2008 and 2009, when Iranian parliament speaker and chief regime negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf served as mayor of Tehran.

Zamanabadi now resides in California and works for Ad Fontes, the Colorado-based “public benefit corporation” behind the Media Bias Chart, which evaluates U.S. news outlets by political leaning and trustworthiness. The chart “consistently rates left-wing sources as more reliable and often less biased than their conservative counterparts,” writes Goodman. Socialist magazine Jacobin, for example, enjoys a higher “reliability” rating than long-established, edited publications such as National Review, the New York Post, and the Free Beacon. On television, the chart says Fox News hosts Laura Ingraham and Jesse Watters are less reliable than their MS Now counterparts Chris Hayes and Jen Psaki.

News of Zamanabadi’s work for Ad Fontes—which markets its “analysis” to schools as a tool for teaching media literacy and claims that its ratings are “non-partisan”—comes as the watchdog faces questions about its own objectivity and ethics. Last summer, the Federal Trade Commission requested records about Ad Fontes’s business practices as part of an investigation into “possible collusion” in a scheme to get advertisers to withdraw their support for conservative content, the New York Times reported. The Trump FTC says these spending pullbacks are illegal boycotts.

READ MORE: Former Iranian State Media Editor Now Works for US ‘Media Bias’ Group That Rates Liberal Outlets as More Reliable Than Their Conservative Counterparts

The New York Times placed Gavin Newsom’s new book on its Best Sellers list even as the outlet acknowledged that Newsom used “bulk sales” to sell tens of thousands of copies of his memoir, Young Man in a Hurry. The Times has cited such sales to disqualify Republican politicians from the list, the Free Beacon’s Collin Anderson reports.

At the center of the controversy is a scheme in which Newsom offered to send a copy of the book to supporters who contributed “ANY AMOUNT,” even “a few bucks,” to his PAC. The California Democrat later disclosed in a recent campaign finance report two January payments to Porchlight Book Company—a Milwaukee-based business that specializes “in moving books in bulk”—totaling more than $1.5 million for “books at cost.” The money paid for 67,000 copies of Young Man in a Hurry—nearly three-quarters of the 91,000 copies Newsom’s team said the book had sold as of March 4.

The Times went on to place Newsom’s book on its March 15 Best Sellers list for nonfiction in the number four spot. Included underneath the book was a small “dagger” icon, which the Times says “indicates that some retailers report receiving bulk orders.” Times spokeswoman Danielle Rhoades Ha also acknowledged in a statement that “when the Times has reason to believe that sales of a book include a mix of organic and bulk sales, the book’s best-seller ranking is accompanied by a dagger,” adding, “That’s what we did with the Newsom book.”

It’s not an ideal situation for Newsom, but it could have been worse: In 2015, the Times refused to place Ted Cruz’s debut book on its Best Sellers list “despite the fact that the book has sold more copies in its first week than all but two of the Times’ bestselling titles,” accusing the Texas Republican of “strategic bulk purchases,” Politico reported. Rhoades Ha did not answer a question about why the Times included Newsom’s book on the list with an accompanying “dagger” rather than excluding it altogether. But we have a few ideas!

READ MORE: New York Times Puts Gavin Newsom on Best Sellers List Despite ‘Bulk Sales’ It Has Used To Disqualify Conservatives

Additional reading:

• President Donald Trump told Bloomberg that the two-week ceasefire with Iran expires on “Wednesday evening Washington time” and that it’s “highly unlikely” he’ll extend it. Trump also said he won’t “be rushed into making a bad deal.” What happens, then, if the ceasefire expires without an agreement? “Then lots of bombs start going off,” Trump told PBS News, adding, “Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. Very simple.”

• Sign of the times: A Dearborn-based attorney whose since-deleted social media posts praising Hezbollah terrorists and urging Iran to “show no laxity” against Israel were first reported by the Free Beacon won the Democratic Party’s nomination for the University of Michigan Board of Regents. The attorney, Amir Makled, ran to unseat incumbent Jordan Acker, a supporter of Israel, and recently introduced left-wing Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed at a rally featuring anti-American influencer Hasan Piker. The University of Michigan Board of Regents consists of eight members elected statewide to eight-year terms.

• FBI director Kash Patel is suing the Atlantic for defamation, arguing that the Beltway outlet—owned by billionaire Democratic megadonor Laurene Powell Jobs—peddled “false and obviously fabricated allegations” when it ran a piece alleging that Patel is “MIA” from his job due to excessive drinking.

Check out our full Tuesday lineup below.

1. Former Iranian State Media Editor Now Works for US ‘Media Bias’ Group That Rates Liberal Outlets as More Reliable Than Their Conservative Counterparts

2. New York Times Puts Gavin Newsom on Best Sellers List Despite ‘Bulk Sales’ It Has Used To Disqualify Conservatives

3. UMich Regent Candidate Who Praised Hezbollah Wins Democratic Nomination

4. Democrats Have a Drinking Problem (But Not in a Good Way)

5. After Netflix, What Is Democratic Megadonor Reed Hastings’ Next Move?

6. Astonishingly Prolific Anti-Israel Medical Researcher Used AI to Churn Out Journal Articles, Screening Software Shows

7. Who ‘Contributes’ to New York City?

8. Palestinian Authority Has Paid Convicted Terrorists Released as Part of Gaza Ceasefire Deal, State Department Tells Congress

A stridently anti-Israel Harvard graduate student, Bilal Irfan, is listed as an author on 57 medical journal articles in the year 2025, a rate of more than one per week. “If that sounds more prolific than humanly possible, that appears to be for a reason,” our Ira Stoll writes. “The Free Beacon put the texts of those articles through five different programs designed to detect the use of artificial intelligence. Several of the papers were flagged by multiple scanning programs as having a 100 percent likelihood of being AI-generated.”

Those papers include “Will There Be A Future For Newborns In Gaza?” published in the Lancet in November 2024. In the paper, Irfan sounds off on the “ongoing Israeli military assault on Gaza,” stating, “The world cannot remain silent any longer. The time for action is now—to restore access to health care, to protect women and children, and to uphold the sanctity of life.” Irfan’s co-author, Abdallah Abu Shammala, listed his affiliation as Gaza’s European Hospital, under which Hamas maintained terrorist tunnels and a command center where the IDF killed former Hamas leader Mohammed Sinwar.

Harvard Medical School is now distancing itself from this fine scholar, telling the Free Beacon he departed nearly a year ago, when he finished a master’s program, that he has been inappropriately using his affiliation with the school for the past year, and that none of the apparently AI-generated “scholarship” was produced while he was at Harvard.

Stoll writes:

The quality of the Irfan articles does appear questionable. They have the even tone characteristic of AI. One on telemedicine in Pakistan uses left-wing jargon and buzzwords about stakeholders and equity and recommends government subsidies. “This situation calls for targeted government intervention to subsidize or provide the necessary technology to underserved populations, ensuring equitable access to telemedical services,” the article says. “In a country where healthcare delivery faces numerous obstacles, telemedicine offers a viable solution to extend healthcare access, reduce costs, and improve patient outcomes. For telemedicine to achieve its full potential, however, a concerted effort is needed from all stakeholders.”

Irfan was the featured speaker at a March 22, 2026 event of Harvard’s FXB Center for Health & Human Rights and of a boycott-Israel advocacy group. He was introduced as “a bioethicist who conducts research at Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital” and who has “published over 100 peer-reviewed articles in medical journals including the Lancet.” At that event, he urged people to engage in “advocacy” and repeatedly accused the “apartheid regime” of Israel of “genocide” in Gaza. He has identified himself in medical journal articles for the past two years, including one in the Lancet Global Health this month, as affiliated with the “Center for Bioethics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.”

READ MORE: Astonishingly Prolific Anti-Israel Medical Researcher Used AI to Churn Out Journal Articles, Screening Software Shows

Zohran Mamdani bragged in a slickly produced video last week that he’s following through on his campaign pledge to “tax the rich” by targeting those who “store their wealth in New York City real estate but who don’t actually live here.” Mamdani, who has waved away scrutiny of his wife’s support for terrorists by describing her as a “private citizen,” called out an actual private citizen, Citadel CEO Ken Griffin, by name, suggesting that Griffin and others like him are not sufficiently “contributing to our city.”

“Nonsense,” our editors write. “These wealthy nonresidents have made enormous—even historic—gifts to America’s largest city.”

In Griffin’s case, his joint $400 million donation to Memorial Sloan Kettering in 2023—made with California resident David Geffen—is the largest single donation the cancer center has ever received. (Mamdani’s friends spend their time caterwauling outside the hospital protesting for Gaza.) Then there’s Griffin’s $40 million to the Museum of Modern Art, $40 million to the Museum of Natural History, and $15 million to the poverty-fighting Robin Hood Foundation. Sources tell us his gifts to city institutions total around $600 million. It’s not a government-funded grocery store, but it’s a little something. That’s not to mention that Griffin, whose Citadel and Citadel Securities together employ approximately 5,000 people, is currently building Midtown’s tallest skyscraper right on Park Ave., something a mayor with any understanding of how to help working people would be welcoming and celebrating.

Griffin packed up and left high-tax, high-crime Chicago for his native Florida in 2022, citing the city’s left-wing governance, and he brought his company with him. There are only a few hundred Citadel workers left in Chicago. By contrast, Citadel still employs more than 2,000 people in New York. One has to wonder who told Mamdani that doxxing such a generous donor and employer—who already pays more than $800,000 a year in New York property taxes on his pied-à-terre and is one of the top taxpayers in New York due to apportionment of income—was a good idea.

Griffin and the rest of the ultra-wealthy are mobile and resilient, and their patience with far-left politicians has limits. There’s nothing stopping him and others from doing the same in New York City, leaving a hole in the budget and the chill of collectivism in the rearview mirror.

READ MORE: Who ‘Contributes’ to New York City?

The Palestinian Authority paid salaries to convicted terrorists released under the October 2025 Gaza ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, according to a State Department report to Congress obtained by the Free Beacon. The report “marks the first U.S. government determination that the PA has ‘provided payments to convicted terrorists released from Israeli prisons in October 2025 under President Trump’s 20-point peace plan,’” our Adam Kredo reports.

Though PA president Mahmoud Abbas, 90, publicly claims to have scrapped his government’s infamous “pay-to-slay” program in early 2025, he has continued distributing funds—often through alternative channels—to militants and their families, including to those freed as part of the ceasefire, the report notes. A separate report from Palestinian Media Watch found that Abbas’s Fatah party is granting “leadership positions” to “terrorists who have been imprisoned for more than 20 years.” The findings have triggered continued U.S. penalties, including a blanket denial of visas for Palestinian officials and diplomatic pressure tied to future compliance reviews. Lawmakers say the report reinforces long-standing concerns about the PA’s role in the West Bank and Gaza.

“The Palestinian Authority has been inciting terrorism and undermining peace for decades,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) told the Free Beacon. “They’ve never lived up to the commitments they’ve made to the United States, and they’ve always been allowed to get away with it. President Trump has made it clear that their behavior is unacceptable, and much more should be done to hold them accountable for the violence they cause.”

READ MORE: Palestinian Authority Has Paid Convicted Terrorists Released as Part of Gaza Ceasefire Deal, State Department Tells Congress

Additional reading:

• After declaring the Strait of Hormuz “completely open,” the Iranian regime opened fire at vessels in the strait linked to France and the United Kingdom. Trump called the move “a total violation of our ceasefire agreement” and said that if the regime refuses the deal that U.S. representatives are headed to Pakistan to negotiate, he will “knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran.” The two-week ceasefire expires Tuesday.

• Ilhan Omar’s latest financial disclosures paint an astonishingly different picture than did her 2025 filing—that showed her net worth skyrocketing to as much as $30 million. The new, amended filing shows Omar’s assets to be worth as much as $95,000. Aides to Omar, whose finances and immigration status are now under a harsh spotlight, told the Wall Street Journal that the original filing contained an accounting error—oops!—and it “didn’t jump off the page for her because she isn’t involved with her husband’s businesses,” the source of her wealth or lack thereof. That’s a far cry from her response when the Free Beacon first reported on the disclosure. Then, she made a confusing argument that she wasn’t worth millions because the businesses didn’t generate millions in income, which isn’t exactly how calculating net worth works.

• Elizabeth Warren campaigned Saturday alongside Graham Platner, saying the left-wing candidate for Senate in Maine “has the values” to serve in the upper chamber and would bring “accountability” to Washington, D.C. It’s an interesting way to describe a man who has called his Nazi symbol tattoo “an eminently reasonable thing.” It’s also a slap in the face to Chuck Schumer, who lured Platner’s primary opponent, Maine governor Janet Mills, into the race in the hopes of securing a more electable nominee than the baggage-laden Platner.

• New York Democratic congressional candidate Brad Lander, who has championed stricter enforcement against dangerous driving, accumulated more than $6,000 in traffic fines over the past decade, including multiple violations in school zones. Vehicles associated with Lander’s office also racked up violations and taxpayers covered the fines, a Lander spokeswoman confirmed. He’s the latest in a string of reckless-driving Democrats to whom we’ve drawn attention, but the first who’s not a woman! The Free Beacon was there to cover former Rep. Susan Wild (D., Penn.) phoning into a campaign Zoom call behind the wheel and AOC’s beat-up Tesla parked illegally outside a D.C. Whole Foods.

• Qatar has retained two Washington, D.C.-based crisis management firms to “address public misconceptions” about its funding of U.S. universities in the wake of high-profile scrutiny from Congress, federal disclosures show. One of the firms, Washington Media Group, says it “crafts solutions to high-profile crises” and “protects and repairs reputations.” Venable partner Ronald Jacob, who “leads clients through crises involving government investigations, litigation, and media exposure,” is also repping the Hamas-friendly Gulf state.

Check out our full Monday lineup below.

1. Astonishingly Prolific Anti-Israel Medical Researcher Used AI to Churn Out Journal Articles, Screening Software Shows

2. Who ‘Contributes’ to New York City?

3. Palestinian Authority Has Paid Convicted Terrorists Released as Part of Gaza Ceasefire Deal, State Department Tells Congress

4. New York House Candidate Brad Lander, Who Pushed a Crackdown on Dangerous Driving, Racked Up 10 Tickets for Speeding in School Zones

5. Elizabeth Warren Says Hamas-Praising Maine Democrat Graham Platner ‘Has the Values’ To Serve in the Senate

Left-wing Michigan Democratic Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed said at a campaign event last year that terrorists commit “heinous act[s]” because they feel “pain and frustration,” citing “hypocritical” U.S. actions that are “creating pain,” video footage exclusively obtained by the Free Beacon shows. El-Sayed—who is tied with state lawmaker Mallory McMorrow for the lead in the hotly contested Democratic primary for Michigan’s open seat, according to a new Emerson College poll—made the remarks at a campaign stop in South Haven, Mich., in July 2025 in response to a question about how he would “deal with hostages and terrorism as a U.S. senator.” El-Sayed stressed the need to “be curious about why those things happen in the first place. Like, what drives somebody to want to commit such a heinous act?”

“There is a level of pain and frustration and a level of lack of agency that they have to feel to do something so insane and absurd, right? And so I’ve often tried to ask, like, so what moves somebody into that, and how is it that we’re behaving that may get somebody to think that we don’t see them, and that’s creating pain?”

El-Sayed went on to argue that “we set up this rules-based international order, and then we break the rules of the rules-based international order, and that creates a situation where there are a lot of people who look at us and say that’s hypocritical and that’s wrong.”

The Free Beacon’s Alana Goodman writes: “The candidate’s remarks are a throwback to the so-called ‘root causes’ debate that unfolded in the years after the 9/11 attacks, when many academics and pundits argued that poverty and desperation across the globe were a major cause of anti-American terrorism. Others pointed out that terrorists were typically educated and well-off and that the argument overlooked the centrality of deep-seated ideological motivations. El-Sayed’s 2025 remarks suggest he would bring the ‘root causes’ view to the Senate, demanding empathy and understanding for violence against civilians as opposed to a military response.”

READ MORE: EXCLUSIVE: Michigan Senate Hopeful Abdul El-Sayed Blamed US for ‘Creating’ Terrorism: ‘What Happens When People Are in Pain?’

New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani’s wife is sorry for using derogatory terms to refer to blacks and gays on an old social media account—but not for glorifying Palestinian terrorists, including a plane hijacker. First Lady Rama Duwaji told the online magazine Hyperallergic that she “felt a lot of shame” when a “tabloid” (that’s us) “published old tweets I wrote as a teenager” that included “language I used that is so harmful to others.” “I’ve read and seen a lot of what others have had to say in response, and I understand the hurt I caused and am truly sorry.”

Duwaji was referring to a Free Beacon report published last month about her social media activity, much of which occurred in her late teens and early 20s.

Her remarks “are revealing for what she did not apologize for,” our Jon Levine writes. “Though Duwaji was a teenager when she posted the slurs”—which included the n-word and a reference to “fgts”—”she was in her early 20s when she shared posts lauding terrorists like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine’s (PFLP) Leila Khaled, who participated in plane hijackings in 1969 and 1970.” A Tumblr post from a 20-year-old Duwaji showed Khaled clad in a keffiyeh along with the quote, “If it does good for my cause, I’ll be happy to accept death.” Duwaji also shared an image of a Bangladeshi postage stamp reading, “We salute the valiant freedom fighters of Palestine” and showing a man wearing a keffiyeh and holding a gun.

