Commentary Culture Investigations

Pope Leo XIV on Palm Sunday announced to the world that God “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.” That statement would have surprised Gen. George Patton and the men of the Third Army who in December 1944 were stalled in their drive to relieve the American paratroopers at Bastogne, and it would have surprised Father James O’Neill, the Chief Chaplain of the Third Army, who responded to Patton’s request for a “weather prayer” by writing one that caused Patton to award him the Bronze Star. Perhaps Pope Leo should take the time to read Alex Kershaw’s book Patton’s Prayer, which tells the story of Patton’s request for divine intervention to help win the war against Hitler’s Germany.
Sometimes, wars are between the forces of good and forces of evil…
Pope Leo’s Palm Sunday sermon focused on Christ as the “King of Peace,” and the Pope rightly prayed for peace in the world — that’s what popes are supposed to do. But they are also supposed to recognize that sometimes wars are between the forces of good and forces of evil — the conflict in Iran is such a war. (RELATED: Reading Pope Leo Charitably in a Time of War)
The Islamic regime that has ruled Iran since 1979 is an evil regime that is bent on acquiring nuclear weapons and converting or killing infidels within Iran, in the Middle East region, and throughout the world. Presumably, many U.S. naval personnel and air personnel currently waging war against Iran offer prayers for their own protection and for the safety of their fellow combatants. And, presumably, they and their commanders pray for victory — yes, victory — and a swift end to the war. Gen. Douglas MacArthur once remarked that “the soldier above all other people prays for peace, for he must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war” and “the soldier, above all other men, is required to practice the greatest act of religious training: sacrifice.”
Of course, the cause must be just. Catholic tradition includes the just war theory, which allows for waging war to resist aggression, to support those who are oppressed, and to protect the innocent. It must be fought on legitimate authority and must be motivated by the intention to advance good and lessen evil. There must be attempts to avoid war before resorting to it, and there must be a reasonable hope of success and justice as the outcomes of the war. The just war theory also demands discrimination and proportionality in the conduct of the war.
The current war against Iran meets these conditions. The Iranian regime has been oppressing its people, harming the innocent, and promoting aggression since its inception. The United States is waging war on the recognized legitimate authority of the president as commander-in-chief under Article II of the Constitution, as interpreted by federal courts throughout our history. The motivation for this war is to prevent the great evil of the Iranian regime from acquiring nuclear weapons and to further degrade its military capability, which it has used to spread chaos and harm throughout the region since 1979.
President Trump has attempted for more than a year to negotiate with Iran rather than wage war against it, and if you include his efforts during his first term — when he resisted calls for military action against Iran — the president sought means other than war to restrain Iranian aggression. (RELATED: Pope Leo vs. President Trump)
But to return to Father O’Neill and Patton’s prayer. The Chaplain typed the prayer on a 3×5 card:
Almighty and most merciful Father, we humbly beseech Thee of Thy great goodness, to restrain these immoderate rains with which we have had to contend. Grant us fair weather for Battle. Graciously hearken to us as soldiers who call upon Thee that, armed with Thy power, we may advance from victory to victory, and crush the oppression and wickedness of our enemies and establish Thy justice among men and nations.
Patton read the prayer and ordered 250,000 copies to be printed and distributed to all the troops in his army. He also discussed with Father O’Neill the need for soldiers to pray more often, which resulted in Father O’Neill issuing a directive in Patton’s name, which was provided to every chaplain in the Third Army. The directive read: “Pray when driving. Pray when fighting. Pray alone. Pray with others. Pray by night and pray by day. Pray for the cessation of immoderate rains, for good weather for Battle … Pray for victory. Pray for our Army, and pray for peace.”
Pope Leo on Palm Sunday was wrong. God answered Patton’s prayer. The immoderate weather ended. The Third Army advanced under the protection of Allied air cover. Bastogne was relieved. The failure of Germany’s last offensive, known as the Battle of the Bulge, doomed Hitler’s regime.
READ MORE from Francis P. Sempa:
Is John Fetterman Channeling Scoop Jackson?
Calling the Iran War a Quagmire Now is Ludicrous
The Domestic Side of War

