Commentary Culture Investigations

A controversial, climate-focused initiative at New York University—that paid the salaries of top officials in Democratic attorney general offices nationwide but quietly shuttered earlier this year—appears to have found a new home about 230 miles north.
According to a review of Vermont Law’s staff directory, nine members of the shuttered NYU State Energy and Environmental Impact Center, including its executive director and legal director, have migrated to the Vermont Law and Graduate School’s new Multistate Assistance for Public Service Leadership and Excellence (MAPLE) initiative in recent months. The top two NYU Impact Center officials joined MAPLE on Aug. 19, 2026, while the others—including the chief operations officer, senior staff attorney, communications manager, and director of environmental justice programs—joined on Sept. 15, 2026.
Those hirings came around the time that the NYU Impact Center, which had received significant funding from billionaire environmental philanthropist Michael Bloomberg, unexpectedly shut down on Aug. 31, 2026, nearly a decade after it was founded, without any public announcement, the Washington Free Beacon reported. The closure came amid multiple congressional and state-level investigations over alleged ethics issues related to its funding and its practice of paying the salaries of environmental officials it placed in state attorney general offices.
The nine individuals who moved from the NYU Impact Center to MAPLE, meanwhile, represent all of the new initiative’s known staff. They also each retained the exact title they had while at the NYU Impact Center.
The MAPLE initiative, its website states, supports students in “exploring state public service.” To do that, it says it offers “experiential learning opportunities where students can engage in state agency work on energy and environmental law,” trainings, workshops, internships, and fellowships; and resources to help educate the public on how state agencies shape energy policy.
On the surface, that mirrors the NYU Impact Center’s practice of embedding “fellows” inside state governments and paying their salaries while these fellows, as state employees, pursue and enforce climate regulations. The practice has attracted at least one ongoing legal complaint and a probe from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which stated the scheme “raises questions as to whether participating state attorneys general are acting on independent judgment to best serve the interests of their states’ citizens.”
It remains unclear whether the MAPLE initiative’s programs will—like its precursor at NYU—fund the salaries of the fellows it directs to state agencies. It also remains unclear whether the initiative has retained the same revenue stream as the NYU Impact Center—Bloomberg’s eponymous charity notably helped found the center in 2017 with two seed grants worth $2.8 million each, according to tax filings.
A spokeswoman for the MAPLE initiative did not respond to a request for comment.
Still, the migration of the NYU Impact Center staff suggests that the two initiatives are, to some extent, intertwined.
“The quiet migration of the NYU Impact Center’s leadership and staff to Vermont Law and Graduate School raises serious questions,” American Tort Reform Association president Sherman Joyce told the Free Beacon.
“When a privately funded organization shuts down under congressional scrutiny, only to immediately resurface under a new name, it looks less like a true closure and more like a rebranding strategy,” he continued. “House Oversight and relevant state officials should closely scrutinize this entity to determine whether it is continuing to place privately funded fellows in public prosecutor offices without standard government oversight.”
Vermont Law School’s involvement, meanwhile, is notable because Christophe Courchesne, who is a professor at the school and the director of its Environmental Law Center, previously served as the deputy chief of the Massachusetts attorney general’s environmental protection division.
In that role, Courchesne worked with the NYU Impact Center to hire a fellow at the attorney general’s office. That fellow reported directly to Courchesne, according to the application Massachusetts submitted to the center.
“We appreciate your consideration of our application and fully expect that the NYU Fellow would make a needed and valuable contribution to the AGO’s nationally significant work to protect the environment and the climate and to advance a clean energy future in the Commonwealth and beyond,” the 2017 application, which was coauthored by Courchesne, stated.
In addition, the Vermont Law boasts connections to a high-profile nationwide legal effort, which has been led by Democratic state attorneys general, to sue oil companies for billion-dollar damages related to their alleged role in causing global warming.
For example, Vermont Law professor emeritus Pat Parenteau has advised Sher Edling, a San Francisco-based environmental law firm that specializes in suing corporations on behalf of Democrat-led state and local governments.
According to tax disclosures reviewed by the Free Beacon, Vermont Law School also shares a revenue stream with Sher Edling. The left-wing charity Chicago Community Trust—which donated $650,000 to a fund that backs Sher Edling’s oil lawsuits—gave $7.1 million to Vermont Law School between 2023 and 2025 for undisclosed programs.
And Vermont Law’s newly announced president, Melissa Hoffer, was a lead attorney on Massachusetts’s climate change lawsuit against ExxonMobil alongside Courchesne, according to the state’s 2019 complaint.
The post Back From the Dead: Shuttered, Bloomberg-Backed Climate Project That Paid Salaries of Government Lawyers Quietly Reappears in Vermont appeared first on .