"Mamdani ultimately commented on the first lady's old posts on Thursday, long after they began receiving attention from mainstream outlets like Politico and CNN," Levine writes. "At a press conference, Mamdani said he would not add to his wife's comments in her interview. 'You know, she shared some of her reflections in this interview, and I won't add much to them,' he told reporters. 'What I will say, however, is that she is someone of incredible integrity, she is someone that I am lucky to be able to call my wife, and that I am proud of her each and every day.'"

READ MORE: Zohran Mamdani’s Wife Apologizes for ‘Harmful’ Racial Slurs She Posted on Social Media—But Not for Glorifying Terrorists

A federal judge presiding over a lawsuit accusing George Washington University of “pervasive and severe antisemitic harassment” has a new gig teaching a law school class on “ethics and discretionary judgment” at…George Washington University, the Free Beacon‘s Jessica Costescu reports. Despite the obvious conflict of interest, the judge, Biden appointee Loren AliKhan, has yet to recuse herself from the case, prompting criticism from legal experts.

GW announced that it had hired AliKhan to teach the course on Feb. 25. A course bulletin shows that the class is part of the spring 2026 semester, which started on Jan. 12, suggesting AliKhan was hired before the school’s announcement. It wasn’t until weeks after that announcement, though, that AliKhan acknowledged a potential conflict of interest when she issued a 10-day stay on March 30 “to assess whether she has a conflict that warrants her disqualification, disclosure to the parties, or other appropriate action.” Law professors said the delay is unnecessary—because federal law and other rules make clear that AliKhan should have recused herself immediately.

“This is such an easy decision,” said Keith Fisher, an associate professor at the St. Thomas University College of Law. “The minute she decided to accept this position with GW, she should have just disqualified herself and short circuited this whole thing.”

“The only ethical solution is her complete recusal,” added University of New Hampshire law professor Seth Oranburg.

READ MORE: George Washington University Hires Federal Judge Overseeing Antisemitism Lawsuit Against It To Teach ‘Ethics and Discretionary Judgment’

Additional reading:

• President Donald Trump said the Iranian regime has “agreed to give us back the nuclear dust,” code for the highly enriched uranium believed to be buried deep underground after last year’s strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. It would be a massive development, and Trump’s statement comes as the U.S. reportedly eyes a second round of negotiations with the Islamic Republic. “If there is no deal,” Trump added Thursday, “fighting resumes.”

• Trump also announced that Israel and Lebanon have agreed to a 10-day ceasefire, though it’s not clear if Hezbollah, the terrorist outfit actually doing the fighting, will honor it. Israel and Lebanon’s leaders will meet within the next two weeks, “probably” at the White House, Trump added. The president “is prepared to use American resources” to help the Lebanese government disarm Hezbollah, a senior Israeli official told the Jerusalem Post.

• Trend alert: Left-wing Senate candidate Graham Platner of Maine took a page out of the Mrs. Mamdani playbook, apologizing for using the word “retarded” in a recent interview. He did not apologize for praising Hamas.

• California’s largest teachers’ union has endorsed Tom Steyer for California governor, throwing its weight behind a billionaire hedge fund mogul who…sent his four children to a cushy San Francisco private school. Steyer graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy, the elite New Hampshire boarding school that costs more than $70,000 a year and boasts a $1.65 billion endowment. The union had previously endorsed disgraced Democrat Eric Swalwell.

Happy Friday, our full lineup is below.

1. EXCLUSIVE: Michigan Senate Hopeful Abdul El-Sayed Blamed US for ‘Creating’ Terrorism: ‘What Happens When People Are in Pain?’

2. Zohran Mamdani’s Wife Apologizes for ‘Harmful’ Racial Slurs She Posted on Social Media—But Not for Glorifying Terrorists

3. George Washington University Hires Federal Judge Overseeing Antisemitism Lawsuit Against It To Teach ‘Ethics and Discretionary Judgment’

4. Former Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax Kills Wife, Then Himself, Amid ‘Messy Divorce’

5. Hegseth Takes Aim at Iranian Regime ‘Pirates and Terrorists’ and ‘Legacy Trump-Hating Press’ in News Conference

6. California Teachers’ Union Endorses Billionaire Tom Steyer, Who Attended Elite Phillips Exeter Academy and Sent Kids to Private School

7. Sanders Resolution Blocking Arms Sales to Israel Garners Approval From 2028 Dem Presidential Hopefuls

“Moderate” Virginia governor Abigail Spanberger signed a bill on Monday requiring public schools to consider “restorative disciplinary practices” like “peer mediation” or a “restorative circle” before suspending or expelling students, the Free Beacon’s Peter Hasson reports. The move follows controversial attempts to swap “exclusionary discipline”—what normal people call “discipline”—with “restorative justice” in liberal strongholds like New York City and Portland. It’s a far cry from the affordability-focused agenda on which the “centrist” Spanberger campaigned.

The bill states that “no public elementary or secondary school student shall be suspended, expelled, or excluded from attendance at school unless the school first considers at least one evidence-based restorative disciplinary practice.” Examples include “mentoring,” “a peer jury,” “peer mediation,” “a restorative circle,” and “any other disciplinary practice” that “provides solutions tailored to students’ cultures” and “includes community members reflecting the cultural and demographic diversity of the school community.” Though the bill does not detail how to organize a “restorative circle,” a guide from the left-wing Center for Justice Innovation says such circles are “rooted in centuries-old indigenous practices” and include an “opening ceremony” like a “breathing exercise” before “passing around an object that serves as the talking piece” which “gives the speaker a chance to share openly and uninterrupted.”

You won’t believe this, but after New York City, under former mayor Bill de Blasio, allocated millions of dollars toward “restorative justice” initiatives in schools, chronic absenteeism among city students rose to 34.8 percent in 2022-23 from 26.5 percent in 2018-19, while the number of incidents that required a response from the New York Police Department’s school safety division rose to 4,120 in the first quarter of 2025 from 1,200 in the first quarter of 2016. High-profile incidents exposing the pitfalls of the policy also emerged: In one case, a Jewish high school teacher in Brooklyn sued her district after students who subjected her to Nazi salutes and threats were sent to a “meditation room” rather than suspended.

READ MORE: Moderate’ Governor Abigail Spanberger Signs Bill Forcing Virginia Schools To Consider ‘Restorative Disciplinary Practices’ Before Suspending Students

Governor Kathy Hochul and Mayor Zohran Mamdani are joining forces in America’s 250th birthday year to implement a tax on people who own property in New York City but don’t live there. Nothing like a little “taxation without representation—precisely the injustice that the United States of America was founded to oppose,” to mark the semiquincentennial, writes the Free Beacon’s Ira Stoll.

Hochul, who some had hoped would serve as a moderating influence on Mamdani, called the tax “a targeted surcharge on second homes and investor-owned apartments worth over $5 million,” saying the owners of those “pied-à-terres are not contributing in the same way that the 8.3 million New York residents do.” Mamdani singled out Florida-based businessman Ken Griffin, founder of one of the most successful hedge funds and market makers in the world, accusing him of having “stored” his wealth in a Manhattan penthouse “that is so often empty.” Stoll writes:

The people who own these properties are not New York City voters or in some cases even New York State voters, though they do pay property taxes already; if their primary residence is in Florida and they vote there, they don’t even have the ability to elect the New York politicians who are imposing taxes on them. That was precisely the same position that the North American colonists were in in the 1760s and 1770s when the British Parliament—where the colonies were not represented—were imposing taxes on the colonists. The colonists likened it to slavery and fought a revolution over it. The Declaration of Independence issued in July 1776 referred to it as “imposing Taxes on us without our Consent.”

Collecting a tax on second homes and investor-owned apartments in New York City poses potential practical challenges from an enforcement perspective. Some New York City apartment buildings are organized as cooperatives; the co-op building pays the tax, and the shareholders in the co-op pay maintenance, a portion of which goes to pay the building’s taxes. In the case of condos, a couple or family could designate a lower-income family member as a New York City resident, and as the apartment owner, for tax purposes, and file a separate tax return for that person. The tax also might be subject to legal opposition on the basis of retroactivity or equal protection, though those efforts might face steep challenges. People could choose to sell the properties, accelerating the flight from New York.

READ MORE: New York Marks America’s 250th With Turn to Taxation Without Representation

A new database created by a former policy analyst for New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, “Below The Fold,” allows users to slice and dice all of the New York Times articles published in the past 25 years. It empirically proves everything we already knew about the “newspaper of record,” from its obsession with Gaza to its outsized focus on coastal elites. Here are some examples:

• Sorting the articles for coverage by country generates a statistic called articles/million residents/year. Gaza generates a score of 104.4, followed by 55.7 for Israel and 41.14 for the West Bank. Compare that with the likes of Japan and Germany, which boast scores of just 1.32 and 2.78, respectively. In total, the Times tagged nearly 15,000 articles with coverage of “Israel” from 2000 to 2025.

• The database also breaks down coverage by state, adjusted by population. Summer vacation destinations like Vermont and Maine get a lot of coverage relative to their populations. Alabama, Indiana, and Arkansas do not.

• The frequency of words appearing in article headlines is searchable, too. The word “Black,” for example, appeared in nearly 120 headlines a month at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, compared with around 20 a month in the year 2000.

READ MORE: New Database Empirically Proves Everything You Suspected About the New York Times

Additional reading:

• As President Donald Trump teases a second round of negotiations with Iran, he is also “sending thousands of additional troops into the Middle East in the coming days,” forces that include “about 6,000 troops aboard the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush and several warships escorting it,” the Washington Post reported. The move comes as the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports—which zero ships have broken through since its launch on Monday—puts significant economic pressure on the Islamic Republic.

• Eric Swalwell’s attorney, Sara Azari, appeared on NewsNation to address rape claims against her client, arguing that “regret is not rape.” “The fact that, you know … you maybe had shame around what you did, or maybe you were in a relationship and shouldn’t have done what you did, doesn’t make it rape,” she said.

• Swalwell’s Democratic “friends,” from Senator Adam Schiff to billionaire Stephen Cloobeck, say that they’re shocked by the allegations against him, even as political insiders say his misconduct was an open secret.

• You can’t teach an old dog new tricks: Former president Joe Biden appeared at Syracuse University for a portrait unveiling on Tuesday. After chairman of the board Jeffrey Scruggs, who is black, introduced Biden and exited the stage, Biden brought him back up, saying, “Come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here. Doesn’t he look like Barack?”

Check out our full Wednesday lineup below.

1. Moderate’ Governor Abigail Spanberger Signs Bill Forcing Virginia Schools To Consider ‘Restorative Disciplinary Practices’ Before Suspending Students

2. New York Marks America’s 250th With Turn to Taxation Without Representation

3. New Database Empirically Proves Everything You Suspected About the New York Times

4. Democrats Who Called Eric Swalwell Their ‘Friend’ Now Say They’re Stunned by Accusations Against Him

5. Swalwell Accuser’s Allegations Corroborated by Campaign Disbursements, Raising Fresh Legal Questions

6. GOP Senators Push To Prohibit US Funding for UNRWA

7. Duke Suspends Students for Justice in Palestine Chapter Over Illustration Depicting ‘Zionism’ as Pig Holding Star of David

Arizona senator Ruben Gallego, now an aspiring 2028 presidential candidate, is in the news thanks to his bromance with the disgraced former California congressman Eric Swalwell, who is facing mounting allegations of sexual harassment and sexual assault, not to mention the emergence of a video that shows him rolling around on a bed in Las Vegas with an escort.

Gallego was Swalwell’s Capitol Hill roommate and longtime wingman, so some people are reasonably starting to wonder what Gallego knew, when he knew it, and whether he got in on the action. Gallego attempted to answer those questions on Tuesday, telling reporters, “This man led a double life. I was manipulated, I was lied to.” Given that everybody in D.C. seems to have known about Swalwell’s extracurricular interests, Gallego is either the stupidest man in Washington or, perhaps, not on the up-and-up. The legacy media is now interested in the story and, it turns out, there may have been some signs Gallego isn’t a stand up guy.

When Gallego filed for divorce in 2016, he managed to seal even the existence of the case on the docket, citing the fact that he was a “high profile public official.” The Free Beacon waged a successful battle to unseal those records, which revealed that Gallego blindsided his pregnant wife, who was “likely to give birth any day,” when he served her with divorce papers—and then demanded she pay his legal bills. He remarried a lobbyist 14 years his junior in short order, announcing their engagement in 2020 with great fanfare even though they were actually already married. Yes, you read that right.

The media weren’t much interested in any of this. The Associated Press told us at the time, “Ruben Gallego divorce records unsealed but reveal little about Democratic Senate candidate.” The records, the news wire said, “offer little insight into the high-profile marriage or the reasons it fell apart.” National Public Radio, then on the taxpayer dime, quoted a Tucson divorce attorney who said the records reveal “a relatively speedy and clearly amicable separation,” adding, “It’s likely the Gallegos had agreed to most of the terms of their separation before filing for divorce.”

Gallego is either one of the few people on Capitol Hill who hadn’t gotten wind of Swalwell’s misdeeds or an enabler and participant in them, and either scenario is a non-starter for a serious presidential contender. It is worth bearing in mind that the Democratic establishment shivved Swalwell when he became a liability in a crowded primary. When Gallego’s turn in the barrel comes and the press touts the power of “investigative reporting,” well, you heard it here first.

READ MORE: On Ruben Gallego, We Told You So

FLASHBACK: ‘Likely To Give Birth Any Day’: Ruben Gallego Served Pregnant Wife With Divorce Papers. She Was Blindsided.

New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani recently unveiled his plan to build a massive government-run grocery store in Manhattan. Rooted in the failed tenets of communism, the taxpayer-funded supermarket will cost $30 million and take three years to build. “Most self-respecting experts think it’s a terrible idea—for obvious reasons,” our Andrew Stiles writes. Here’s everything you need to know:

Can the city afford it? Not really. Mamdani has until July 1 to resolve a $5.4 billion deficit.

Where are they building it? Not in Midtown Manhattan, obviously. The first city-run supermarket will be located on what is now an empty lot in East Harlem at 116th Street and Park Avenue. The New York Times described the neighborhood as a “diverse community with high poverty rates.”

Is that a good location for a government supermarket? Not really. One of Mamdani’s stated aims was to combat “food deserts” where grocery options are limited. There are five grocery stores within a two-block radius of the proposed building site, though they will struggle to compete with a taxpayer-subsidized venture that is immune to rising property tax rates. It will also compete with local vendors at the nearby La Marqueta complex.

Shouldn’t they just build a Costco instead? Probably, but there is already a Costco several blocks away, or 0.7 miles. Google Maps says it’s a 15-minute walk, but a normal person could probably make it there in 10 minutes, while a freak such as Bill de Blasio could do it in 5 minutes.

READ MORE: The People’s Boondoggle: Mamdani’s $30 Million Taxpayer-Funded Supermarket, by the Numbers

Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán became a hero for some on the right because of his unapologetic opposition to one of Europe’s great failures: mass immigration. At the same time, he “contributed to other problems that more directly affect U.S. interests,” Free Beacon columnist Mike Watson writes in the wake of Orbán’s electoral defeat.

Americans who focus on national security see Budapest as one of the most pernicious foot-draggers on European defense. Orbán has cozied up to Russia throughout his tenure, most recently signing a new trade and energy agreement in December. Unlike virtually every other European country, Hungary has increased its dependence on Russian oil since the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine and repeatedly slowed or vetoed sanctions on Russia. It currently blocks a $100 billion EU loan for Ukraine.

Orbán is also close to China and Iran. Shortly after expelling Soros’s university, he tried to approve a campus for China’s Fudan University. Xi Jinping has richly rewarded Orbán for being his lawyer in Brussels: He established an “All-Weather Comprehensive Strategic Partnership” during a visit to Budapest in 2024, and Hungary was the top European destination for Chinese investment that year. Budapest signed a trade deal with Iran a few months after October 7 and promised to help Iran investigate after Israel detonated thousands of Hezbollah’s pagers.

Hungarian nationalists do not understand their problems or how to solve them. Before World War I, they co-ruled a massive, multiethnic empire with Austria and never recovered from the consequences of that defeat. They now complain bitterly about their lost territory and the Hungarian communities there—one of Ukraine’s top drone commanders is ethnically Hungarian—blame the United States for somehow holding them back, and fantasize about getting even. This is one of the key sources of Europe’s malaise rather than a solution for it.

READ MORE: Managed Decline: Lessons from Viktor Orbán’s Loss

Additional reading:

• Not a single ship has breached the United States’ naval blockade in the Persian Gulf since it began Monday morning, according to U.S. Central Command, a development that will hamper the Iranian regime’s ability to export billions of dollars in oil and sustain itself financially. The Islamic Republic stands to lose around $435 million per day if it is unable to penetrate the blockade, former Treasury Department official Miad Maleki said.

• Harvard’s 2025 settlement agreement with the Brandeis Center requires the Ivy League university to publish an annual report on its handling of campus antisemitism. More than a year after reaching that agreement, it has yet to publish a report, according to the Harvard Crimson.

• More women are coming forward to accuse disgraced California Democrat Eric Swalwell of sexual assault. One of them, Lonna Drewes, said Tuesday that Swalwell spiked her drink at a bar in West Hollywood before raping her in his hotel room. Drewes said she planned to file a police report detailing the incident.