If ever there was any doubt as to the utterly worthless character of the United Nations — the universe’s premier wretched hive of scum and villainy — that was put to bed on Wednesday of last week.
The end, not that there shouldn’t already have been an end, came when the successor regime to the West African Ashanti Kingdom — that being the nation of Ghana — proposed a resolution indicating that the trans-Atlantic slave trade from the 15th through the 19th centuries was the worst sin against humanity, and called for reparations to be paid.
And the vote was 123-3 in favor, with 52 abstentions.
You probably already heard about this idiocy. If you haven’t, here’s the link to the resolution. Don’t drink anything while you’re reading. You might spit it all over your screen.
The three nations voting against the Ghanaian gambit were Israel, Argentina, and the United States. Most of the 52 abstentions were European and other Western countries (the U.K., Canada, Japan, etc.).
Hilariously, the Arab and African countries that have engaged in slave trading both before and since the flowering of the trans-Atlantic flesh market were the bulk of the 123 “yes” votes.
This column will offer no defense to the trans-Atlantic slave trade. It was indeed a terrible sin committed against humanity, one which the United States and its citizens have paid an awful price in blood and treasure — a price a certain political party, which started a civil war over the preservation of slavery, does everything it can to force our people to continue paying. (RELATED: Democrats Silent on Party Paying Reparations for Slavery)
No nation has spent more money attempting (perhaps largely in vain) to remedy the effects of the slave trade than has America.
In fact, no nation has spent more money attempting (perhaps largely in vain) to remedy the effects of the slave trade than has America. Certainly, no nation has spent more blood — some 600,000 dead, in fact, from 1861-65 — in putting a stop to slavery. Furthermore, it was the rapid onset of mechanization, perfected by Americans as the Industrial Revolution took hold, which made slavery obsolete. We should not fail to recognize that until American-style capitalism (though predated to an extent in England, Germany, and some other European countries) entered the scene, virtually every society on earth made use of slave labor to do the work most wouldn’t do. Until American-style capitalism came along, there was no incentive for people to invent machines and processes that obviated the need for masses of laborers.
There is an old story attributed to Milton Friedman from his travels in Asia, but which has roots much earlier, which goes like this: Friedman was shown a large government road-building project. Thousands of workers were breaking their backs digging with shovels, with no heavy machinery in sight. So Friedman asked his government host why they weren’t using tractors, bulldozers, or other equipment that could speed things up. And the official replied: “You don’t understand — this is a jobs program. We want to create as much employment as possible.”
Friedman shot back: “Oh, I see. I thought you were trying to build a road! If it’s jobs you want, then why don’t you take away their shovels and give them spoons instead?”
The point being that pre-industrialization, the key to prosperity for those with the power was to employ as many strong backs in whatever project — war, construction, sex, etc. — was on the menu. Until the Western capitalist came along and showed that there were multiple paths to prosperity, and developed technology at an expanding pace to prove the equation, slavery, and the gross inefficiency and mortal sin it involved, was the only game in town.
Milton Friedman was the Western capitalist questioning the pre-industrial mindset and exposing it for its backwardness. Add the absence of a wage for those laborers, and you understand why, in pre-capitalist societies, slavery was universal.
And it was universal.
But the idea that the trans-Atlantic slave trade was worse than the trans-Saharan slave trade, or the Barbary slave trade, the Ottoman slave trade in southern and eastern Europe, the various Asian slave trading networks, or the Arab slave trade of East Africa (most of the major ports along the East African coast were set up by Arab slave traders, after all), when those lasted much longer and almost certainly involved more victims, is, in a word, stupid. Dumber still is the idea that any of these ought to be pitted against each other, as the Ghanaians and the rest of the Third World kleptocrats at the U.N. would have it.
And Ghana needs to keep its national mouth good and shut.
Let’s remember a few things here.
Let’s first remember that the transatlantic slave trade was a joint international enterprise — not unlike the United Nations, actually. The Portuguese, British, Dutch, French, Spanish, and even Danes bought slaves at African coastal forts, yes. Almost none of them came ashore for the purchases, and it just about never happened that the slave traders actually captured anybody.
Somebody else did that.
And that somebody looked just like the diplomats and government officials from Ghana.
Roughly 12.5 million Africans, almost all of them from West Africa, were trafficked to the Western Hemisphere by those European slave traders. Eighty to 90 percent of them were caught — through wars, raids, judicial punishments, and other means — and brought to the slave ships by other Africans.
The rest were mostly caught by Arab slave traders who had been in the game since Muhammad’s friends broke out of the Arabian Peninsula.
In fact, the name Ghana came from those Arab slave traders who predated the Portuguese. This is a country that literally chose an Arab slave-trading name as the name for its country, and it wants to lecture others about slavery.
Perhaps we should defer to the Ghanaians’ expertise as the sales agents for the slave trade for the vast majority of their history.
And the sales agents for the international slave trade made out like bandits. Slaves were traded for guns, gunpowder, textiles, rum, and all kinds of manufactured goods that a primitive kingdom needs to inflict tyranny on the local tribesmen. As such, there were some very big winners in the slave trade.
Among them were…

