Mamdani Transition Adviser Under Congressional Investigation for Teaching Illegal Aliens How To Evade ICE
Plus, CAIR's political arm has operated without legal authority across US, watchdog report finds
Zohran Mamdani tapped a transition adviser whose nonprofit organization is the subject of an active congressional investigation for teaching illegal aliens how to evade ICE, our Jon Levine reports.
Mamdani’s decision to tap Wayne Ho, the CEO of the Chinese-American Planning Council, for his transition team is consistent with the mayor-elect’s campaign pledge to block federal deportations in New York.
Ho joined Mamdani’s transition committee on social services. Meanwhile, the House Homeland Security Committee is investigating his group over a video showing an official “explaining strategies for avoiding and potentially impeding immigration officials during a seminar in New York,” as former committee chairman Mark Green put it in April. A committee staffer confirmed that the investigation remains active.
Republicans say the appointment is a troubling indication of how Mamdani’s left-wing approach to immigration enforcement will shape his administration. The committee’s new chairman, Andrew Garbarino, told Levine he’s “disappointed but not surprised that the incoming mayor is providing a platform to an individual who is associated with an organization that has reportedly worked to undermine law enforcement” and said he will “continue conducting oversight.”
DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said the department “will enforce the law, including in New York City.”
CAIR’s political arm has been operating a nationwide fundraising and electioneering machine without the proper legal authority, according to a report from the watchdog groups Network Contagion Research Institute and the Intelligent Advocacy Network, which found that CAIR Action lacks the requisite licenses, charitable registrations, or business filings to conduct political activity in at least 22 states.
That includes Washington, D.C., where CAIR Action is incorporated and where it never obtained the business license needed to operate, according to the report. In California—home to one of CAIR’s largest and most active chapters—CAIR Action is not registered with the California Attorney General’s Registry of Charitable Trusts and “has received no authorization to solicit funds,” the California AG’s office told the watchdog groups. It nonetheless maintains state-specific websites allowing users to “Donate Now” or “Become a Member,” solicitations that the groups say are illegal.
CAIR gave a conflicting response to the charges, saying in a statement provided to the Free Beacon that it “fully complies with all applicable federal and state laws” and also that it would conduct a review of “all applicable compliance requirements” to “ensure full adherence to the law.”
READ MORE: CAIR’s Political Arm Has Operated Without Legal Authority Across US, Watchdog Report Finds
A national security incident at the University of Michigan is exposing a broader vulnerability on American college campuses: partnerships with Chinese universities that the CCP is exploiting.
The feds have charged at least 12 Chinese students, researchers, and recent graduates at Michigan with national security-related offenses. Five of them were accused of taking photographs of military drills at a nearby military facility, and they were all in Ann Arbor thanks to a partnership between the university and Shanghai Jiao Tong University, a Chinese school that helps the CCP modernize its military and allegedly sits on a People’s Liberation Army base. Under pressure from Republican lawmakers, Michigan put an end to the 20-year partnership in January, but it’s going strong at other schools.
“Shanghai Jiao Tong maintains joint institutes, dual-degree programs, and student and faculty research exchanges with more than two dozen top American universities—including Columbia, Yale, Cornell, Northwestern, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of California, Berkeley—in fields ranging from engineering to public health and finance,” our Jessica Costescu writes. They reflect “real risk,” according to Center for Immigration Studies senior legal fellow George Fishman.
“If there is a vulnerability and the University of Michigan refuses to correct that vulnerability, the federal government could shut off student visas for the University of Michigan,” Fishman said. “If it’s not unique to the university, then this is something that needs to be solved by the federal government.”
Elsewhere:
The Trump administration released its highly anticipated national security strategy document—and it does not name China as the country’s leading adversary, as prior iterations of the document have. Rather, it says we seek a “mutually advantageous economic relationship with Beijing.” On the plus side, it makes no mention of a Palestinian state. Rather, it says, “The Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains thorny, but thanks to the ceasefire and release of hostages President Trump negotiated, progress toward a more permanent peace has been made.”
Jasmine Crockett will announce today whether she plans to run for reelection in the House or whether she will run for Senate. She seems to be leaning toward the latter: “For the last week,” CNN reports, “Crockett was making phone calls that left people on the other end thinking she sounds not like a Senate candidate, but one very much trying to arrange the pieces around her, according to several people familiar with the conversations.” Yas, queen!
Advisers warned Joe Biden of “chaos” at the southern border if he didn’t implement policies aimed at deterring migrants. “Mr. Biden seemed to grasp the risk. But he and his top aides failed to act on those recommendations,” the New York Times reports. Um, we know.
Pete Hegseth has called for a “1981 moment” of increased military investment amid mounting global threats. To make it happen, Sen. Mitch McConnell writes in the Wall Street Journal, he must make spending more on defense uncontroversial: “If our goal is to make this a ‘1981 moment’—as in the first year of the Reagan administration, when under-investment in the U.S. military was turned around—we must deliver more consistent support for defense. President Reagan’s peace-through-strength Cold War budgets allocated about twice as much as we spend now as a percentage of GDP.”
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Excellent reporting that connects the institutional gaps. The CAIR compliance issue across 22 states is particuarly significant because it exposes a pattern rather than isolated oversight. The fact they lack basic business licenses in their own incorporation state (DC) while running nationwide fundraising kinda undermines any good-faith compliance defense. The timing with Mamdani's appointment signals how these institutional vulnerabilities can compound when local officials actively resist federal enforcement.
Disgusting! It's all DISGUSTING...