• Service Employees International Union rescinded its endorsement of University of Michigan Board of Regents candidate Amir Makled after the Free Beacon reported on deleted X posts in which Makled celebrated Hezbollah terrorists and expressed support for the Iranian regime. Makled campaigned with left-wing Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed last week.

• American University is recruiting Jewish students through an ad in a Brooklyn-based Jewish newspaper, a move that follows similar efforts from Dartmouth and Brown universities—and stands in contrast to the big shrugs that have come from Harvard and Yale in the face of a steep decline in Jewish enrollment.

Check out our full Wednesday lineup below.

1. On Ruben Gallego, We Told You So

2. FLASHBACK: ‘Likely To Give Birth Any Day’: Ruben Gallego Served Pregnant Wife With Divorce Papers. She Was Blindsided.

3. The People’s Boondoggle: Mamdani’s $30 Million Taxpayer-Funded Supermarket, by the Numbers

4. Managed Decline: Lessons from Viktor Orbán’s Loss

5. No Ships Have Broken Through US Blockade in Persian Gulf, CENTCOM Says, Threatening To Deprive Islamic Republic of Billions in Oil Revenue

6. American University Advertising for Jewish Students, Mirroring Efforts From Dartmouth

7. New Database Empirically Proves Everything You Suspected About the New York Times

Student journalists and comedy writers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have gotten death threats after an April Fools’ day article and a Saturday Night Live-style video skit—both satirizing issues of race, class, and immigration status—caused a massive uproar on the easily triggered campus. University officials denounced the “completely unacceptable” and “deeply hurtful” satire, and announced an investigation into the video skit, only to backtrack several days later after receiving complaints from national free speech groups, UNC senior Ashley Dowdney reports for the Free Beacon.

The student paper, the Daily Tar Heel, included in its annual April 1 satire issue a spoof report about President Donald Trump replacing the state’s Alcohol Law Enforcement agency, despised by many students on campus, with ICE. The “report” indicated that a federal agent had mistakenly arrested “a white girl who was sporting a suspect dark fake tan.” The satirical video skit—published by the student-run late night show Hill After Hours—featured an entitled white sorority girl touring UNC’s freshman budget housing with her bodyguards, describing the area as a “third-world country” and being condescending to Hispanic students.

UNC senior vice provost for student success James Orr condemned the “racist and insensitive nature” of the material, which he described as “completely unacceptable” and “deeply hurtful.” He also pledged to “investigate” Hill After Hours. The approach clashes with Article 36 of UNC’s 2024 “equality” policy, which requires university officials to remain neutral on “political controversies of the day.”

“Provost Orr’s ‘Statement on Behalf of the University’ certainly appears to violate the UNC system’s commitment to institutional neutrality,” said the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s special counsel for campus advocacy, Robert Shibley, who said the school’s reaction “seems likely to chill freedom of expression at UNC.”

On Friday, UNC’s general counsel’s office reached out to FIRE, four days after Orr’s fiery denunciation, and backtracked, but not before the Daily Tar Heel and Hill After Hours folded like cheap suits, removing the content and issuing multiple groveling apologies. The Daily Tar Heel will now give editors DEI training—administered by UNC’s journalism school—and Hill After Hours told viewers, “Satire is not an excuse for ignorance.”

Read the whole mindbending piece below.

READ MORE: UNC Officials Accused of Not Protecting Students or Defending Free Speech After April Fools’ ICE Article, ‘Sorority Girl’ Skit Lead to Death Threats, Campus Uproar

The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal recently published suspiciously similar stories claiming the Iran war had vindicated China’s investments in wind and solar energy. “How’d the New York Times (’War Highlights China’s Renewables Lead‘) and the Wall Street Journal (’An Iran War Winner: China’s Clean Energy‘) wind up with the same bad takes on the same story on the same day?” asks the Free Beacon‘s Ira Stoll. “It’s likely that their editors were both reading the Associated Press, a wire service that drives newsroom agendas by providing a tip sheet in advance disclosing what stories the AP is working on.” Stoll writes:

The AP had its own version of the same story, headlined, “Iran war’s global energy crisis sharpens China’s advantage in clean tech.” Datelined Hong Kong, a China-controlled territory where journalists are imprisoned if they publish articles that the Chinese authorities disapprove of, the AP story begins, “China is poised to benefit from the Iran war as global energy disruptions accelerate a shift away from fossil fuels and toward clean technologies and renewable power, industries that China dominates.”

The gist of the story—that the Iran war somehow demonstrates that China is right about wind and solar energy—is a fantasy, not a fact. Even if you rely on China’s own unreliable data, the International Energy Agency lists coal and coal products as 71 percent of China’s energy production, and solar, wind, and other renewables combined at 5.4 percent.

The AP’s questionable business relationships may explain how the piece was published in the first place. The AP has a “partnership“ with the China News Service, which is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. The AP’s “climate desk,” meanwhile, is funded by left-wing philanthropies like the Hewlett Foundation, which also happens to give to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. A researcher for the institute, Sam Reynolds, is quoted in the AP piece as saying, “China’s approach to energy sector development and geopolitics has been completely validated by the Iran conflict.”

READ MORE: The Misleading Media Groupthink On China’s Renewable Energy

Additional reading:

• The U.S. blockade of Iran went into effect Monday morning, “and there are more than 15 U.S. warships in place to support the operation,” according to the Wall Street Journal, which noted that U.S. naval assets positioned in the region include “an aircraft carrier, multiple guided-missile destroyers, an amphibious assault ship and several other warships.” Those ships are expected to operate just outside the Strait of Hormuz to minimize attacks from Iran, and they “have the ability to launch helicopters that support boarding operations.”

• Trump said Iranian ships that “come anywhere close to our BLOCKADE” will be “immediately ELIMINATED, using the same system of kill that we use against the drug dealers on boats at Sea. It is quick and brutal.”

• Disgraced California Democrat Eric Swalwell is resigning from Congress as sexual assault and harassment allegations from former staffers stack up against him. In a truly ridiculous statement, he called the allegations “false” while also apologizing to his family and staff for “mistakes in judgment.”

• An overlooked figure in the scandal is Ruben Gallego, the Arizona senator who will live in infamy for, among other things, posing shirtless with Swalwell while riding a camel in the Qatari desert. Gallego, who endorsed Swalwell’s gubernatorial campaign, initially rose to his buddy’s defense. Now, Gallego claims he’s “shocked and upset” to learn of the accusations and regrets sticking up for his friend. Gallego, who served his wife with divorce papers when she was nine months pregnant and then tried to force her to pay his legal bills, now says he had no idea his scumbag friend was leading a “double life.” “An important question everyone should be asking: what did Senator Ruben Gallego know and when did he know it?” journalist Yashar Ali wrote on X.

• The Obama bros over at Pod Save America hosted anti-American streamer and Abdul El-Sayed campaign surrogate Hasan Piker, who called Republicans “the biggest terrorists internationally” and expressed support for the actual terrorists of Hamas. “When you say, ‘Hamas is a thousand times better,’ do you actually mean that?” former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau asked. “I do mean it,” Piker replied. His appearance on the podcast came around the same time New York Times columnist and Democratic darling Ezra Klein published a column headlined, “Hasan Piker Is Not the Enemy.”

Check out our full Tuesday lineup below.

1. UNC Officials Accused of Not Protecting Students or Defending Free Speech After April Fools’ ICE Article, ‘Sorority Girl’ Skit Lead to Death Threats, Campus Uproar

2. The Misleading Media Groupthink On China’s Renewable Energy

3. Wingman Woes: Gallego Caught in Swalwell Storm

California governor Gavin Newsom said he has a “moral duty” to release his tax returns every year but hasn’t done so since 2022, raising questions about the governor’s finances and whether he can actually put his money where his mouth is as he eyes a 2028 presidential bid, our Andrew Kerr reports.

Newsom made the commitment while campaigning for his first term as governor in 2017, earning praise from the Sacramento Bee, which said the Democrat “set a standard of transparency.” Two years later, Newsom signed a bill requiring presidential and gubernatorial candidates to release their tax returns to appear on the ballot in California, which Newsom said would deter allegations of “conflicts of interest, self-dealing, or influence from domestic or foreign business interests.”

The move was aimed at forcing President Donald Trump to release his own tax returns, though that did not happen: California’s supreme court struck down the provision related to presidential candidates while upholding the requirement for gubernatorial candidates. Newsom complied with the law when running for reelection in 2022, when he released his 2020 tax return. He has not released any returns since then—meaning Newsom is not “the first Governor in state history to release his tax returns on a yearly basis,” as he said he would become.

The release of more recent returns could shed light on income Newsom and his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, have received from Siebel Newsom’s charity, the Representation Project, which combats “intersectional gender stereotypes” and is funded by companies that do business with Newsom’s administration. The charity has paid a production company owned by Siebel Newsom—who comes from a wealthy family and is the beneficiary of a multimillion-dollar trust—nearly $800,000 since 2020, but it’s unclear how much of the money has gone to Siebel Newsom directly. Fresh tax returns from Newsom would provide an exact figure.

READ MORE: Gavin Newsom Said He Had a ‘Moral Duty’ To Release His Tax Returns Every Year He Served in Office. He Hasn’t Since 2022.

A California real estate developer is funding both climate lawsuits against major oil companies and the academic research used to shape how judges evaluate those cases, according to emails and tax filings reviewed by the Free Beacon. The wealthy environmental activist Dan A. Emmett has bankrolled the law firm Sher Edling, which has filed an array of lawsuits seeking damages from oil companies for everything from the rise of sea levels to heat waves. He’s also a funder of Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, home to the academics behind a chapter on climate science included in a manual that judges are supposed to use to adjudicate climate-related cases.

Sher Edling asked Emmett to fund a 2017 lawsuit from three California communities seeking billions in damages from Shell, Chevron, and Exxon for the rise of sea levels, emails show. Months later, Emmett “encouraged Sher Edling to parlay his support into additional donations, pressing the firm in a 2018 email to identify him as a ‘serious supporter’ when soliciting support,” our Thomas Catenacci reports. The Sabin Center, meanwhile, lauds Emmett as a “generous supporter.”

Emmett “is reflective of an emerging trend on the Left in which philanthropic donations and nonprofit organizations are used to bankroll lawsuits aimed at quantifying the damage caused by climate change and forcing the nation’s leading oil producers to pay—and, at the same time, producing climate-related academic literature and course material intended to influence the judges overseeing that litigation,” Catenacci writes. “The Free Beacon reported in December that the New Venture Fund, a left-wing dark money group, gave $2.3 million to Sher Edling, the law firm behind a bevy of lawsuits targeting oil companies, and $1.3 million to the Environmental Law Institute, which runs a project to train judges overseeing climate-related lawsuits. (Emmett has also directed at least $25,000 to the Environmental Law Institute since 2019.)”

READ MORE: Meet the California Millionaire Funding Anti-Oil Lawsuits—And the Columbia Academics Working To Influence the Judges Handling The Cases

Additional reading:

• That was fast: Vice President J.D. Vance and the rest of the U.S. negotiating team left Pakistan after less than 24 hours of negotiations with Iran. President Donald Trump said the Islamic Republic was—imagine this—”UNWILLING TO GIVE UP ITS NUCLEAR AMBITIONS.”

• As a result, Trump vowed to implement a U.S. blockade of ships entering and exiting Iranian ports—he said he would blockade the Strait of Hormuz but CENTCOM later clarified the operation is narrower—conduct a mine-clearing operation, and “BLOW TO HELL” anyone who fires at the United States while doing so. “Additionally and, at an appropriate moment, we are fully ‘LOCKED AND LOADED,’ and our Military will finish up the little that is left of Iran!” Trump said.

• Liberal congressman and California gubernatorial candidate Eric Swalwell is facing a criminal investigation from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office after former staffers accused him of sexual misconduct, including one who said Swalwell raped her in a New York City hotel room in 2024. Swalwell is now facing calls to resign from Congress. He hasn’t resigned, though he did suspend his gubernatorial campaign on Sunday night, saying he “deeply sorry for mistakes in judgment” while simultaneously pledging to “fight the serious, false allegations that have been made.”

• The left-wing candidate in the Maine Democratic Senate primary, Graham Platner, vowed to work with Kentucky Republicans “Ron Paul” and Thomas Massie if elected to the upper chamber. Platner—who appeared to mistake the 90-year-old Paul with his son, Sen. Rand Paul—named the pair after an attendee at a Friday virtual town hall asked Platner, “Do you think bipartisanship is still possible, and in what ways would you be willing to work with Republicans?” Platner said he is “completely” and “very much” aligned with Paul and Massie on issues like foreign policy.

• The New York City cops who stopped a machete-wielding maniac at Grand Central Terminal on Saturday were working overtime subway station shifts—the sort of assignment that could plummet under Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who pledged during his campaign to eliminate NYPD’s overtime budget in an attempt to save money.

Check out our full Monday lineup below.

1. Gavin Newsom Said He Had a ‘Moral Duty’ To Release His Tax Returns Every Year He Served in Office. He Hasn’t Since 2022.

2. Meet the California Millionaire Funding Anti-Oil Lawsuits—And the Columbia Academics Working To Influence the Judges Handling The Cases

3. Managing the Mullahs: What a Negotiated Victory Over Iran Looks Like

4. How to Handle Your Out-of-Control Ivy

5. Guests of the Nation

6. Former Eric Swalwell Staffer Says California Democrat Sexually Assaulted Her Twice: ‘I Blacked Out and He Had Sex With Me’

7. Texas Democratic Senate Hopeful James Talarico Sought To Create ‘New Generation of Climate Activists’ by Mandating Climate Change Lessons in Texas Schools

8. ‘That Ain’t My Party’: Al Sharpton Says It Would Be ‘Crazy’ for Black People To Celebrate America’s 250th as 2028 Dem Hopefuls Pay Homage to Him

9. El-Sayed Campaigns With UMich Board of Regents Candidate Who Shared Since-Deleted Posts Praising Hezbollah and Iranian Regime

10. Maine Democrat Graham Platner Vows To Work With ‘Ron Paul,’ Thomas Massie if Elected to Senate: ‘Very Much Aligned’

11. GOP’s John Sununu ‘Very Confident’ He Can Win Under-the-Radar New Hampshire Senate Race As Polling Shows Tight Contest

12. No One Is Alone, Except Maybe Stephen Sondheim

13. He’s Crafty: How George Downing Kept His Head

14. Trump Administration Moves Closer To Deporting Mahmoud Khalil as Immigration Board Nixes Agitator’s Last Ditch Plea

Texas’s far-left Democratic Senate nominee, James Talarico, says he supports his state’s enormous oil and gas industry. Which is funny because he was a leading climate activist in the Texas State Legislature, introducing a bill that sought to “stop climate denialism” and “inspire a new generation of climate activists” by, of course, mandating that every K-12 public school teach kids about “the long-term problem of human-caused climate change and its effects.”

Talarico also authored a Green New Deal-style bill that would have implemented statewide green energy mandates. And in 2019, he joined a world-wide school walkout protest inspired by Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg during which participants “called for a drastic reduction in the use of fossil fuels.” Talarico posted a photo from the so-called Youth Climate Strike. “Students around the world are walking out of school to save our planet,” he wrote on Facebook at the time. “It’s time for the grown-ups to follow their lead.” Which super-supporter of the oil and gas industry hasn’t?

Talarico said he championed the climate education bill because he was “so proud of the young people stepping up to push legislators like me to address the climate crisis. But we need millions more.” He unveiled the legislation in March 2021, around the same time he introduced the Texas Climate Action Act, “which would have required the state to cut its total carbon emissions in half by 2030 and by 90 percent by 2050,” our Thomas Catenacci writes. None of these bills got anywhere in Texas’s GOP-controlled Legislature.

Now, as he runs to represent a state that generates more than $400 billion in oil and gas revenue, Talarico says he wants to “make gasoline more affordable by investing in pipeline fortification” and “add to our hundreds of thousands of oil [and] gas” jobs. A spokesman for Talarico told the Free Beacon the candidate “knows how essential oil and gas is to Texas’s economy” and “has never supported the Green New Deal.” But Talarico’s Texas Climate Action Act was strikingly similar to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s dead-in-the-cradle federal climate resolution, which called for a carbon emissions reduction of 40 to 60 percent by 2030 compared with Talarico’s 50 percent. Talarico praised Ocasio-Cortez in 2021 for arguing that fighting climate change “is about ‘creating prosperity.’”

READ MORE: Texas Senate Hopeful James Talarico Sought To Create ‘New Generation of Climate Activists’ by Mandating Climate Change Lessons in Texas Schools

The anti-American streamer Hasan Piker was the main draw at left-wing Michigan Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed’s rally earlier this week at the University of Michigan, but he wasn’t the only disgraceful figure out stumping for El-Sayed. The Senate candidate was introduced by “civil rights” attorney Amir Makled, himself a candidate for the University of Michigan’s board of regents, who shared since-deleted social media posts praising the Iranian regime and Hezbollah terrorists, the Free Beacon’s Alana Goodman reports.

Makled is looking to unseat longtime regent and Israel supporter Jordan Acker. Last June, Makled shared a post from a Hezbollah fan account that described the terrorist group’s onetime leader, Hassan Nasrallah, as a “martyr” and lamented the death of his security chief. “May His Ascension rise High,” the post read. That same month, the day Israel began pounding Iran’s nuclear facilities, Makled shared a post from an Iranian regime fan account calling on the Islamic Republic to “show no laxity in sacred war against the enemy.” Makled has also shared posts from podcaster and conspiracy theorist Candace Owens describing Israelis as “demons” and asserting they have a “bloodlust like no other.” All of those posts have now been deleted.