Two college students — one from the University of Michigan and the other from the University of Texas at San Antonio — received backlash from conservatives for their violent encounter with TurningPoint USA speakers during their campus outreach. (READ MORE: The Democrats’ Black-Pill Cult Is on Full Display in Michigan) 
The Spectacle Podcast hosts Melissa Mackenzie and Scott McKay discuss the viral TurningPoint USA altercation and how cultural Marxism has changed the atmosphere of campus activism. Melissa and Scott hark back to the influence of Charlie Kirk and say that security presence needs to be heightened for conservatives who are continuing Kirk’s legacy of speaking on college campuses. They also discuss the outlook for Election Day and how political violence from the Left is likely in all outcomes. (RELATED: A Modest Proposal Explaining the Midterm Rout) 
Tune in to hear their discussion!

Listen to The Spectacle with Melissa Mackenzie and Scott McKay on Spotify.
Watch The Spectacle with Melissa Mackenzie and Scott McKay on Rumble.

The next two years are not about passing legislation. They are for highlighting the costs and damage of Democrat proposals and focusing voters on the agenda available only if the GOP wins the House and Senate in 2028.

On Tuesday, the Republican Party lost its majorities in the House and Senate, four Governorships, a dozen state legislative chambers including both houses in Arizona, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin, the Pennsylvania Senate, and the House in Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Alaska, and even Texas. This hands Democrats control of a majority of the nation’s legislative chambers and new trifectas in at least five states. Democrats now hold 51 chambers, up from 29 when Trump won in 2016. 

President Trump’s approval rating was 39 percent.

If the Democrats elect a president in 2028, they can end the filibuster with a simple majority in the Senate and then proceed to add an unlimited number of states to the 50 we have now, add as many Supreme Court members as they wish, and organize immigration and naturalization laws to add as many voters as they wish from whatever nations they wish. (RELATED: Here Come the Court-Packing Democrats)
Democrats can and will nationalize health care, ban independent contractors (as California has done), repeal Right to Work for all Americans, and impose the PRO Act that will force more workers to pay dues to unions that can then be recycled to the Democrat Party and its candidates.

And Democrats will certainly impose a national property (“wealth”) tax on your home, your life savings, farms, and small businesses. They tried this in California this past week. They lost. But they want your money. They will be back.

Tort laws will be “liberalized” to create more billionaire trial lawyers (read Democrat donors). And welfare will be targeted to Democrat voting blocs to free up their time to work for the “common good” — i.e., the various factions of the Takings Coalition that is the modern Democrat Party.

America would become a one-party state for all intents and purposes.

This future is not inevitable.

We have been here before. Several times.

The Republican Party’s epitaph was forcefully written by the establishment press in 1964 after the Goldwater defeat. And in 1974, following Watergate. And in 1976, when Carter won, ending the short-lived Republican Southern strategy “lock” on the presidency. And in 1986, with the Democrat sweep of the House and Senate. And in 1992, when the Clintons marched into Washington, and again in 2008, with the Obama win bringing 60 votes in the Senate to pass Obamacare — designed to be the follow-on to the New Deal and Great Society expansions of federal power.

And yet, Nixon was elected four years after Goldwater lost. Reagan won the presidency and the Senate after four years of Carter. Bush won in 1988, promising to give Reagan a third term. After only two years of Clinton and a Democrat congress Republicans swept the House and Senate in the Gingrich Revolution. And again, two years into the Obama era, Republicans won the House and Senate majority.
[G]rown-ups need to get active in the Republican party from the precinct to county and state level.

The GOP can come back, again. So what is to be done? (RELATED: What Now, America?)

First off, conservatives need to figure out why the shellacking. The number one issue cited by voters was “affordability.” Trump chose to open his second term with a barrage of tariffs (aka taxes on imports paid by American consumers). The purpose of a tariff is to raise the price of imported goods. Domestic producers are able and encouraged to raise their prices to grab the monopoly rents created by the tariffs. (RELATED: A Modest Proposal Explaining the Midterm Rout)
This increases costs for all Americans and raises prices for inputs for manufacturing such as steel and aluminum. This is the opposite of affordability. 
And in a trade war, the other team gets an at-bat. China boycotted our farm products. Canada threw tariffs up against our products. The use of tariffs as a negotiating cudgel created great uncertainty as tariffs bounced up and down from day to day. Uncertainty slows hiring and investment.
The impact of tariffs directly undercut the Trump Tax Cuts. Tariffs increased the marginal effective tax rate on new investment enough to offset the aggregate tax reduction provided by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, according to an analysis from the American Enterprise Institute.