The Ashanti (Asante) Empire in what is now Ghana: One of the biggest suppliers. The Ashanti built enormous wealth and military power from the trade and fought wars specifically to capture slaves for sale. Go and look at a map of the Ashanti Empire, and it’s basically Ghana.
Kingdom of Dahomey, which is essentially modern Benin, right next door — and Dahomey is the capital of Benin: Dahomey was famous for its annual “slave raids” and female Amazon warriors, most of whom were essentially slaves to the king; Dahomey kings openly resisted British abolition efforts in the early 19th century because the kingdom’s economy depended on the slave trade.
Oyo Empire (Nigeria): In constant war against Dahomey over the slave trade. Not that the Oyo wanted to end it; they wanted to control it. The Oyo were slavers, but they were also best known as middlemen, organizing caravans and negotiating prices with Europeans.

You’ll see an awful lot of Afrocentric types, the kinds of people who demand reparations for slavery, trundling around in kente cloth. The next time you see one, ask him or her why he/she is promoting the African slave trade. Kente is the cultural signifier of, principally, the Ashanti Empire. It’s more or less the same thing as people decrying genocide while wearing a swastika hat.
And it isn’t like these people were only trading slaves to the Europeans. The trans-Saharan slave trade involved far more people for far longer — in fact, there are slave markets involving sub-Saharan Africans going on in places like Libya today — with some of the same people.
But such belly-laugh contradictions have never bothered any of the creeps plying their trade at Turtle Bay.
The hypocrisy involved here, of the descendants of the Ashanti somehow sitting in judgment principally of the U.S. (when a plurality — some 40 percent of all souls trafficked to the New World — were transported by Portugal to Brazil and not the United States), is a classic U.N. offense against rationality. It’s on par with giving Iran and Cuba control of the organization’s human rights commission.
And don’t kid yourself. This flapdoodle comes as no coincidence in light of President Trump’s reticence to continue funding the various grift operations and scams the UN has been running. That’s just short of explicit in the ridiculous speech that Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who can’t be forgotten fast enough, gave last week… (RELATED: Sovereignty First)

Enough of this.
The United Nations is no longer a serious forum for international debate or conflict resolution, if it ever was one. It’s a relic of the Cold War, which has done more harm than good, and it is right that Trump has stopped payment on that check.
What’s next is to evict the U.N. from that prime Manhattan real estate and use the land to ease the housing crunch in New York — not that Zohran Mamdani won’t handle that problem with brutal efficiency, given the raft of kleptocratic policies he’s brought to City Hall there. Or turn it into a landfill. Or build the Giants and Jets a stadium. It doesn’t matter.
Boot the diplomats out, raze the site, start over with something more honest.
Perhaps Ghana can be the U.N.’s next host country. That would be a just reward for the 123 countries voting yes to this idiotic resolution.
READ MORE from Scott McKay:
Democrats Won’t Win the Midterms
Who’s Teaching Those AI Machines Your Kids Will Learn From?
Five Quick Things: Hormuz

The elitist media celebrated another “massive” and “historic” set of “No Kings” protests on the Left, but they can’t seem to remember the Democrats cracking down on conservative “disinformation,” from COVID to climate to the Biden scandals. You’re supposed to forget the Democrats’ “Disinformation Governance Board” and Nina Jankowicz — if you ever warned about that at all. 