“Makled is best known in the university community for representing Michigan students who faced criminal charges after participating in the university’s illegal anti-Israel encampment in spring 2024,” writes Goodman. “The Tuesday night campaign event—where El-Sayed spoke alongside Piker, who has said that ‘America deserved 9/11’ and that it ‘doesn’t matter if rape happened on October 7’—came after a Free Beacon report on a private campaign call the Senate candidate held one day after the death of former Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei. El-Sayed said he wanted to avoid making a statement on Khamenei’s assassination because many voters in Dearborn, Mich., were ‘sad.’”

READ MORE: El-Sayed Campaigns With UMich Board of Regents Candidate Who Shared Since-Deleted Posts Praising Hezbollah and Iranian Regime

Negotiations between the United States and Iran are set to begin in Pakistan this weekend, assuming Hezbollah’s foolhardy attacks on Israel and Iran’s reluctance to reopen the Strait of Hormuz do not derail them. The regime says publicly it’s sticking to a 10-point plan that the White House literally threw in the trash, but the White House claims to have a different set of points that President Trump called “workable.” Trump’s demands, by contrast, are clear: open the Strait of Hormuz, stop enriching uranium, and give up the nuclear material buried during last summer’s Operation Midnight Hammer. Free Beacon columnist Mike Watson writes about whether and how the U.S. might achieve victory at the negotiating table:

Forcing Iran’s rulers to give up their nuclear program and agree to inspections that verify their continued compliance would be a significant victory. For decades, Iran’s rulers have claimed that they have the right to enrich uranium. According to the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, they used that supposed right to stockpile enough uranium that was just shy of weapons-grade to make 10 bombs. Other parts of the regime have researched how to use that material to make nuclear weapons. The knowledge of how to make a nuclear bomb cannot be fully removed, but the material needed to do so can.

This would not fully blunt the threat to the Strait, but it would dull it. The United States can demonstrate that closing the Strait is a losing proposition for Iran without necessarily forcing it open in combat. The regime has prioritized the nuclear program for decades over nearly everything else, especially the wellbeing of the Iranian people. Abandoning it despite having blocked the Strait would reveal to all that the regime fears continued American and Israeli bombardment far more than many believe. Threats to the Strait could still spike oil prices at inopportune times, much as they did before the war, but they would be a dead man’s hand, not a trump card.

A victory of this kind would not bring true peace to the region, but it would constrain Iran’s options. Iran had depended on its legions of terrorist lackeys and missile arsenal to deter the United States and Israel from halting its nuclear program. But the proxies have had little impact on this round of fighting. Gen. Dan Caine said that over 80 percent of Iran’s missile facilities are “gone,” the United States “hit” a similar share of its nuclear industrial base, and “attacked” about 90 percent of Iran’s weapons factories. If Iran’s minions are neither reliable nor effective, its long-range missiles depleted and irreplaceable, and its threat to close the Strait defeatable, the mullahs will need to find new options to threaten their neighbors and the United States.

READ MORE: Managing the Mullahs: What a Negotiated Victory Over Iran Looks Like

Elsewhere:

• In the first statement released in his name since the U.S.-Iran ceasefire was announced, Iranian supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei or somebody writing on his behalf set the tone for negotiations in Islamabad: “All must know that, by Almighty God’s will, we definitely won’t allow the criminal aggressors who attacked our country to go unpunished.”

• Buckle up, New York: Zohran Mamdani told the New York Times that he, rather than police commissioner Jessica Tisch, holds “the final decision” on matters of policing, adding that he remains “steadfast” in his pledge to dismantle an NYPD unit, the Strategic Response Group, that polices unruly protests.

• The White House is considering a proposal that would “involve moving U.S. troops out of North Atlantic Treaty Organization member countries deemed unhelpful to the Iran war effort and stationing them in countries that were more supportive,” the Wall Street Journal reported. It’s unclear which countries might be affected, though presumably the list includes Spain, which blocked U.S. planes from using its airspace and is reopening its embassy in Tehran.

• Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan broke his silence Thursday about a Free Beacon investigation into his pocket-size height. “I am in fact only 5’9…in shoes,” he posted to X. “I ask that the press and the public give my family and me space in this trying time.”

• Insurgent Florida gubernatorial candidate and alleged groomer James Fishback used “fake email and X accounts” and “paid” social media bots to “plant media tips, inflate social media engagement, and counter online criticism,” Florida Politics reported. Mainstream outlets like the New York Times have cited Fishback’s online engagement to suggest Fishback “might be a harbinger of conservative politics to come.”

Happy Friday, our full lineup is below.

1. Texas Senate Hopeful James Talarico Sought To Create ‘New Generation of Climate Activists’ by Mandating Climate Change Lessons in Texas Schools

2. El-Sayed Campaigns With UMich Board of Regents Candidate Who Shared Since-Deleted Posts Praising Hezbollah and Iranian Regime

3. Managing the Mullahs: What a Negotiated Victory Over Iran Looks Like

4. Federal Judge Authorizes Evictions at Condominium Besieged by Sprawling Homeless Encampment

“Moderate” Virginia governor Abigail Spanberger campaigned on affordability but has spent her first weeks in office pushing a redistricting measure she said she had “no plans” to support. Now she’s touting new legislation “welcoming 3,250 new jobs” and “$7.1 billion in business investment to Virginia.” It turns out that Spanberger’s Republican predecessor, Glenn Youngkin, secured all of the investments. Three of the companies Spanberger spotlighted, in fact, invested before Spanberger won in November, our Jessica Schwalb reports.

Spanberger’s announcement on Monday highlighted investments from Avio USA, Hitachi Energy, Eli Lily, and AstraZeneca. All four companies included quotes from Youngkin when they announced investments last year. AstraZeneca’s CEO specifically thanked “Governor Youngkin and his team for their energy and vision,” saying the company “found in Virginia an amazing team that moves at incredible speed to build a better future for this Commonwealth and the American people.” Hitachi said its new Virginia facility came “with the support of Governor Youngkin” as well as “the Trump Administration’s White House AI Action Plan.” Spanberger nonetheless took credit in her announcement for “working to create a stable business environment so companies can hire, expand, and continue to invest in our Commonwealth.”

“Spanberger, who did not respond to a request for comment, touted the investments the same day a Washington Post-Schar School poll put her approval rating at 47 percent—13 percentage points below the average for Virginia governors in Post polling since the 1990s,” writes Schwalb. “A plurality—41 percent—also said her policies would make Virginia less affordable, according to the Post survey.”

A Youngkin spokesman, Justin Discigil, said the former governor “is happy that Virginians are being reminded of some good news, even if it means Gov. Spanberger taking credit for the economic deals he secured for the Commonwealth.”

READ MORE: Abigail Spanberger Takes Credit for $7.1 Billion In Business Investments Secured by GOP Predecessor Glenn Youngkin

Two of the most prominent New Yorkers have released documents outlining their visions of America’s future. On one hand is Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s 375-page “Preliminary Racial Equity Plan.” On the other is JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon’s 48-page annual shareholder letter. It’s “hard to believe that the two men are describing the same planet, let alone the same country and city,” writes the Free Beacon’s Ira Stoll:

Both men are racing to define America’s past in its 250th anniversary year. For Dimon, a big danger is that Americans lose faith in our country. “While we should acknowledge America’s flaws, they should not be used to pull apart our country. We need to believe in ourselves and get back to work, not tear each other down,” Dimon writes.

For Mamdani and his “Mayor’s Office of Equity and Racial Justice,” a big danger is overlooking what the report calls “historical harms” and how “New York City’s past is deeply intertwined with the structural racial inequities experienced by its communities of color.”

These dueling visions—grievance versus optimism—will likely define the debate about America’s future. As Dimon put it, they aren’t totally mutually exclusive—acknowledging America’s flaws doesn’t prevent celebrating America’s ability to fix its flaws and believing in its continued capacity for self-improvement. Yet Mamdani—the son of a Columbia professor full of criticism of settler colonialism—generates doubts about whether New York City will be at the lead of America’s next 250 years or, instead, will be undermining it. Those of us in the optimism camp have some confidence that, regardless of New York City’s role, America will net out as it has over the past 250 years, as a kind of miracle.

READ MORE: Mamdani, Dimon Offer Clashing Visions of New York City—And America at 250

There were plenty of outlandish moments during left-wing Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed’s campaign stops with the noxious anti-American influencer Hasan Piker. But amid all the hubbub, a critical storyline fell through the cracks: El-Sayed’s height.

“Piker appeared almost comically larger by comparison as the two answered questions about Israel’s nefarious influence and the anti-colonial resistance of Hamas,” our Andrew Stiles writes. But how much larger? The University of Michigan’s club lacrosse team listed El-Sayed at 5 foot 9, while a glowing New York Times profile described Piker as “6 feet 4 inches tall and built like a professional athlete.”

“Of course, this is the same publication that mistakenly referred to NATO as the ‘North American Treaty Organization,’” Stiles notes, and an “extensive Washington Free Beacon analysis found ample evidence to suggest that El-Sayed and Piker are lying about their actual size.”

In September 2015, for example, Piker was photographed alongside former NFL wide receiver Drew Carter, who was listed at 6 foot 3 throughout his career. Piker appeared to be at least 1-2 inches shorter than Carter, but “because Piker’s feet were not visible in the photo, we were unable to rule out the possibility that he was wearing lifts or standing on a box.” A decade later, in April 2025, Piker interviewed the 5 foot 9 socialist Zohran Mamdani in a New York City smoothie cafe.

“Screenshots from the interview, in which both men were seated at a table, reveal that Mamdani is roughly an inch taller than Piker, which would make Piker approximately 5’8”—eight inches shorter than advertised,” writes Stiles. “A subsequent comparative analysis determined that Piker is about 10 inches taller than El-Sayed, which would make the U.S. Senate hopeful approximately 4’10”—a prohibitively diminutive stature for a male politician running for higher office.”

READ MORE: Too Short to Serve? Hasan Piker Brutally Height Mogs Pocket-Sized ‘Manlet’ Abdul El-Sayed

Additional reading:

• Maryland governor Wes Moore has embarked on a preemptive media campaign attacking his state’s flagship newspaper, the Baltimore Sun, for a forthcoming investigative series that will allegedly scrutinize Moore’s record. “The Baltimore Sun used to be our paper of record,” Moore complained to Biden White House press secretary-turned-MS NOW host Jen Psaki. “It’s now become the paper of the right wing.” An editor working on the series, Candy Woodall, said that Moore’s team privately “warned” her in January that it would work to tarnish the Sun’s reputation if it moved forward.

• Operation Epic Fury eliminated 90 percent of Iran’s weapons factories, 80 percent of its air defense systems, 90 percent of its naval fleet, and nearly 80 percent of its nuclear infrastructure, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Dan Caine told reporters Wednesday morning. Hegseth said it amounted to “America’s retribution for every American lost to Iranian terror, especially those brave troops killed by Iranian-made roadside bombs in Iraq.”

• California Democrat Eric Swalwell and his wife made more than $400,000 a year from 2021 to 2024—and still withdrew nearly $145,000 from their retirement accounts, used more than $400,000 in campaign cash to cover childcare, and put off paying federal taxes, all while failing to pay down tens of thousands of dollars in credit card bills and student loan debt, the Sacramento Bee reported. Swalwell gubernatorial campaign spokesman Micah Beasley said the lawmaker’s financial situation allowed him to relate to “millions of Californians” balancing “mortgage payments, student loans, childcare and everyday expenses.”

• Mugged by reality? As Zohran Mamdani faces a historic budget crisis, the New York City mayor is acknowledging that his “plan for fast and free buses isn’t going to happen so fast,” Politico reported.

Check out our full Thursday lineup below.

1. Abigail Spanberger Takes Credit for $7.1 Billion In Business Investments Secured by GOP Predecessor Glenn Youngkin

2. Mamdani, Dimon Offer Clashing Visions of New York City—And America at 250

3. Too Short to Serve? Hasan Piker Brutally Height Mogs Pocket-Sized ‘Manlet’ Abdul El-Sayed

4. Wes Moore Attacks Local Newspaper for Deigning To Report on His Record

5. ‘America’s Retribution’: Operation Epic Fury Destroyed 80 to 90 Percent of Iran’s Weapons Factories, Air Defenses, Naval Fleet, and Nuclear Infrastructure, Pentagon Says

6. Michigan’s El-Sayed, Campaigning Alongside Anti-American Streamer Hasan Piker, Suggests US Lawmakers Only Support ‘Genocidal’ Iran War Because of AIPAC

Woohoo! The U.S. News & World Report rankings of America’s top law schools now offer a slightly better reflection of reality: Yale Law School lost the top spot, which it held for 35 years, after several scandals tarnished its reputation as a serious institution. Many of those were first reported by the Free Beacon‘s Aaron Sibarium, and he writes that Stanford now holds the top spot while Yale is tied for second with the University of Chicago. Harvard Law School, meanwhile, has fallen to number six.

The downgrade comes after Yale withdrew from the rankings in 2022 like a petulant (Yale) child, arguing that the rankings and presumably any other measurement of merit—Yale Law School does not assign grades—“disincentivize programs that support public interest careers,” whatever that means.

Yale is still included in the U.S. News rankings even though it no longer turns over data to the publication. It dismissed the rankings, saying the school is “proud to have sparked a movement away from these rankings four years ago” and is “focused on providing a rigorous and excellent legal education and increasing access and opportunity to law school and the profession.”

“Whether Yale actually provides such an education became the subject of debate in 2021, when a second-year law student, Trent Colbert, wrote an email inviting classmates to his apartment, which he lightheartedly described as a ‘traphouse,’ a slang term for an inner-city drug den to which many of his classmates took offense,” Sibarium writes. “The email, which sparked nine complaints to the law school’s discrimination and harassment office, led to a weeks-long inquisition in which administrators pressured Colbert to sign an apology they had written on his behalf, citing the ‘trauma’ he had caused his classmates and suggesting that he could face disciplinary action and professional repercussions if he failed to apologize.”

The dean of Yale Law School at the time, who passed the buck and blamed her subordinates for the fiasco, is now the president of the left-wing Ford Foundation. She was passed over for the Yale presidency in 2024 when the search committee pulled a Cheney and tapped one of its own members, Maurie McInnis, who was then serving as the president of Stony Brook University and called the cops to demolish an anti-Israel encampment, instead.

READ MORE: Yale Law School Loses Top Spot in US News Rankings After Scandals Tarnish Ivy League School

The New York Times “is enjoying a rarefied hot streak in the field of prestige journalism,” our Andrew Stiles writes. From botching NATO’s name to depicting the Hezbollah-tied Michigan synagogue terrorist as a “quiet restaurant worker” who “lost family members” in Lebanon, “the so-called paper of record has published numerous articles and op-eds that neatly capture the elite liberal worldview in all its cloistered absurdity.” Here’s a rundown:

Mamdani’s Wife Supports the ‘Palestinian Cause’ (March 6)

A Times report on New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani’s (D.) wife’s history of liking social media posts celebrating the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks by Hamas described the posts as reflecting support for “the Palestinian cause.” The article included a supportive quote from Jews for Racial & Economic Justice, a Soros-funded activist group.

Beloved Space Romp Panned for Lack of Climate Doom (March 19)

Project Hail Mary is one of the most successful movies in recent memory. Roughly 95 percent of critics and viewers loved it, according to Rotten Tomatoes. The Times did not. Chief film critic Manohla Dargis, a five-time Pulitzer finalist with a Ph.D. in cinema studies, dismissed the film as a “bummer.” Not because the movie itself was too sad, but because it was too whimsical and optimistic in light of the “human-generated environmental catastrophe we’re facing.”

Iran Is Stronger Than Ever (April 6)

The Times ran an op-ed by Robert Pape, a political science professor who served as a foreign policy adviser to Barack Obama and Ron Paul. He argued that Iran—despite its depleted military, decimated leadership, and feeble economy—was on the verge of becoming a “major world power.”

READ MORE: The New York Times, Ladies and Gentlemen

Additional reading:

• The campaign of Democratic congressman and California gubernatorial hopeful Eric Swalwell denied allegations from left-wing activists and strategists that Swalwell has sexually harassed his female staffers, calling it a “false, outrageous rumor” spread by “flailing opponents.” The activists say the full story will break “soon.” Stay tuned.

• Even international groups known for egregious anti-Israel bias—like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch—have noted that Hamas targeted civilians on Oct. 7. Columbia encampment organizer, Syrian national, and Trump administration deportation target Mahmoud Khalil disagrees. He told the Forward that he “wouldn’t rule out that Hamas targeted civilians” but “wouldn’t confirm it either.” “That’s my position on this,” he said. Good riddance.

• Surprise! A $100 million Minnesota program meant to help small businesses impacted by “racial discrimination” appears to be rife with fraud, according to ABC’s Minneapolis affiliate KSTP-TV, which reported that “several recipients appear to be operating miles outside of eligible neighborhoods” and “other businesses may not be operating at all.”

• In an attempt to appease Russia, China, and France, the U.N. watered down a Security Council resolution from Bahrain aimed at authorizing an international coalition to reopen the Strait of Hormuz by stripping all language that would approve military action. On Tuesday, Russia and China vetoed the resolution anyway.