The war with Iran raised the prices of gasoline and diesel to the highest national average ever recorded on an election day, noticed by farmers and truckers and everyone who drives a car.
Housing costs became a national concern.
What can Trump do now to address the “affordability” and housing issues? 
First, the tariffs did or didn’t win the concessions Trump wanted from other nations. Now it is time to end the pain they inflict on Americans. They were put in place by executive order, not Congress. They can be abolished just as easily.

And Trump also has the power to index the taxation of capital gains for inflation. The Treasury Department can use its rulemaking power to assert that, for tax purposes, the “cost” of a house, business, or retirement savings is not “historic cost” — what you paid for it, but “real cost” — what you paid for it plus all the inflation since you bought your home, farm, business, stocks.

This would free up homes for Americans by dramatically reducing the effective capital gains rate.

Older Americans would sell homes they no longer needed without the crushing tax burden created by paying taxes on the inflation created by the government in the first place. Investors would reallocate all their investments. The increase in productivity by moving trillions to higher and better use would drive growth. The realtors and home builders have told the Republican congressional leadership that nothing would do more for home building and freeing up homes for younger families than ending the taxation of inflation in capital gains. Inflation is created by Washington and then taxed by Washington. It is time to end the inflation tax.

The upcoming Democrat Congress means that many good ideas long awaiting a vote on the floor of the House and Senate will be delayed. Republicans in the House, Senate, and White House can and should highlight legislation they would enact if given the majority. This was the genius of Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America: a commitment by all House Republicans that they would hold a vote on 10 pieces of legislation the Democrats refused to bring up for a vote. Every Republican could run on an agenda that has been poll-tested and scrubbed for possible weaknesses. 

At the state level, those states with a Republican legislature and governor can continue to reduce taxes and reform government to attract talent, investment (and electoral votes) from blue states to red states.

And grown-ups need to get active in the Republican party from the precinct to county and state level. Half of the failure of Republican Senate candidates flowed from lousy candidates. The president and vice president put the finger on the scale for candidates unable to win: Texas’s Paxton with too many mistresses and corruption “problems,” the sister of Lindsey Graham, the Ohio smashup that cost us both the governorship and Senate seat, and North Carolina was stuck with a party chairman whose skill set was “friend of the White House” but not “able to win Senate seat or raise money.”

Senate and House leaders and state party leaders need to insist that there be no more handpicking candidates with obvious fatal flaws.

The Republican Party has come back from the dead several times in recent memory.

There is no time and no need to ask for permission.

And Mr. Paxton owes the Republican Party $330 million. We want it back.
Grover Norquist is president of Americans for Tax Reform.
READ MORE from Grover Norquist:
The Government Should Not Own the Means of Production in America
The Redcoats Are Back With a New Tax

Debating whether Republicans owe their smackdown more to tariffs or Iran is akin to arguing whether Hiroshima or Nagasaki hurt imperial Japan more.

George Perry counters that colleges can become too much like businesses.