MRC Free Speech America vice president Dan Schneider and FSA staff writer Tom Olohan joined the show to discuss social media and the “kings” of content moderation. 

The new free-speech victory in the Missouri v. Biden case was ignored by the press. Last week, Senator and former Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt announced on X that “We just won Missouri v. Biden,” a case he brought against the Biden administration for brazenly colluding with Big Tech to censor speech. The courts resolved the case with a 10-year consent decree that will restrict the Surgeon General, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency from threatening and coercing Big Tech Companies to censor users. 

That was not a story, but on Thursday, all the national newspapers made a front-page story out of a California jury verdict that found Meta (Instagram/Facebook) and Google’s YouTube liable for deliberately designing addictive platforms that harmed young users. The TV networks were all over this, too. It’s funny that the networks weren’t as interested when Brent Bozell’s Parents Television Council was pointing fingers at TV networks in prime time, like an orgy scene on a CBS show Without A Trace in 2004.

While MRC underlined the 57 Biden censorship initiatives, the Left held “No Kings” rallies in a reported 3,000 cities because somehow Trump is a king, destroying the First Amendment. Never mind that the Left never stops talking about what a tyrant he is. The protesters demanded Trump be removed from office immediately, and never mind that Trump was elected with a majority of the popular vote. 

Speaking of alleged authoritarianism, FCC chairman Brendan Carr announced at CPAC said President Trump is winning the war on the fake news media, like defunding PBS and NPR, and a bunch of annoying journalists ended up on Substack. People like David Folkenflik and Brian Stelter think Carr shouldn’t be so aligned with the president. They don’t mind if Democrat-appointed FCC chairs act like Democrats. That’s all good. You can see the media can be depressed about its powers. But we who monitor the media daily wouldn’t say the content has changed much at all. 

Hundreds gathered in Yorktown Heights, New York to remember the life of 18-year-old Sheridan Gorman, who was shot by an illegal alien near Loyola University in Chicago. We still can’t get more than a few seconds of coverage of this. FSA found Apple News, Google News, Microsoft’s MSN and Yahoo News did not promote a single article about Gorman in the top 20 of their morning editions between March 20 and 25. The apps did have 29 articles about other deaths or murders, however.

Absorb all the details below, or listen to the audio here. 

Michigan’s left-wing Democratic Senate candidate, Abdul El-Sayed, said the Washington Free Beacon “may have illegally and unethically obtained” audio of an internal campaign meeting in 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. In line with his strategy, El-Sayed’s statement did not mention Khamenei.
The Free Beacon broke the news on Monday that El-Sayed told staffers he wanted to avoid making a public statement about the assassination of Khamenei because “there are a lot of people in Dearborn who are sad” about the late Iranian dictator’s death. The story was based on audio from a private campaign strategy call obtained by the Free Beacon.
Nearly 12 hours after the story broke, El-Sayed released a statement calling the Free Beacon a “rightwing news outlet” that “may have illegally and unethically obtained” the audio recording.
“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,” El-Sayed 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.”
El-Sayed also accused the Trump administration of an “illegal and unjustifiable war” and argued that “Americans are paying with their lives and livelihoods for a war MAGA swore they’d never take us into.”
The statement Abdul El-Sayed posted to X.
Rather than comment on the story when contacted by the Free Beacon ahead of publication, the El-Sayed campaign responded through a lawyer who said the “campaign is considering legal options against the individual” who took the recording.
“I write to inform you that the audio recording that you base the below questions on was obtained without the campaign’s permission, and without knowledge that individuals were being recorded,” said the attorney, David Mitrani, a partner at the Washington, D.C., law firm Sandler Reiff. “Given these circumstances, the campaign expects that you will take this into account in determining to proceed with any reporting on this matter.”
Unlike El-Sayed, Mitrani did not suggest that the Free Beacon illegally obtained the recording.
In the audio of the March 1 meeting, El-Sayed discussed his Iran War communications strategy with a group of campaign advisers. He said he wouldn’t comment on the Khamenei assassination that took place the day before because “there are a lot of people in Dearborn who are sad” about it, referencing the heavily Democratic Michigan city that has the largest Muslim population per capita of any city in the country and in 2023 became the nation’s first Arab-majority city.