• Terrorist gunmen possibly linked to ISIS attempted to attack the Israeli consulate in Istanbul on Tuesday, prompting a firefight with police that killed one attacker. No Israeli staff were at the consulate—Israeli diplomats left Turkey in the wake of Oct. 7 amid protests in the country and hostility from Turkey’s government.

Check out our full Wednesday lineup below.

1. Yale Law School Loses Top Spot in US News Rankings After Scandals Tarnish Ivy League School

2. The New York Times, Ladies and Gentlemen

3. US Strikes Kharg Island Weapons Depots and Air Defense Facilities in ‘Message’ to Tehran Ahead of Trump’s Deadline

4. Michigan’s El-Sayed Suggests Hasan Piker’s ‘America Deserved 9/11’ Remark Must Be Viewed in ‘Context’

5. ‘I Have No Idea, To Be Honest’: Columbia Encampment Organizer Mahmoud Khalil Says It’s Unclear Whether Hamas Targeted Civilians on Oct 7

6. US To Enter Two-Week Ceasefire if Islamic Republic Allows ‘COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE, and SAFE OPENING of the Strait of Hormuz,’ Trump Announces

The New York Times has found some government spending it opposes. As he prosecutes a war against the mullahs, President Donald Trump wants Congress to approve $1.5 trillion in defense spending for the 2027 fiscal year. “If enacted,” the paper warned in a piece to which nine reporters contributed, “that amount would set military spending at its highest level in modern history.” Well, yes, for lots of reasons, like inflation, the fact that Congress almost always spends more from one year to the next, and that Democratic presidents have not invested heavily in defense. And our Ira Stoll notes that it’s funny the Times hasn’t used that language to describe Democratic boondoggles:

“The highest level in modern history” language is dramatic. It’s also unusual. When the New York Times writes about Democrat-proposed welfare spending or proposed tax increases, it never, or hardly ever, uses nominal current dollars to claim the “highest level in modern history.”

The Office of Management and Budget’s historical table 8.4 provides outlays by category as a percentage of GDP for the years 1962 to 2025. The 2.9 percent of GDP that “national defense” spending amounted to in 2025 is a tie for the lowest level on the whole 64-year chart. Every year of the Obama administration—not known for its reckless abandon when it came to military spending—came in higher. In 2016, the final year of the Obama administration, national defense was at 3.1 percent of GDP. At 4.5 percent of GDP, defense spending would still be lower than in every year from 1962 to 1992, even lower than in 1978 and 1979 under the anemic Carter administration that was humiliated by its failed hostage rescue attempt in Iran. In 2010, under Obama, the level was 4.6 percent of GDP, so even after a Trump-proposed increase to 4.5 percent of GDP, by the percent-of-GDP measure spending would still be below Obama levels.

READ MORE: On Defense Spending, a New York Times Double Standard

Human rights groups are concerned about the Iranian regime’s “surge in executions” as Operation Epic Fury unfolds. “The New York Times is also concerned about the situation in Iran, albeit with a slightly different focus,” our Andrew Stiles writes. Over the weekend, the paper published a spread of cheery photos taken at several parks in the affluent enclaves of northern Tehran during Iranian new year celebrations and lamented that Iranians are struggling to cherish the outdoors amid the war.

“The celebrations took place despite daily bombardment of Tehran and other parts of Iran that have killed civilians, destroyed buildings and infrastructure, and brought much of normal life to a halt,” the Times explained. There was a passing mention of the fact that Iranians have faced “continued repression by their government,” but the Times offered no details—like the tens of thousands of civilians the regime killed during a two-day period in January and the 400-plus reported executions the regime has carried out during Operation Epic Fury.

“The images stand in stark contrast to the scenes in Tehran depicted by the Times and other outlets at the height of the crackdown,” writes Stiles.

READ MORE: As Regime Executions Mount, NYT Laments Trump’s War Is Preventing Iranians From Cherishing Nature

Democratic congressman and California gubernatorial hopeful Eric Swalwell will “soon” face sexual harassment allegations from a group of “credible” women that includes former staffers, the leader of a left-wing advocacy group said in a series of videos posted to social media.

Late last month, Cheyenne Hunt, the executive director of Gen-Z for Change, released a text from a woman who wrote, “You know Eric Swalwell has slept with many of his interns and makes them all sign NDAs so they don’t speak up, right?” Hunt said she “started digging in” and found that the allegation was “not an anomaly” but “part of a pattern.” She now says she’s “personally working with a group of women who want to come forward and share their stories” and is “aware of a much larger group that is also in this process.” The story will “break soon,” she added.

“Many of these women have remained silent for so long because they believed that they were alone and that if they came forward, it would ruin their careers,” said Hunt, who worked as an intern for Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.) and as a “Big Tech Accountability Advocate” for the left-wing nonprofit Public Citizen before joining Gen-Z for Change in May 2025. “It appears that others may have stayed silent because of a belief that non-disclosure agreements required them to keep this secret.”

“The allegations loom as Swalwell narrowly leads a crowded field of candidates in the closely watched California gubernatorial race,” writes our Chuck Ross. “He has landed endorsements from prominent Democrats like Sens. Adam Schiff (Calif.) and Ruben Gallego (Ariz.) and from prominent labor unions like Service Employees International Union California.” Hunt acknowledged in an Instagram video that the allegations will “have an impact on the California governor’s race” but dismissed “any suggestions that we should refrain from talking about this or seeking justice for these women because it is not good ‘political strategy.’” She also said Swalwell follows her on social media and that she knows his team “is aware” of her posts. Swalwell’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

READ MORE: Eric Swalwell Will ‘Soon’ Face Sexual Harassment Allegations From Former Staffers, Left-Wing Activist Says

Additional reading:

• “The woman who thinks civil rights went too far.” That’s the headline on a Politico profile of Justice Department civil rights chief and Trump administration star Harmeet Dhillon, the latest disgraceful editorial move from the once-influential publication that pulled down an anti-Semitic cartoon late last month after “readers,” i.e. the Free Beacon, pointed out that “it did not meet our standards.” Sorry, what standards? We actually asked and didn’t hear back.

• Dhillon responded by slamming the headline in an X post: “I don’t think civil rights ‘went too far’ — they didn’t go far enough and the DOJ didn’t stand up for ALL Americans,” she wrote. “Thanks to Donald Trump and with the support of our DOJ leadership — NOW WE DO!” Even the Politico reporter who wrote the piece, Dustin Gardiner, reposted Dhillon’s message.

• President Donald Trump said Monday that he’d prefer to make a deal with the Iranian regime to reopen the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for a short-term ceasefire. But he said the regime is full of “bullshit artists” who “for 47 years” have “been bullshitting other presidents,” and the president threatened to take out “the entire country” in “just one night” if the Islamic Republic does not accept a deal by 8 o’clock tonight.

• Virginia governor Abigail Spanberger hasn’t governed as the “moderate” Democrat she campaigned as, and voters appear to be noticing: A new Washington Post-Schar School poll found that 46 percent of Virginia voters disapprove of Spanberger compared to 47 percent who approve, “13 percentage points lower than the average for Virginia governors in Post polling since the 1990s” and “a worse net approval rating than the early-term scores of her predecessors,” including Republican Glenn Youngkin, who won by just 2 points. Spanberger won by 16 points less than six months ago.

• An Israeli strike took out the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ head of intelligence, Maj. Gen. Majid Khademi, early Monday, marking the latest blow to the Iranian regime’s leadership. Khademi was the IRGC’s second most powerful official and played a role in surveilling both Americans and Iranian civilians as part of the regime’s recent crackdown on protesters. A separate Israeli operation struck the South Pars gas field, the central processing hub for Tehran’s lucrative energy exports.

Check out our full Tuesday lineup below.

1. On Defense Spending, a New York Times Double Standard

2. As Regime Executions Mount, NYT Laments Trump’s War Is Preventing Iranians From Cherishing Nature

3. Eric Swalwell Will ‘Soon’ Face Sexual Harassment Allegations From Former Staffers, Left-Wing Activist Says

4. Israeli Strike Kills IRGC’s Head of Intelligence in Latest Blow to Iranian Regime’s Leadership

5. ‘For 47 Years, They’ve Been Bullshitting Other Presidents’: Trump Threatens To Take Out ‘The Entire Country’ of Iran in ‘Just One Night’ If Regime Rejects Ceasefire Deal

Left-wing Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed told an older female colleague that he didn’t want to work with “anyone over 40” as he prepared to assume a prestigious role at New York City’s Icahn School of Medicine, according to a 2019 age and gender discrimination lawsuit brought by former employees against the institution. Though the suit does not name El-Sayed as a defendant, he is a central villain in the complaint, the Free Beacon‘s Alana Goodman reports.

“Eight former female employees at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai allege that, when their department, Mount Sinai Global Health, was reorganized into the Arnhold Institute for Global Health (AIGH) in 2015, new boss Prabhjot Singh demoted them and pushed them out of their roles,” Goodman writes. “They claim Singh sought to fill leadership positions with ‘overwhelmingly young men’ in his social circle—including his first hire, El-Sayed, who worked with Singh at Columbia University.”

“The complaint alleges that El-Sayed, who was 30 at the time, told one female AIGH employee ‘that he was excited to not be working with “anyone over 40.”’ That woman was 41 at the time of that conversation. El-Sayed and Singh ‘made numerous statements about how they only wanted to work with young people,’ said the plaintiffs. ‘They wanted to run AIGH like a Silicon Valley start-up and believed, as is common in that world, that effective enterprises should be run by young men.’”

El-Sayed, who was a year out of medical school at Columbia at the time (he did not complete a residency), declared at a “Women for Abdul” campaign initiative in mid-March that “incredible women raised me” and “incredible women guide me today.” He didn’t say whether those women were over the age of 40. The lawsuit will move forward as El-Sayed reaches the crucial stages of the primary, which takes place August 4. Two versions of the complaint—one state and one federal—are active and in the discovery stages. A group of plaintiffs were dropped from the federal case due to the statute of limitations and took their allegations to the state level as a result.

READ MORE: Michigan’s El-Sayed Told Women He Didn’t Want To Work With ‘Anyone Over 40,’ According to Embarrassing Discrimination Lawsuit

Colorado’s taxpayer-funded health care program for illegal immigrant children and “pregnant persons” is costing far more than originally projected, adding pressure to the state’s already strained budget, reports our Andrew Kerr. Lawmakers initially estimated the Cover All Coloradans program would cost $14.7 million annually. Expenses have surged to $104.5 million this fiscal year—seven times the estimated cost—after enrollment far exceeded expectations.

The spike is largely driven by higher participation. Roughly 28,000 illegal immigrants enrolled in the program compared to the state’s projected 3,700. The ballooning costs come as Colorado faces a $1.5 billion budget shortfall, prompting lawmakers to consider cuts to Medicaid and other programs. While the state’s Joint Budget Committee approved a 2 percent cut to Medicaid payments to save money, it stopped short of immediately scaling back the immigrant health care program. Instead, the committee voted to cap enrollment in the program if costs exceed $96 million next fiscal year. That’s still six times the estimated cost of $14.7 million.

The program could become a political flashpoint for two Democratic lawmakers who supported it and are now facing off in a primary to challenge GOP Rep. Gabe Evans in Colorado’s toss-up Eighth Congressional District. Shannon Bird voted for the program when it first passed in 2022, while both Bird and the Democrat she’s running against, Manny Rutinel, voted to fund it in 2025 (Rutinel joined the state legislature in 2023). State officials have since acknowledged “unanticipated impacts” from the program’s rollout. Lawmakers must finalize a balanced budget in the coming months, a process that will make clear Colorado Democrats’ spending priorities.

READ MORE: Colorado’s Free Health Care Program for Illegal Immigrant ‘Pregnant Persons’ and Children, Backed by Dem Congressional Hopefuls, Costs Seven Times More Than Planned

Elsewhere:

• In a scene straight out of Top Gun: Maverick, a heroic team of U.S. special forces rescued a crew member of an F-15 fighter jet shot down over Iran who was stranded and wounded. The crew member, a weapons systems officer, reportedly hid in an Iranian “mountain crevice” for more than a day, where he was invisible to everyone except CIA agents. All Americans involved returned safely on back-up aircraft after destroying two transport planes that were supposed to carry the commandos home but got stuck. President Donald Trump will address the mission during a Monday press conference in the Oval Office.

• Around the time those search efforts began, on Friday, mediators of a ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran said the Islamic Republic had refused to meet its American counterparts in Islamabad to negotiate a deal. Trump appeared to confirm as much on Sunday, when he said “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran,” threatening to destroy regime infrastructure if Tehran refused to “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards,” as the president put it.

• Later in the day, however, Trump told Axios there is a “good chance” the U.S. could reach a deal with Iran before Tuesday. He appeared to set a deadline in a Sunday afternoon Truth Social post, which read, “Tuesday, 8:00 P.M. Eastern Time!”

• Former New York Times White House correspondent and current Times Justice Department reporter Glenn Thrush and several mainstream media bigshots dismissed criticism of an embarrassing Times headline in the paper’s print edition that described NATO as the “North American Treaty Organization” rather than the “Atlantic” one. “There are tired copy editors who work really really hard and make one innocent and mortifying mistake that becomes grist for the social media gumball machine,” he said. He did not note that the mistaken use of “American” was central to the premise of the piece—its headline was, “A North American Treaty Organization Without America?”

• Secretary of State Marco Rubio revoked the green cards of the late Iranian terrorist Qassem Soleimani’s niece and her daughter. Rubio said they had been “living lavishly” in the U.S. and called Soleimani’s niece “an outspoken supporter of the Iranian regime who celebrated attacks on Americans and referred to our country as the ‘Great Satan.’”

Check out our full Monday lineup below.

1. Michigan’s El-Sayed Told Women He Didn’t Want To Work With ‘Anyone Over 40,’ According to Embarrassing Discrimination Lawsuit

2. Colorado’s Free Health Care Program for Illegal Immigrant ‘Pregnant Persons’ and Children, Backed by Dem Congressional Hopefuls, Costs Seven Times More Than Planned

3. Duel of the Faiths: Judeo-Christians vs China’s Marxist-Leninists

4. Letter to the Editor: Who’s Censoring Whom?

5. The Fall and Rise of Bowie

6. A Novel Way to Approach Death

7. Some Soviets Were Less Equal Than Others

8. From Desecration to Consecration

In December, Columbia University’s anti-Semitism task force recommended hiring Middle East professors who are “not explicitly anti-Zionist,” noting that Columbia would benefit from some diversity of perspective among its tenure-track faculty who study the region. This proposal was met with rage by the union that represents Columbia’s graduate students, many of whom are part-time teaching assistants, screenshots from an official union group chat obtained by the Free Beacon show. Union members compared Zionists to racists and fascists and said they “f—ing hate” Columbia.

“I think the way they’ve framed it carefully states that the existing faculty are anti and they want ‘not anti,’” wrote Student Workers of Columbia (SWC) member Jon Ben-Menachem, “Which is still quite zany if you thought [sic] about ‘not anti racist.’” Fellow union member Hayes Buchanan said the recommendation amounted to “affirmative action for zionist views,” “trigger warnings for zionists,” and a “giant pot of money to pay zionists with.”

Others used more plain language. “Jesús f—ing cristo,” wrote an SWC member identified as “Lex,” who added, “I’m so over these idiots.” “I enjoy colonizing and genocide,” the chair of the union’s board of trustees, Adithya Gungi, wrote sarcastically. “I f—ing hate this university.”

“The messages provide an inside look at the union’s hostility not just toward Israel and its supporters but also toward the university the union has spent the last year negotiating with in search of a new contract,” writes the Free Beacon’s Jessica Schwalb. “In addition to pushing for massive pay increases for student workers, SWC is demanding Columbia dismantle ties to the Jewish state and adopt an ‘academic freedom’ article that gives teaching assistants free rein to insert progressive politics into unrelated lectures without facing disciplinary action, the Free Beacon reported.”

“The December report from Columbia’s anti-Semitism task force—its fourth and final—noted that Columbia ‘lacks full-time tenure line faculty expertise in Middle East history, politics, political economy, and policy that is not explicitly anti-Zionist.’ It also detailed numerous instances of instructors casting Jews and Israelis as occupiers and ‘murderers’ in classes unrelated to the conflict in Gaza. In the SWC group chat, several union members cast doubt on the veracity of those incidents. At the same time, they vowed to talk about ‘Israel Palestine’ in class even if Columbia barred them from doing so.”

READ MORE: ‘I F—ing Hate This University’: Columbia Student Workers Union Erupts Over Anti-Semitism Task Force’s Recommendation To Hire Middle East Professors Who Don’t Hate Israel

U.N. agencies are stonewalling a U.S. investigation into their employees’ ties to Hamas, the chief oversight body responsible for tracking U.S. foreign aid said in a non-public report transmitted to Congress and obtained by the Free Beacon. That body, the USAID inspector general’s office, sent letters to six separate U.N. agencies asking them to name all employees “who worked on U.S.-government funded awards” and provide their contact information, nationality, and date of birth. “None of the responding UN recipients provided the requested information pertaining to their personnel,” the report states.

The investigation, dubbed “Operation Stop the Carousel,” was initiated last year in response to concerns from the State Department and Republicans in Congress that U.N. agencies working in Gaza remain vulnerable to Hamas infiltration. Access to U.N. employment records would enable the inspector general to determine whether the U.S. government had flagged a particular U.N. staffer for being affiliated with Hamas. Any affiliated staffers could then be blacklisted, preventing them from working on U.S.-funded foreign aid projects for a period of 10 years. The U.S. government blacklisted one such staffer—a former UNRWA school principal who participated in the Oct. 7 attack—in February, the Free Beacon reported.