CNN: Warnock Accuses Republicans of Islamophobia and Bigotry

Senator (and Rev.) Raphael Warnock isn’t discouraging any talk of a presidential run in 2028, a black minister like Jesse Jackson trying for the White House.On Sunday, CNN’s State of the Union with Jake Tapper hosted Warnock and began by discussing whether the Democrast aren’t investing enough resources in the South. He joked he was “nauseously optimistic” Democrats would get the job done.The conversation quickly shifted to Tapper and Warnock accusing Republicans of Islamophobia and religious bigotry, while ignoring the controversy surrounding Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed’s political associations. Tapper began: CNN: Warnock Accuses Republicans of Islamophobia and Bigotry #cnn #jaketapper #democrats #republicans #midtermelection #news https://t.co/IgGkrhil9f— Sarah (@scbpoli) November 4, 2026 TAPPER: You’re a man of faith, so you see the intersection of politics and faith all the time. There’s another Democratic pastor, Adam Hamilton, running for the U.S. Senate in Kansas. Senator Ted Cruz, your colleague in the Senate, who like you is a Baptist, he was in Kansas. I want to play a little bit of what he had to say about Adam Hamilton. Take a listen.SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX): And he says, “when we get to Heaven, there will be Muslims, and we can hug and embrace them, and they will be welcomed in Heaven.” It’s an interesting idea. We show up there in Heaven, first thing you see is Osama bin Laden.TAPPER: What’s your response to that?This could be an occasion for a Christian pastor to address the Bible and discuss whether Muslims who haven’t accepted Jesus will get into Heaven. Sen. Cruz was making a joke in a broader context. Obviously, mass-murdering terrorists shouldn’t be expected there. Tapper cut the Cruz remarks off for political effect. Cruz went on to point out lamented that Hamilton said from the pulpit, “Jesus is one way to get to Heaven, but he’s not the only way.” He pointed out that Hamilton is contradicting what Jesus says in the Bible: “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me.”Instead, Rev. Warnock knew CNN didn’t want to discuss theology on a Sunday, so he accused Cruz of “bigotry” and “Islamophobia,” and compared it to anti-black racism in the South: WARNOCK: It’s bigotry, pure and simple. Religious bigotry is bigotry. And the Republicans know that they’re losing the argument. It’s just deeply disheartening, though not terribly surprising, that they are trying to stir up these old demons.Listen, I’m a proud American, as is Abdul. There is no religious test for citizenship in America. And there’s no religious tests to hold office. And, as a Christian pastor, I take no comfort in this kind of Islamophobia, in this kind of bigotry of lifting up the worst example of someone who claims a faith and trying to conflate that as the faith itself. As an African-American, I know bigotry when I see it. We have to resist it, reject it. America is so much better than this.Tapper let Warnock rant and failed to mention Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan’s association with the left-wing streamer Hasan Piker. Piker, who El-Sayed campaigned alongside, has faced widespread criticism for boldly saying “America deserved 9/11.” So how can he be sold as a “proud American”? Click Expand to view the transcript:CNN’s State of the UnionNovember 1, 2026JAKE TAPPER: Joining us now, Reverend and Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia, who we’re catching on his way to church. Thank you so much, Senator and Reverend. We appreciate it. So, the most frequently texted phrase in politics in the news media, probably in your phone right now, is, what are you hearing? So, Senator Warnock, I will ask you what everyone’s asking me. What are you hearing?SEN. RAPHAEL WARNOCK (D-GA): Well, thank you so very much, Jake. Great to be with you. Listen, I am seeing a lot of energy on the ground. As you point out, we’re seeing record voter turnout. I think Georgians understand the assignment. They are being crushed by these tariffs that are raising the price on everything. They want to put an end to this war, which is spiking the cost of gas, and they want to make health care affordable.And so they know that the only way to do that is to hold Donald Trump’s enablers in Congress accountable and to send somebody like Keisha Lance Bottoms to the governor’s mansion. And I think we’re on track. I am nauseously optimistic that we’re going to get this done.TAPPER: So Democrats are also optimistic about putting some deep red Republican states in play, but you have expressed deep concern that Democrats are still not investing enough in the South. Mississippi Democratic Senate candidate Scott Colom said in an interview Friday that — quote — “Mississippi has never been a lost cause. It’s been a betrayed cause” — unquote — because Democrats don’t bother to try to win there.If Colom doesn’t win on Tuesday, will that be because Democratic leaders didn’t listen to you or Scott Colom and take the South and the opportunities there for Democrats seriously enough?WARNOCK: Listen, the road to a sustainable Democratic majority runs straight through the South. Democrats are not investing enough in the South, but we’re moving it in the right direction, I think, with some pushing and urging by me and others. Here is the thing. Mississippi is a blue state that just needs to be organized. And I think that Scott Colom can win there.I think he can win this year. But whether he wins or not, here’s what Democrats ought to be doing. We ought to be investing in Mississippi the very next day. We have been through this in Georgia. There were times, remember, over the last decade or so, when folks kept asking, is the Georgia miracle going to happen? Can they move it? Can they turn the page? And there were years when it was like Lucy and the football. But the mistake we make is that, when we don’t get the outcome we want, we lean back, rather than leaning in. Mississippi is a blue state. And what you see in Georgia, the dynamics, many of those dynamics are there. We ought to be investing the next day, regardless of the outcome, because a ceiling of 52 for Democrats in the Senate is unsustainable and unacceptable.TAPPER: You’re a man of faith, so you see the intersection of politics and faith all the time. There’s another Democratic pastor, Adam Hamilton, running for the U.S. Senate in Kansas. Senator Ted Cruz, your colleague in the Senate, who like you is a Baptist, he was in Kansas. I want to play a little bit of what he had to say about Adam Hamilton. Take a listen.SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX): And he says, when we get to heaven, there will be Muslims, and we can hug and embrace them, and they will be welcomed in heaven. It’s interesting idea. We show up there in heaven, first thing you see is Osama bin Laden.TAPPER: What’s your response to that?WARNOCK: It’s bigotry, pure and simple. Religious bigotry is bigotry. And the Republicans know that they’re losing the argument. It’s just deeply disheartening, though not terribly surprising, that they are trying to stir up these old demons.Listen, I’m a proud American, as is Abdul. There is no religious test for citizenship in America. And there’s no religious tests to hold office. And, as a Christian pastor, I take no comfort in this kind of Islamophobia, in this kind of bigotry of lifting up the worst example of someone who claims a faith and trying to conflate that as the faith itself. As an African-American, I know bigotry when I see it. We have to resist it, reject it. America is so much better than this.

The late night comedy shows were in a celebratory mood on Wednesday as they reacted to the midterm election results, but ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel and NBC’s Late Night host Seth Meyers were especially happy to see Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed and Texas’s James Talarico overcome “vile attacks” and “fearmongering ads.”Kimmel cued up a video of El-Sayed’s victory speech by declaring, “Another big one for Democrats was in Michigan, where Abdul el-Sayed became the first Muslim American ever elected to the Senate, despite being on the receiving end of vile attacks from Vice Couch Canoodler JD Vance, who got a little shout-out last night during El-Sayed’s victory speech.” Jimmy Kimmel hypes Abdul El-Sayed winning “despite being on the receiving end of vile attacks from Vice Couch Canoodler JD Vance, who got a little shout-out last night during El-Sayed’s victory speech.”After El-Sayed cracked himself up over having to be sworn in by JD Vance,… pic.twitter.com/6RejAbWyqt— Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) November 5, 2026 In the video, El-Sayed was shown cracking himself up at the prospect of his upcoming swearing in, “JD, habibi, there is this delicious irony in the fact that you’re constitutionally obligated to swear me in in January.”Kimmel added that he was “finally having fun.”About an hour later, Meyers praised Talarico while urging his critics to calm down, “But let me just say, don’t worry, Texans, despite the fearmongering ads from his opponents, Talarico ran on affordability. Not a return to wokeism. No one’s going to replace your brisket with tofu or make Landman join a polycule. ‘These are my non-binary partners, Zephyr and Willow. Now, before we have our three-way, we would like to acknowledge that this oil field is on the stolen land of the Apache people.’” Seth Meyers hyped James Talarico overcoming “fear-mongering ads from his opponents…Texas is now so blue, the only remaining Republican in state-wide office is Ted Cruz. The next Texas GOP convention is just going to be Ted in an empty room — Wait, sorry. I’m being told that’s… pic.twitter.com/0y1hHQFzUd— Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) November 5, 2026 Meyers further basked in Democrats’ Texas wins by adding, “Texas is now so blue, the only remaining Republican in statewide office is Ted Cruz. The next Texas GOP convention is just going to be Ted in an empty room —  wait, sorry. I’m being told that’s a picture from his birthday party.”Concerns about El-Sayed and Talarico don’t go away just because they happened to get elected. Now they have to prove that all their campaign conversions were authentic, but when they revert back to their pre-campaign selves, don’t expect the late night comedy shows to notice.Here are transcripts for the November 4-taped shows:ABC Jimmy Kimmel Live!11/4/202611:53 PM ETJIMMY KIMMEL: Another big one for Democrats was in Michigan, where Abdul el-Eayed became the first Muslim American ever elected to the Senate, despite being on the receiving end of vile attacks from Vice Couch Canoodler JD Vance, who got a little shout-out last night during El-Sayed’s victory speech.ABDUL EL-SAYED: JD, habibi, there is this delicious irony in the fact that you’re constitutionally obligated to swear me in in January.KIMMEL: Finally having fun.***NBC Late Night with Seth Meyers11/5/202612:51 AM ETSETH MEYERS: Texas. That Texas is a blue state. But let me just say, don’t worry, Texans, despite the fearmongering ads from his opponents, Talarico ran on affordability. Not a return to wokeism. No one’s going to replace your brisket with tofu or make Landman join a polycule. “These are my non-binary partners, Zephyr and Willow. Now, before we have our three-way, we would like to acknowledge that this oil field is on the stolen land of the Apache people.”Texas is now so blue, the only remaining Republican in statewide office is Ted Cruz. The next Texas GOP convention is just going to be Ted in an empty room —  wait, sorry. I’m being told that’s a picture from his birthday party.

It was the war that clobbered Republicans.

Most of these states have already seen serious efforts to legalize doctor-prescribed death — even when Republicans held some power.