USAID was responsible for doling out U.S. foreign aid to the U.N. and other organizations before President Donald Trump dismantled the agency, though its inspector general’s office is a separate investigative body. In February 2025, a former senior USAID official, Max Primorac, told Congress that, during the Biden administration, the agency scrapped vetting reforms meant to prevent taxpayer funds from ending up in the hands of foreign terror organizations. He said “vast sums of U.S. money have been diverted to fund terrorists in Gaza, Syria, Yemen, and Afghanistan.”

READ MORE: UN Agencies Are Stonewalling a Probe Into Their Employees’ Ties to Hamas, US Investigators Say in Report to Congress

Additional reading:

• Democratic fundraising behemoth ActBlue told congressional investigators in 2023 that it had instituted “multilayered” checks to ensure it only accepted overseas donations from American citizens. That wasn’t entirely accurate, attorneys for ActBlue warned in memos noting that ActBlue did not apply such checks when donors paid through third-party apps such as Apple Pay or Venmo. “This presents a substantial risk for ActBlue,” one memo read, according to the New York Times. Oops!

• In yet another unearthed Reddit post, Graham Platner, the Democratic Senate candidate in Maine known for his now-covered Nazi tattoo, described himself as so “crudely atheist” that he derided the Virgin Mary as “sucking at covering up being a skank.” Christians make up a majority of Mainers, according to Pew Research.

Check out our full Friday lineup below.

1. ‘I F—ing Hate This University’: Columbia Student Workers Union Erupts Over Anti-Semitism Task Force’s Recommendation To Hire Middle East Professors Who Don’t Hate Israel

2. UN Agencies Are Stonewalling a Probe Into Their Employees’ Ties to Hamas, US Investigators Say in Report to Congress

3. ‘Substantial Risk’: Democratic Fundraising Juggernaut ActBlue May Have Misled Congress About Vetting Foreign Donations, Its Own Attorneys Warned

4. Maine Democrat Graham Platner Called Jesus a ‘Zombie’ and the Virgin Mary ‘a Skank’ in Unearthed Reddit Post

The New York City Parks Department—which is facing a $33 million budget cut under Mayor Zohran Mamdani—instructs its supervisors to be “antiracist” activists who police “microaggressions,” training materials obtained by the Free Beacon show.

The department’s Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging offers the trainings to help supervisors and managers identify “subtle” slights that people experience in the workplace “due to their group identity,” according to the materials. An NYC Parks “Resource Guide for Leaders,” for example, features a “Becoming Anti-Racist” graphic “inspired by” “antiracist” huckster Ibram X. Kendi. It says those who “avoid hard questions” and “deny racism is a problem” are operating in a “Fear Zone.” Those in the “Growth Zone,” by contrast, “yield positions of power to those otherwise marginalized” and “promite [sic] and advocate for policies and leaders that are Anti-Racist.” What this has to do with managing hundreds of public basketball courts, we don’t know.

It’s unclear exactly when the department created the training slides and graphics—they’re undated—but they do appear to have been distributed or updated this year, given that the Free Beacon obtained them through a request for records dated from the time Mayor Zohran Mamdani took office on Jan. 1. The materials “are the latest example of Democratic governments using ostensibly apolitical agencies to promote ideologically left-wing views on race and culture,” our Chuck Ross reports, and they come as the Parks Department “faces a looming budget shortfall and staffing shortages.”

“Last year, an executive Citizens’ Committee for Children testified to the New York City council that NYC Parks is ‘chronically underfunded and understaffed’ and that ‘there are not nearly enough maintenance workers … to keep our parks safe and clean,’” writes Ross. “Mamdani, who pledged to allocate one percent of the city budget to the Parks department, is poised to cut the agency’s budget by $33 million this year, according to the New York Times.”

READ MORE: ‘Yield Positions of Power to Those Otherwise Marginalized’: Mamdani’s Cash-Strapped Parks Department Trains Leaders on ‘Becoming Anti-Racist’

President Donald Trump delivered his first primetime address to the nation on Operation Epic Fury. He said the United States is “on track” to complete its military objectives “very shortly” and will spend “the next two to three weeks” hitting the Iranian regime “extremely hard.” “We’re going to bring them back to the stone ages where they belong,” Trump said Wednesday.

The operation remains focused on “eliminating Iran’s navy, which is now absolutely destroyed, hurting their air force and their missile program at levels never seen before, and annihilating their defense industrial base,” Trump said. The regime’s “weapons, factories, and rocket launchers are being blown to pieces,” and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps “is being decimated as we speak,” he added.

At the same time, the United States will pursue negotiations with Tehran aimed at requiring the regime to give up its uranium stockpiles and close its nuclear facilities, Trump said. Should the regime refuse a deal, Trump vowed to “hit each and every one of their electric generating plants very hard and probably simultaneously.” He also said he could strike Iran’s oil infrastructure, which he called “the easiest target of all, because it would not give them even a small chance of survival or rebuilding” and “there is not a thing they could do about it.”

READ MORE: ‘We’re Going To Bring Them Back to the Stone Ages’: Trump Says US Will Hit Iranian Regime ‘Extremely Hard’ Over Next 2 to 3 Weeks

Harvard’s legal disclosures to potential investors in a $675 million tax-exempt bond offering don’t give enough warning “concerning Harvard University’s role in fostering antisemitism” and may violate securities laws as a result, a watchdog group wrote in a March 30 letter to Harvard.

The bond money is meant to fund a new economics building, and Harvard issued a draft offering document used to help line up buyers for the bonds on March 27, the Free Beacon reported. That document, according to the National Jewish Advocacy Center, a nonprofit legal group that works to combat anti-Semitism, does not adequately warn investors of the “significant litigation and governmental risks facing Harvard” due to “extensive antisemitism” at the Ivy League school as well as Harvard’s “culpability” in allowing it.

The center’s letter—signed by attorney Marc Greendorfer and shared with the Free Beacon’s Ira Stoll—argues that, despite the well-documented nature of those risks, Harvard’s offering document “contains only conclusory, boilerplate disclosure” and “provides no meaningful analysis of the scope, likelihood, or magnitude” of the risks. “Relevant securities laws’ anti-fraud provisions apply and require materially complete and accurate disclosure,” the letter continues, urging Harvard and its bankers to “promptly revise and expand” the document “to ensure that investors are fully informed of these material risks.” Stoll writes:

“It’s the second legal issue to arise related to the offering. Earlier this week, the Free Beacon reported that some of the nation’s foremost legal scholars expressed concerns about the state’s requirement that Harvard ‘agrees that no part of the Project, so long as it is owned or controlled by the Institution, shall be used for any sectarian instruction or as a place of religious worship or in connection with any part of a program of a school or department of divinity for any religious denomination.’ Law professors said that amounted to discrimination that unconstitutionally interferes with the free exercise guaranteed by the First Amendment as interpreted by recent rulings from the U.S. Supreme Court.”

READ MORE: ‘Potentially Materially Inadequate Disclosure’ on Harvard’s $675 Million Bond Offering Prompts ‘Anti-Fraud’ Warning

Additional reading:

• Though America’s European allies—much to Trump’s displeasure—have been reluctant to show up in the Strait of Hormuz, the deep-pocketed United Arab Emirates “wants to force Hormuz open and is willing to join the fight,” according to the Wall Street Journal, which reported that the UAE “is lobbying for a United Nations Security Council resolution that would authorize such action” and has “urged the U.S. and military powers in Europe and Asia to form a coalition to open the strait by force.”

• A former security staffer for left-wing Democrat Abdul El-Sayed’s Senate campaign, Marine veteran Jordan Domingue, told the Michigan Enjoyer that El-Sayed is unfit for the Senate. “Antisemitism is now hidden behind calculated rhetoric, spoken by people who disguise themselves as partners of peace between Israel and Palestine,” Domingue said of El-Sayed, whom he described as a “chameleon.” “Personally, I regret and feel shame for excusing antisemitism and for not leaving sooner.”

• El-Sayed is also facing criticism from the Democratic group Third Way, which released a letter on Wednesday calling on El-Sayed to disclose whether he “aligns” with radical left-wing influencer Hasan Piker’s “most abhorrent views,” like Piker’s statement that “America deserved 9/11.” El-Sayed will campaign alongside Piker at a pair of rallies next week.

• Nevada Democratic congresswoman Susie Lee, who calls herself “America’s #1 Most Bipartisan Member of Congress,” wrote this in a 1 a.m. social media post addressing Trump’s trip to the Supreme Court hearing on birthright citizenship: “So fucking fucked up. I’ll pray they fuck him to his face. Sorry, I say fuck a lot these days.” Lee deleted the post but defended it in a 10 a.m. follow-up, saying her “nerve was touched by the attacks on our Constitution and its separation of powers.”

Check out our full Thursday lineup below.

1. ‘Yield Positions of Power to Those Otherwise Marginalized’: Mamdani’s Cash-Strapped Parks Department Trains Leaders on ‘Becoming Anti-Racist’

2. ‘We’re Going To Bring Them Back to the Stone Ages’: Trump Says US Will Hit Iranian Regime ‘Extremely Hard’ Over Next 2 to 3 Weeks

3. ‘Potentially Materially Inadequate Disclosure’ on Harvard’s $675 Million Bond Offering Prompts ‘Anti-Fraud’ Warning

4. Exclusive New Details About Trump’s Presidential Library

5. Trump’s Tuchis Afn Tish Moment: ‘Go Get Your Own Oil!’

6. Trump Says Iranian President Requested Ceasefire But US Won’t ‘Consider’ Until Hormuz Strait Is Open: ‘Until Then, We Are Blasting’

Yale College’s Jewish enrollment sank to just 9.5 percent in 2024, below where it sat in the 1940s, when the Ivy League school capped the number of “alien” Jews on campus, according to data from the Yale Chaplain’s Office. Yale College dean Pericles Lewis isn’t concerned. He says the school’s diminished Jewish community is “thriving.”

Lewis’s comment came in response to a new report from the Harvard Jewish Alumni Alliance on Jewish enrollment in the Ivy League. It identified the decline in the Jewish population at Yale as particularly troubling, given that Yale has actually increased the size of its undergraduate classes in recent years and seen a decline in the number of Jewish undergraduates nonetheless. Lewis told the Yale Daily News that the numbers would be “very hard to measure,” though the Chaplain’s Office has done so for decades, with data tracing back to the 1940s.

At that time, according to the office’s “Religious Diversity at Yale” survey, 9.9 percent of undergraduates were Jewish, slightly higher than the 9.5 percent cited for the classes of 2024-2027, the lowest number in decades. That marks a 42 percent decrease from the 16.4 percent of students who identified as Jewish in the 2010s and a 52 percent decrease from the 19.9 percent of students who identified as such in the 2000s.

In the 1940s, Yale imposed ruthless quotas on the number of Jews admitted in an attempt to address what university leaders described as the “Jewish problem,” according to Dan Oren’s history of anti-Semitism at Yale, Joining the Club: A History of Jews and Yale. The university’s former admissions chairman, Robert Corwin, imposed a quota after Jews made up 13 percent of the 1921 freshman class. Corwin wrote at the time that Jewish students lacked “attributes of refinement and honor” and did not “share the ‘ethical code’ of their peers,” according to a separate 2006 book on the topic, The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admissions and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, by UC Berkeley sociology professor Jerome Karabel. Corwin and other admissions leaders conspired thereafter to quietly keep Jewish enrollment around 10 percent. Now, roughly 100 years later, the number of Jews at Yale has dipped beneath that level and Yale’s leaders say everything is hunky-dory!

Lewis and Yale University chaplain Maytal Saltiel did not respond to a request for comment, but we did get an email from an unnamed Yale spokesman waving away the numbers, which evidently are supposed to provide “a view of the religious diversity at Yale, not to report on the exact percentage of a particular community.” So they’re good for measuring diversity, but not so good for telling us anything about the decline of the Jewish population.

READ MORE: As Yale’s Jewish Population Declines to 1940s Quota Levels, University Leaders Say Jewish Community is ‘Thriving’

The U.S.-China Competition for Global AI Supremacy

While the United States has an early lead in artificial intelligence (AI), America is not positioned for long-term AI leadership. China is investing trillions to win the tech race—targeting the four key pillars of AI strength: energy, infrastructure, talent, and adoption. Losing our AI edge would threaten America’s security, prosperity, and the values of freedom and openness that anchor the world’s digital future. Lawmakers must act decisively, starting by codifying and funding the national AI Action Plan. If they do, America can secure lasting AI leadership and create new jobs, higher wages, and breakthroughs in healthcare, education, and everyday life. Time is running out—America must act now, and with purpose. Learn more here.

Former Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah lost her job after “endangering” colleagues with inflammatory posts about the assassination of Charlie Kirk. This summer, she will receive the Distinguished Service Award from the Washington, D.C., chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, our Andrew Stiles reports.

The society is a mainstream association that says it’s dedicated to the promotion of “high standards” and “ethical behavior.” Its Distinguished Service Award was designed to honor journalists whose “work and or actions have made a positive difference on our craft and on society.” Attiah, for her part, has repeatedly denounced mainstream journalism as a racist industry in which black voices are “silenced” and progressive black women are “hunted.” In the wake of Kirk’s killing, she described the United States as a “sick” country that “worships violence” and denounced the “performative mourning for a white man that espoused violence.” She later responded to her firing from the Post by posing in front of the paper’s headquarters wearing a socialist ball gag and holding a flaming newspaper like a torch.

“Since leaving the Post, Attiah has posted sporadically on Substack and prolifically on Bluesky, the social media app for deranged liberals who will never be happy,” Stiles writes. “She has also launched an online school for ‘resistance’ liberals that aims to guide students through the ‘intellectual and emotional labor of building a liberated future.’ She recently announced a new course on politics and soccer—the most anti-American sport ever devised—that purports to explain how the World Cup is a ‘framework for how we move through the world.’” Congrats, Karen!

READ MORE: Karen Attiah, Radical Beefcake Columnist Fired for ‘Endangering’ Colleagues, To Receive ‘Distinguished Service Award’ From Journalism Society

Additional reading:

• Iranian missile strikes have dropped to their “lowest number” yet over the past 24 hours as Operation Epic Fury sparks “widespread desertions” among Tehran’s fighting force, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said during a Tuesday morning briefing.

• Hegseth also detailed his recent surprise visit to an undisclosed U.S. Central Command base engaged in Operation Epic Fury. “I met a junior airman,” he shared, “who when asked what they needed, she simply looked at me with a sly smile on her face and said, ‘More bombs, sir, and bigger bombs.’ We will happily oblige her.” It was an example of “the American warrior unleashed,” Hegseth said.

• The Supreme Court struck down a Colorado law banning so-called conversion therapy for minors—which is to say that the law banned therapists from suggesting to children that they shouldn’t undergo harmful and permanent procedures changing their gender. The High Court ruled 8-1 that the law unconstitutionally regulated speech. Naturally, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.

• An American journalist, Shelly Kittleson, was kidnapped in Baghdad on Tuesday after the U.S. government informed her “about a specific threat against her by the Iranian-backed paramilitary group Kata’ib Hezbollah, which was allegedly looking to kidnap or kill female journalists” and had Kittleson’s name on a list, according to CBS News.

Check out our full Tuesday lineup below.

1. As Yale’s Jewish Population Declines to 1940s Quota Levels, University Leaders Say Jewish Community is ‘Thriving’

2. Karen Attiah, Radical Beefcake Columnist Fired for ‘Endangering’ Colleagues, To Receive ‘Distinguished Service Award’ From Journalism Society

3. Iranian Missile Strikes Fall to Lowest Level Seen During War As ‘Widespread Desertions’ Squeeze Regime’s Fighting Force, Hegseth Says

4. ‘More Bombs, Sir, and Bigger Bombs’: Hegseth Recounts Witnessing ‘the American Warrior Unleashed’ During Recent Trip to Middle East

Left-wing Democratic Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed presumably spent all day Monday huddling with his intrepid campaign advisers and emerged with a statement alleging the Washington Free Beacon “may have been illegally and unethically obtained” the audio recording we published earlier in the day of a campaign strategy call during which El-Sayed said he wanted to avoid commenting on Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s death because many of Michigan’s Muslim voters were “sad” about it.

Even El-Sayed’s lawyers at the Sandler Reiff law firm, who contacted us over the weekend to try and stop the publication of the report by our Alana Goodman, weren’t stupid or brazen enough to make that claim. The governing law protects journalists who were not themselves a party to any illegal acquisition, and it’s far from clear there was any illegal conduct in this case. Michigan is a one-party consent state. The Free Beacon, of course, can’t comment on its sources. But El-Sayed isn’t one to let facts or the law get in the way of his political campaign.

“The fact that a rightwing news outlet may have illegally and unethically obtained a deliberation about how to talk about this by way of a disgruntled former employee is only a distraction,” he said in the statement. “They’re distracting from the fact that Donald Trump, Mike Rogers, the entire MAGA base doesn’t want to talk about the pain they’re forcing us all into.”

On the recording, El-Sayed told aides that, if pressed on Khamenei’s demise, he would switch the subject to Jeffrey Epstein. Nice to see him employ the diversionary tactic here, but why didn’t he talk about Epstein? And hey, it’s not every day you get to have the guy who wants to avoid taking a position on the ayatollah’s death lecture you about ethics!

READ MORE: Michigan’s El-Sayed Says Free Beacon ‘May Have Illegally and Unethically Obtained Recording’ and Employs Diversion Tactic Discussed in Campaign Strategy Call

The U.S.-China Competition for Global AI Supremacy

While the United States has an early lead in artificial intelligence (AI), America is not positioned for long-term AI leadership. China is investing trillions to win the tech race—targeting the four key pillars of AI strength: energy, infrastructure, talent, and adoption. Losing our AI edge would threaten America’s security, prosperity, and the values of freedom and openness that anchor the world’s digital future. Lawmakers must act decisively, starting by codifying and funding the national AI Action Plan. If they do, America can secure lasting AI leadership and create new jobs, higher wages, and breakthroughs in healthcare, education, and everyday life. Time is running out—America must act now, and with purpose. Learn more here.

New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani is committing $260 million to his newly created Office of Community Safety, where social workers replace cops, as the city faces a multibillion-dollar budget shortfall, raising concerns about fiscal priorities, the Free Beacon’s Jon Levine reports. The office, which Mamdani established by executive order, is designed to deploy social workers and other non-police responders to handle mental health crises and hate crimes—functions traditionally managed by law enforcement.

The spending comes as Mamdani’s proposed $127 billion budget has triggered warnings from credit rating agencies about the city’s long-term financial health. The mayor has pledged to close a $5.4 billion budget gap—he is legally required to balance the city’s budget by July 1—but has identified just $200 million in savings thus far. Slashing his social worker pet project could save more than just the $260 million (initial) budget: Mamdani pledged to fund the office to the tune of $1.1 billion while campaigning for mayor, and he said he would provide it with “more funding down the line” when he established the office earlier this month, according to the New York Times.

“It’s remarkable that Mayor Mamdani is supposedly grappling with a historic budget gap of $5.4 billion through fiscal 2027—despite the absence of a recession or financial crisis—yet has managed to include $260 million for a new office with only two staffers,” John Ketcham, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, told the Free Beacon. “At $260 million, the office represents roughly 5 percent of Mamdani’s budget gap, more than the approximately $200 million in savings the mayor touted last week. Many of those savings are speculative and may never materialize.”

READ MORE: Mamdani Sinks $260 Million Into Office of Community Safety, Where Social Workers Replace Cops, as Big Apple Faces Historic Budget Crisis

For Harvard to qualify for $675 million in tax-exempt bond financing via the Massachusetts Development Finance Agency, it must agree that no part of the financed project—a new economics building bearing the Pritzker name—is used “as a place of religious worship.” Some of the nation’s foremost legal scholars say that’s unconstitutional, the Free Beacon’s Ira Stoll reports.

“That’s got to be unconstitutional,” said the John P. Murphy Foundation Professor of Law at Notre Dame Law School, Nicole Stelle Garnett. “You are right that the breadth of the limit raises free exercise and even free speech questions,” the Maurice & Hilda Friedman Professor of Law at Columbia, Philip Hamburger, who wrote the landmark 2002 book Separation of Church and State, wrote to Stoll. “Indeed, under a recent series of Supreme Court cases over the past decade, this sort of provision is unconstitutional as it violates the Free Exercise Clause as a prohibited form of religious discrimination,” added the Brenden Mann Foundation Chair in Law and Religion at Pepperdine Caruso School of Law, Michael Helfand. Stoll writes:

It’s not inconceivable for religious worship to take place inside Harvard buildings. Harvard Chabad has Shabbat dinners inside Harvard Business School and Harvard Kennedy School buildings and hosts High Holiday services at Harvard Law School. Harvard has a Hindu prayer space in the basement of a dormitory building for first-year students. It has a Muslim prayer space on the second floor of the Smith Center, an office building and campus center whose eighth and ninth floors are part of the “project” being financed with the tax-exempt bond offering. A room adjacent to a shower in the basement of the Harvard Kennedy School also functions as a Muslim prayer space, or did when I worked in the building from 2019 to 2023.

Penny Pritzker, who announced a $100 million gift for the new economics building in 2021, did not respond to an email seeking comment. Pritzker served as Secretary of Commerce in the administration of President Barack Obama and as a State Department envoy in the administration of President Joe Biden. She is the senior fellow of the Harvard Corporation, one of Harvard’s two governing boards.

READ MORE: Harvard’s Prayer-Free Pritzker Economics Building Is Called ‘Unconstitutional’

Additional reading:

• The United States is negotiating with “A NEW, AND MORE REASONABLE, REGIME” in Iran, President Donald Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Monday, but is also prepared to move forward with attacks “blowing up and completely obliterating” the Islamic Republic’s oil infrastructure if a deal is not reached. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said during a subsequent ABC News appearance that “we also have to be prepared for the possibility, maybe even the probability,” that Iran will reject a deal.

• Iranian oil infrastructure isn’t the only potential target: Trump “is weighing a military operation to extract nearly 1,000 pounds of uranium from Iran,” a mission that would likely require an “elite special operations team specially trained to remove radioactive material from a conflict zone,” the Wall Street Journal reported. Hundreds of Special Operations Forces recently arrived in the Middle East.

• At a traditional Passover Seder, the youngest capable child in attendance is tasked with reading the traditional “Four Questions.” At the “Seder” Zohran Mamdani attended Monday night, the task was assigned to Don Lemon, the 60-year-old former CNN host who was arrested earlier this year for storming a church in Minnesota. Another featured attendee at the Downtown Seder—obviously not a traditional one—was Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie, the subject of the 2024 documentary film Sabbath Queen, which followed Lau-Lavie’s “epic journey” as a “drag-queen rebel.”

• Mamdani has dismissed criticism of his wife Rama Duwaji’s support for terrorism and use of a variety of slurs online by describing Duwaji as a “private person.” That’s BS, a number of the New York City mayor’s allies told Politico. “As the leader of New York City, he has to start addressing this,” said Moms United For Black Lives NYC’s Tanesha Grant. “It’s not good enough to just say she’s ‘a private person’—she’s not.” As another Mamdani ally put it: “She has a police detail and a government staff.”

• Left-wing Senate candidate Graham Platner signed a “Patients Over Profits” pledge in which he swore to refuse campaign donations from health care industry lobbyists—days after he held a fundraiser in Washington, D.C., “hosted by lobbyists who have represented the sector,” the Bangor Daily News reported.

Check out our full Tuesday lineup below.

1. Michigan’s El-Sayed Says Free Beacon ‘May Have Illegally and Unethically Obtained Recording’ and Employs Diversion Tactic Discussed in Campaign Strategy Call

2. Mamdani Sinks $260 Million Into Office of Community Safety, Where Social Workers Replace Cops, as Big Apple Faces Historic Budget Crisis

3. Harvard’s Prayer-Free Pritzker Economics Building Is Called ‘Unconstitutional’

4. HHS Sued For Race-Based Program Reserved For ‘Native Hawaiian’ Students

5. Washington Free Beacon Victorious Over AOC Campaign Photographer As Federal Court Tosses Copyright Infringement Lawsuit

6. ‘She Has a Police Detail and a Government Staff’: Mamdani Allies Urge NYC Mayor To Confront Wife’s Controversial Social Media History

7. Mamdani Attending ‘Postmodern’ Passover Seder With Don Lemon and ‘Drag Queen’ Rabbi

8. US Negotiating With ‘NEW, AND MORE REASONABLE REGIME,’ Trump Says, But Will Strike Energy Infrastructure Without a Deal

Left-wing Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed told staffers he wanted to avoid taking a public position on the assassination of Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei because “there are a lot of people in Dearborn who are sad,” audio from a private campaign strategy meeting obtained by the Free Beacon shows. The comments from El-Sayed—a serious contender for the Democratic nomination in Michigan’s toss-up 2026 Senate race—came during a conference call with his campaign’s communications team on March 1, a day after an Israeli airstrike killed Khamenei.

If reporters pressed him to take a position on the matter, El-Sayed said, he would change the subject to Donald Trump’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. “I’m just gonna go straight to pedophilia, frankly,” El-Sayed said. “I’ll just be like, ‘Pedophile president decides that he doesn’t like the front page news, so he decides to take us into another war.’”

The campaign responded to a request for comment with a note from their attorneys at the Sandler Reiff law firm indicating the audio recording was obtained “without the campaign’s permission” and “without the knowledge of the people who were being recorded” and that the campaign is “considering its legal options” against the person who made the recording. The Free Beacon was asked to “take this into account in determining whether to proceed with any reporting on this matter.” We certainly did that.

READ MORE: 'There Are a Lot of People in Dearborn Who Are Sad': Democratic Senate Hopeful Abdul El-Sayed Said He Needed To Stay Silent on Khamenei Killing Because Many of Michigan’s Muslim Voters ‘Are Sad’

The U.S.-China Competition for Global AI Supremacy

While the United States has an early lead in artificial intelligence (AI), America is not positioned for long-term AI leadership. China is investing trillions to win the tech race—targeting the four key pillars of AI strength: energy, infrastructure, talent, and adoption. Losing our AI edge would threaten America’s security, prosperity, and the values of freedom and openness that anchor the world’s digital future. Lawmakers must act decisively, starting by codifying and funding the national AI Action Plan. If they do, America can secure lasting AI leadership and create new jobs, higher wages, and breakthroughs in healthcare, education, and everyday life. Time is running out—America must act now, and with purpose. Learn more here.

Columbia University’s student union—which is in a yearlong contract dispute with the Ivy League school—is demanding an “academic freedom” provision that would protect teaching assistants who bring their political activism into the classroom. The academic freedom article from the Student Workers of Columbia, which represents mostly graduate student teaching and research assistants, has not been previously reported. It states that student employees “have the right to address the larger Columbia and global community with regard to any matter of social, political, economic, or other interest, without institutional discipline” and “will not be disciplined for extramural activity that would normally be covered under First Amendment principles.”

The point, SWC members emphasized during a March 9 bargaining session, is to “solve” for the insistence of teaching assistants who want to talk about “Palestine in the classroom.” One member, identified as “JP,” told the story of a teaching assistant who faced disciplinary action after making “references to Palestinian astronomers in their lab assignments.” It was likely a nod to a teaching assistant who in January of 2025 added extraneous comments referring to “genocide” and “military occupation” in Gaza to lab notes for an astronomy class. At the time, Columbia condemned the insertion of “political views” in the classroom. “We want to protect against discipline in those situations,” said “JP.”

“Instructors using their classrooms to push anti-Israel sentiment is not new at Columbia,” our Jessica Costescu and Jessica Schwalb write. “The university’s December anti-Semitism report identified numerous instances of teachers using ‘classes whose subject matter is far removed from Zionism, Israel, and the Middle East’ to offer ‘harsh condemnations of Israel.’ A group of graduate students urged each other to ‘teach for Palestine’ in their classes on a wide variety of subjects.”

READ MORE: Columbia Student Union Demands ‘Academic Freedom’ To Protect Political Activism in the Classroom

As Harvard faces mounting financial and political pressure, it’s looking to borrow $675 million through tax-exempt bonds offered by the Massachusetts Development Finance Agency, the Free Beacon’s Ira Stoll reports. A draft offering document used to help line up buyers for the bonds “offers some hints at how Harvard is coping under intense pressure from the federal government, which says the university has ‘failed to live up to both the intellectual and civil rights conditions that justify federal investment.’” Stoll writes:

The Massachusetts Development Finance Agency is controlled by Governor Maura Healey, a Democrat and former captain of the Harvard women’s basketball team; Harvard has already tapped the agency for $1,169,075,000 in bond offerings in 2024 and 2025, and if this offering is completed at the $675 million level, Healey’s helping hand to Harvard via Massachusetts’ municipal bond authority will reach a total of more than $1.8 billion.

Among the key disclosures:

— “First-year student applications received” by Harvard plunged more than 21 percent to 47,893 for the 2025-2026 academic year from a recent high of 61,221 in 2022-23. Peer institutions such as Yale reported 54,919 applicants this year, Brown 47,937 applicants, and Columbia 61,031 applications. Harvard isn’t releasing its application numbers for students entering in the fall of 2026 until it is required to by the federal government, the Harvard Crimson reported.

— Harvard, which has been complaining it is so financially strapped that potentially life-saving cancer research is endangered, employs 12 vice presidents. The United States of America somehow manages with just one vice president, and MIT somehow survives with a mere seven.

READ MORE: Harvard To Borrow Another $675 Million as Applications Plunge

Elsewhere:

• Thousands of American soldiers and Marines are arriving in the Middle East as the Pentagon preps for “weeks of ground operations in Iran,” the Washington Post reported, citing U.S. officials. Rather than a full-scale invasion, the operations would include Special Operations raids on key Iranian sites like Kharg Island. It’s unclear whether President Trump will give the green light.

• Remember Fang Fang, the suspected Chinese spy who helped Rep. Eric Swalwell (D., Calif.) with campaign fundraising? FBI director Kash Patel is reportedly pushing for the release of files related to the investigation into Swalwell’s relationship with the intrepid, uh, money honey.

• Russian satellites took images of a U.S. air base in Saudi Arabia in the days before an Iranian attack on the base, which wounded a number of U.S. service members, according to NBC News.

Check out our full Monday lineup below.

1. ‘There Are a Lot of People in Dearborn Who Are Sad’: Democratic Senate Hopeful Abdul El-Sayed Said He Needed To Stay Silent on Khamenei Killing Because Many of Michigan’s Muslim Voters ‘Are Sad’

2. Columbia Student Union Demands ‘Academic Freedom’ To Protect Political Activism in the Classroom

3. Harvard To Borrow Another $675 Million as Applications Plunge

4. Coups and Consequences

5. You’re Not a Monkey’s Uncle

6. Tyranny Through Technology

7. Brothers in Arms

8. Finish the Job: There’s Only One Way To Lower the Price of Oil

9. Politico Publishes Cartoon Depicting Trump, Republicans Wearing Blood-Covered Jewish Prayer Shawls, Yarmulkes Amid Bags of Money

10. ‘Jobs Don’t Justify Harm’: Spanberger’s Chief Energy Officer Sought To Kill Natural Gas Plant That Needs Approval From Spanberger’s Administration

The human resources software company Rippling emerged as a top Democratic Party vendor after receiving tax breaks from Gavin Newsom and Kathy Hochul. It’s also accused of cultivating a “borderline barbaric” culture that penalizes employees who take paid family leave, according to lawsuits and complaints from several former employees.

Newsom and Hochul, the Free Beacon’s Andrew Kerr reports, awarded Rippling nearly $20 million in combined tax breaks between 2023 and 2025, money that helped the firm build offices in San Francisco and New York City. ActBlue and the DNC have processed more than $23 million in payroll expenditures through Rippling in the 2026 midterm election cycle, campaign finance disclosures show. And while Newsom and Hochul have made expanded paid family leave a cornerstone of their political platforms, Rippling is accused of taking a different approach.

Former employees have alleged in lawsuits that the company fired them after they took family leave or expressed their intention to do so. A March 2025 suit from former engineering manager Fu Zhou alleged that she was fired after taking medical leave to undergo IVF treatments—and that her replacement, a man, was terminated “shortly after expressing his own intention to take family leave.” An anonymous former employee, meanwhile, posted on the employer review site GlassDoor describing the company as “borderline barbaric in today’s workplace culture.”

Rippling responded to the Free Beacon with a legal letter from the leading defamation lawyer Tom Clare, whose firm ClareLocke represented Matt Lauer amid his #MeToo battles, former Obama White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler amid revelations of her close friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, and former Harvard president Claudine Gay amid her plagiarism scandal. Clare, who penned a seven-page letter filled with veiled legal threats—and marked “Confidential—Not For Publication Or Attribution,” a condition to which the Free Beacon did not agree—said the Free Beacon did not afford the company adequate time to comment, demanded the Free Beacon “identify all its sources,” and said Rippling could not comment on pending litigation anyway.

READ MORE: ‘Borderline Barbaric’: Troubled Dem Payroll Vendor Accused of Punishing Employees For Taking Paid Family Leave

The U.S.-China Competition for Global AI Supremacy

While the United States has an early lead in artificial intelligence (AI), America is not positioned for long-term AI leadership. China is investing trillions to win the tech race—targeting the four key pillars of AI strength: energy, infrastructure, talent, and adoption. Losing our AI edge would threaten America’s security, prosperity, and the values of freedom and openness that anchor the world’s digital future. Lawmakers must act decisively, starting by codifying and funding the national AI Action Plan. If they do, America can secure lasting AI leadership and create new jobs, higher wages, and breakthroughs in healthcare, education, and everyday life. Time is running out—America must act now, and with purpose. Learn more here.

House Republicans are launching an investigation into whether Columbia University is complying with the settlement agreement it reached with the Trump administration, citing allegations that the school is withholding information on anti-Semitism and DEI from a federal monitor. In a letter to the university shared with the Free Beacon, House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Brett Guthrie said Columbia “repeatedly failed” to provide documents related to DEI policies and anti-Semitism despite a requirement that the monitor have full access to relevant materials.

The inquiry also highlights concerns about university leadership. It points to testimony from Columbia medical center CEO and former president Katrina Armstrong, who, as the Free Beacon reported, said in a 2025 deposition that she could not recall the specifics of any anti-Semitic incident on campus. Guthrie suggested that Columbia could have used Armstrong’s subsequent sabbatical—she took time off to “spend time with her family” in the wake of the deposition—to “reflect on the way Columbia has addressed antisemitism on campus and ways to reform and improve Columbia’s record of compliance with federal civil rights laws.” Instead, “questions remain” about the university’s leaders, including Armstrong, Guthrie’s letter states.

Columbia said it is “reviewing” the letter and will cooperate with the committee. The university’s deal with the Trump administration included a $200 million fine, though it did not include some of the far-reaching reforms for which Jewish leaders had hoped . “The fact that Columbia receives hundreds of millions of dollars from HHS and its subagencies, coupled with the serious concerns regarding its compliance with federal anti-discrimination laws, demonstrates that further oversight is needed,” Guthrie told the Free Beacon.

READ MORE: House Energy Committee To Investigate Columbia’s Compliance With Trump Deal

The Iranian regime has “been just beat to s—” in the opening 26 days of Operation Epic Fury, President Donald Trump said, and now faces two options, take a deal or face “their worst nightmare.” Trump, speaking during a cabinet meeting on Thursday, said the regime is “begging to make a deal” but “should’ve done that four weeks ago.” He said the Islamic Republic allowed several Pakistan-flagged vessels to sail through the Strait of Hormuz earlier this week to show that talks are “real and solid” and extended a moratorium on bombing Iranian energy infrastructure to April 6 from March 27. To reach a deal, the regime must “permanently abandon their nuclear agreements and chart a new path forward,” the president said.

The meeting came after Trump threatened the regime in a Thursday morning Truth Social post, writing that Iran “better get serious soon, before it’s too late, because once that happens, there is NO TURNING BACK, and it won’t be pretty.” Special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff reiterated that message during the cabinet meeting, saying there are “no good alternatives for them other than more death and destruction.” Also on Thursday, U.S. Central Command confirmed the death of IRGC Navy commander Alireza Tangsir in an Israeli strike. He was responsible for closing the strait.

Iranian officials have offered mixed messages on Trump’s 15-point proposal to end the war. Though unnamed Islamic Republic leaders told state-run media outlets that they had rejected the proposal, Iran’s foreign minister said Wednesday that the regime is still reviewing it.

READ MORE: ‘They Have Been Just Beat to S—’: Iranian Regime ‘Begging’ For Ceasefire Deal, Trump Says

Additional reading:

• A year after a Trump administration executive order called to rescind federal funds from institutions that allow biological men to compete in women’s sports, the International Olympic Committee agreed to enact a new eligibility policy limiting female event categories to “biological females.”

• She’s running? Kamala Harris is set to make a “swing through four Southern state Democratic Party events in April” as “speculation continues about what Kamala Harris will do next,” CNN reported. Harris is also weighing “similar stops through the summer and fall.”

• The Department of Justice is suing the NewYork-Presbyterian hospital system—which houses Columbia University Medical Center and Weill Cornell Medical Center—over allegations that it reached illegal deals with health insurers and prevented them from offering their customers cheaper options.

Happy Friday, our full lineup is below.

1. ‘Borderline Barbaric’: Troubled Dem Payroll Vendor Accused of Punishing Employees For Taking Paid Family Leave

2. House Energy Committee To Investigate Columbia’s Compliance With Trump Deal

3. ‘They Have Been Just Beat to S—’: Iranian Regime ‘Begging’ For Ceasefire Deal, Trump Says

4. Senate Republicans Introduce Bill Boosting Defense Cooperation Between Abraham Accords Members

5. For America at 250, Some Jewish Wisdom on How to Last 3,000 Years

A Harvard Business School professor who protested in the library in favor of anti-Israel student activists is now set to teach a case study about divesting from Israeli companies because of their “possible complicity in the crisis in Gaza,” Free Beacon senior writer Ira Stoll reports. The 26-page case, obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, likens divesting from Israel to responding to “the apartheid regime in South Africa” and says “Palestinian armed groups,” rather than “terrorists”—a word that does not appear in the case—were behind the October 7 attack on Israel. Stoll writes:

The case is about whether the Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global—at $2.1 trillion, one of the world’s largest—should divest from Caterpillar, IBM, Microsoft, and Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Holdings Inc. and Unilever on account of being “‘too’ complicit in unethical activity to justify investment.”

The lead author of the case and the teacher of the business school class is Reshmaan Hussam. Hussam co-wrote an October 2024 Harvard Crimson article about participating in a library protest wearing a black scarf as a variation on “traditional Palestinian keffiyehs” worn by students. “Our students’ suspensions from the library come amid a wave of new, excessively restrictive rules governing campus speech that have been codified in direct response to student protests about the devastation in Gaza,” she wrote. She was also quoted in Harvard Magazine coverage of the faculty in-library protests, which the participants described as “study-ins.”

Harvard “case study” pedagogy sometimes features a two-part presentation in which students get part of the story, discuss what they’d do, and then get the second part of the case reporting what the decisionmakers actually did and how the decision turned out. The case version that was obtained by the Free Beacon is titled Divestment (A), suggesting that a part (B) may be next. The case carries a boilerplate disclaimer that cases “are developed solely as the basis of class discussion” and “not intended to serve as endorsements, sources of primary data, or illustrations of effective or ineffective management.” The fine print also says “Funding for the development of this case was provided by Harvard Business School. The citation review for this case has not yet been completed.”

Hussam did not reply to an email seeking comment. An HBS spokesman did not respond to an email seeking comment. Harvard says generally that it “cares deeply about members of our Jewish and Israeli community and remains committed to ensuring they are embraced, respected, and can thrive on our campus,” and that the university “has taken substantive, proactive steps to address the root causes of antisemitism.”

READ MORE: Harvard Business Professor Who Protested at Library Now Teaching Israel Divestment ‘Case’ in Class

The U.S.-China Competition for Global AI Supremacy

While the United States has an early lead in artificial intelligence (AI), America is not positioned for long-term AI leadership. China is investing trillions to win the tech race—targeting the four key pillars of AI strength: energy, infrastructure, talent, and adoption. Losing our AI edge would threaten America’s security, prosperity, and the values of freedom and openness that anchor the world’s digital future. Lawmakers must act decisively, starting by codifying and funding the national AI Action Plan. If they do, America can secure lasting AI leadership and create new jobs, higher wages, and breakthroughs in healthcare, education, and everyday life. Time is running out—America must act now, and with purpose. Learn more here.

UCLA has a new dean of public health: Harvard official Kari Nadeau, who just months ago became the interim director of a center that has been hit with numerous allegations of anti-Semitism. A UCLA statement announcing the appointment praised Nadeau for her “inclusive, student-centered approach to preparing the next generation of public health leaders.” Harvard’s task force on anti-Semitism has described the Harvard François-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Center for Health and Human Rights that Nadeau briefly led in different terms.

The center was a focus of the report issued by Harvard’s task force on anti-Semitism, which quoted a student who said FXB programming created the impression that “Israel exists solely to oppress Palestinians, and nothing else.” Students who raised concerns about the programming were allegedly asked, “who is more marginalized, Jews or Palestinians.” The pattern continued under Nadeau, who took over from the center’s previous director, Mary Bassett, in January. Over the weekend, a program sponsored by the FXB Center featured a speaker who demonized Israeli doctors as “pro-genocide.”

Nadeau’s appointment comes as the Trump administration sues UCLA over a string of controversial incidents, including a guest lecture by an “activist-in-residence,” Lisa Gray-Garcia, who led chants of “Free, Free Palestine” in a mandatory class for first-year medical students. A separate lawsuit filed this week accuses the university of stonewalling a public records request about Gray-Garcia, who has referred to the Oct. 7 attacks as “justice.”

READ MORE: UCLA Taps Director of Harvard Center Accused of Anti-Semitism As Next Public Health Dean

Additional reading:

• Virginia governor Abigail Spanberger campaigned last year as a “moderate” who had “no plans” to gerrymander her state’s congressional districts. She released an ad on Wednesday urging voters to approve a ballot measure that would do just that. “I’m voting yes on Virginia’s redistricting amendment,” Spanberger said. “At this extraordinary moment, I urge all Virginians to join me.”

• Iran has rejected President Donald Trump’s 15-point peace plan to end the U.S.-Israeli military campaign against the Islamic Republic, according to unnamed regime officials who spoke to state media. “Iran will end the war when it decides to do so and when its own conditions are met,” one of the officials said. We’ll see what Donald Trump thinks of that.

• It may have taken 12 years, but San Francisco school officials finally voted to restore eighth-grade algebra, a class they axed in 2014, arguing that the move would give minority students more time to learn basic math skills. Instead—surprise!—math proficiency declined across the district, including among black students, sparking intense backlash.

• Columbia University placed its Young Democratic Socialists of America chapter on interim suspension in the wake of a Free Beacon report on the group’s work with Columbia University Apartheid Divest, the banned student organization that wished “death to America” as Trump began U.S. military operations against Iran. Columbia has said that recognized student groups that affiliate with CUAD will lose university benefits like access to campus spaces and funding.

• Loyola University Chicago’s campus newspaper apologized after writing in an Instagram post describing the Venezuelan national who shot and killed first-year student Sheridan Gorman, 25-year-old Jose Medina, as an “illegal immigrant.” The statement was accurate—Medina entered the United States illegally—but the paper said in an editor’s note that it didn’t “align with the values of this newspaper.”

Check out our full Wednesday lineup below.

1. Harvard Business Professor Who Protested at Library Now Teaching Israel Divestment ‘Case’ in Class

2. UCLA Taps Director of Harvard Center Accused of Anti-Semitism As Next Public Health Dean

3. ‘Moderate’ Abigail Spanberger Said She Had ‘No Plans To Redistrict Virginia’ When Running for Governor. Now She’s Campaigning for a Gerrymandering Ballot Measure.

4. ‘Iran Does Not Accept A Ceasefire’: Islamic Republic Rejects Trump’s Peace Offer

5. San Francisco Reinstates 8th-Grade Algebra After ‘Equity’ Experiment Fails

6. Columbia Slaps Socialist Student Group with Interim Suspension Following Free Beacon Report

7. Indiana University Launches Investigation Into Muslim Philanthropy Initiative That Gave Fundraising Advice to ‘Sham Charity’ Bankrolling Hamas

8. EXCLUSIVE: We Obtained the Syllabus for Claudine Gay’s New Harvard Course on Higher Education

The left-wing Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed told the audience at a United Auto Workers conference last month that he did “time” for participating in a 2018 minimum wage protest. Police and court records related to the arrest obtained by the Washington Free Beacon’s Alana Goodman paint a different picture, revealing that El-Sayed was detained briefly and released with a misdemeanor ticket. The charges against him were dropped a few months later.

“I put my body on the line and took an arrest,” El-Sayed said at the UAW event, referring to the Oct. 2, 2018, incident, in which he helped protesters block a traffic lane in front of a Detroit McDonald’s. “And I didn’t take the politician’s arrest, where they, like, turn around and drop you off. No, I took the whole arrest. Did my time.”

That “time,” according to the police report, consisted of a trip in a police van to a Detroit detention center, where El-Sayed and other protesters were “issued [citations] and released.” The report notes they were “not finger printed.” Court records show that El-Sayed was ordered to pay a $200 fine and that prosecutors dropped charges against him and closed the case in March 2019.

El-Sayed has fundraised off of the arrest, sending an email last month indicating that the incident shows “why I stand with unions” and asking recipients to “please pitch in $10 today.” The police report, court records, and fundraising email are consistent with contemporaneous local news reports on the arrest. A reporter from WXYZ-TV Detroit asked El-Sayed point blank if it “was a publicity stunt,” while WDIV-TV said of the arrested protesters, “It was fairly obvious this is the ending they wanted.”

READ MORE: Michigan’s El-Sayed Said He Did ‘Time’ After His Arrest at a Minimum Wage Protest. He Got a Ticket, Records Show.

The U.S.-China Competition for Global AI Supremacy

While the United States has an early lead in artificial intelligence (AI), America is not positioned for long-term AI leadership. China is investing trillions to win the tech race—targeting the four key pillars of AI strength: energy, infrastructure, talent, and adoption. Losing our AI edge would threaten America’s security, prosperity, and the values of freedom and openness that anchor the world’s digital future. Lawmakers must act decisively, starting by codifying and funding the national AI Action Plan. If they do, America can secure lasting AI leadership and create new jobs, higher wages, and breakthroughs in healthcare, education, and everyday life. Time is running out—America must act now, and with purpose. Learn more here.

Ousted Harvard president Claudine Gay will return to the classroom at the Ivy League university in the fall to teach a course on “Politics in Higher Education” two years after she resigned in disgrace amid allegations she condoned anti-Semitism and that she was a habitual plagiarist. The course, titled “What is a University?: Purpose and Politics in Higher Education,” will use Harvard as a case study to examine debates over “curriculum, admissions, research, preservation, and governance,” according to its description. It will culminate in a final project in which students propose “a vision for institutional reform or reinvention.”

Gay’s return comes after a turbulent six-month presidency—the shortest in Harvard history—that ended in January 2024. Gay drew backlash for her initial response to Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which did not mention the word “terrorism” and equated the rampage to Israel’s military response. She went on to tell a congressional panel that calls for the genocide of Jews may not constitute harassment at Harvard.

Gay didn’t resign, though, until she faced dozens of allegations of plagiarism in her academic work, having lifted entire paragraphs from other academics’ scholarly work and claimed them as her own. She nonetheless remained a tenured professor at Harvard and kept her $900,000 salary, and while she was expected to return to teaching, “it’s unusual, if not unique, for a deposed administrator like Gay to teach a course on a topic related to their ousting,” the Free Beacon’s Collin Anderson writes. Gay’s students can feel confident that their instructor is familiar with the “politics” surrounding higher education, but her status as an expert navigating them is up for debate.

READ MORE: Ousted Harvard President Claudine Gay To Teach Harvard Course on ‘Politics in Higher Education’ Two Years After Resigning in Disgrace

The University of California, Los Angeles was slapped with a lawsuit Tuesday for stonewalling a public records request related to “activist-in-residence” Lisa Gray-Garcia, who demanded during a mandatory lecture at UCLA’s medical school that students pray to “Mama Earth” and chant “Free, Free Palestine,” our Aaron Sibarium reports.

The Goldwater Institute, a conservative nonprofit, filed the request on Oct. 31, 2025, seeking Gray-Garcia’s contract with UCLA, any course syllabi she’s prepared, and emails she’s sent mentioning terms like “Israel,” “Palestine,” “genocide,” or “Zionist.” “Nearly five months later,” Sibarium writes, “UCLA has not produced any of the records sought by the institute.” Those materials could be fodder for the Justice Department, which cited Gray-Garcia’s medical school lecture in a lawsuit accusing UCLA of anti-Semitism.

“The university has been known to slow-walk the production of sensitive documents: after UCLA medical school was accused of lowering admissions standards for minority applicants, it took more than eight months for UCLA to comply with a public records request for data on student performance,” writes Sibarium. “Such delays can violate the California Public Records Act, which requires agencies to produce records ‘promptly.’ The Goldwater lawsuit relies heavily on that provision, arguing that ‘UCLA has violated the CPRA by not making the responsive … documents and writings available promptly.’”

READ MORE: UCLA Sued for Withholding Records Related to ‘Activist-in-Residence’ Who Demanded Students Pray to ‘Mama Earth’

Additional reading:

• Two paths are emerging in the fourth week of Operation Epic Fury. President Donald Trump is reportedly planning to deploy the 82nd Airborne Division—an elite unit of roughly 3,000 soldiers that could be used to seize Iran’s Kharg Island oil infrastructure—to the Middle East. At the same time, Trump has a “growing desire” to “bring the war to a close,” the Wall Street Journal reported, and may send special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to meet with Iranian officials later this week.

• Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman has his own preference: for the war to continue. The New York Times reports that bin Salman “has argued that Iran poses a long-term threat to the Gulf that can only be eliminated by getting rid of the government.”

• The aforementioned Abdul El-Sayed, the left-wing Michigan Democratic Senate candidate, will hold a pair of rallies in April with the radical influencer Hasan Piker, according to a Politico report, which did not mention that Piker has said “America deserved 9/11,” a remark that even Zohran Mamdani described as “objectionable and reprehensible.” Stay tuned for more on the rallies.

• Don’t threaten us with a good time: Tech journalist Kara Swisher, the self-described “liberal lesbian Donald Trump of San Francisco,” confirmed she will quit her gig as a CNN contributor if David Ellison-led Paramount purchases the network. “I refuse to work for an organization that doesn’t respect journalists,” she said.

• The “already massive gap” in fundraising between the RNC and DNC “widened in February,” CNN reported, citing new federal campaign finance disclosures. The RNC took in $18.5 million in February to the DNC’s $10.3 million and has “nearly seven times as much cash on hand, $109 million to $15.9 million.” The DNC has more debt than cash on hand.

Check out our full Wednesday lineup below.

1. Michigan’s El-Sayed Said He Did ‘Time’ After His Arrest at a Minimum Wage Protest. He Got a Ticket, Records Show.

2. Ousted Harvard President Claudine Gay To Teach Harvard Course on ‘Politics in Higher Education’ Two Years After Resigning in Disgrace

3. UCLA Sued for Withholding Records Related to ‘Activist-in-Residence’ Who Demanded Students Pray to ‘Mama Earth’

4. Maryland Supreme Court Tosses Dem Attempt To Hold Oil Companies Accountable for Climate Events