Instead, El-Sayed said he would pivot to different subjects.
If reporters pressed El-Sayed to take a position, he said, he would change the subject to President 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.'”

Critics accused El-Sayed of siding with radical, anti-American terrorists.
“Abdul El-Sayed empathizes more with terrorists than their victims,” wrote Michigan Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers on X. “This is what we’re up against.”
Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R., Tenn.) criticized El-Sayed as a “left-wing lunatic” who “refused to take a position about the strike that killed Khamenei because ‘a lot of people in Dearborn’ were sad.”
The post Michigan’s El-Sayed Says Free Beacon ‘May Have Illegally and Unethically Obtained Recording’ and Employs Diversion Tactic Discussed in Campaign Strategy Call appeared first on .

In a new low, the once-vaunted Cable News Network is now reduced to running crisis communications for the nepo grandbabies of Latin American communist dictators. A recent interview of Fidel Castro’s grandson demonstrates the rot at CNN.

Watch and try not to gag as CNN’s man in Havana, Patrick Oppmann, unironically asks Sandro Castro why the Coban people hate his family so much:

THIS…IS CNN- now conducting public relations for Fidel Castro’s surviving relatives. When asked why so many people hate the Castro family, Fidel’s grandson says “it’s complicated.” Perhaps the expropriations and executions and summary imprisonments had something to do with it.… pic.twitter.com/SuYp3xHTnu
— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) March 31, 2026

PATRICK OPPMANN: Cuba’s leaders reject attempts to blame them for the crisis. And Sandro Castro says officials have questioned him about his often surreal and critical postings. As well, Cuban exiles regularly attack him online, he says. 

Why do you think there are people, though, that hate the Castro family so much?

SANDRO CASTRO: It’s complicated. Many Cubans would have liked to have been capitalist. I think the majority of Cubans want to be capitalist, not communist. That has created differences, a hatred which is not productive. 

Oppmann heard that and offered no pushback whatsoever. To be clear, it is true that Cubans would have preferred capitalism to 67 years of murderous communism. And that is precisely why so many on the island and beyond hate the Castro family- specifically, Fidel and Raul.

To be clear, the reasons that so many hate the Castros are the imprisonments, expropriations, and public summary executions. This, in addition to the constant spying, the military adventurism all over the globe, and the constant repression of Cuban citizens for doing in private what Fidel’s grandson did on CNN- criticizing the regime.

The entirety of the interview flowed like this, a transparent piece of communicational rehab for the Castro family ahead of a potential deal with the United States. Young Sandro is simply trying to get ahead of the coming change by expressing support for whatever changes to the system President Trump may introduce, and Oppmann is all too happy to oblige.

This shameful interview proves that, like many of the classic buildings in Old Havana, CNN is in crumbling decay.

Click “expand” to view the full transcript of the aforementioned segment as aired on CNN’s The Briefing with Jim Sciuto on Monday, March 30th, 2026:

JIM SCIUTTO: More from Cuba now, where CNN’s Patrick Oppmann sat down with the influencer grandson of Fidel Castro, of course, the man who led the island for almost five decades. In an exclusive interview, the two discussed his political differences with his grandfather and his support of Donald Trump’s economic policies.

PATRICK OPPMAN: In this social media satire video, Donald Trump arrives in Cuba to buy the island. While this Trump is a fake, he’s dealing with a real member of the Castro family. Fidel Castro’s grandson Sandro Castro, an influencer and nightclub impresario who says he has no interest in politics. The very public face of an otherwise still mysterious family that has held power in Cuba for nearly seven decades. At an interview in his apartment in Havana, Sandro Castro says he is a sign of the changing times on the communist-run island. 

And what would your grandfather, Fidel Castro, say? That you’re more capitalist than communist?

SANDRO CASTRO (IN SPANISH WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES): My grandfather was a person who had his principles like everyone else. But he also respected others’ opinions. That’s my way of thinking.

OPPMANN: But all the capitalists had to leave Cuba.

CASTRO: There are many people in Cuba that think in a capitalistic way. There are many people who want to have capitalism with sovereignty.

OPPMANN: When we arrived for the interview, the neighborhood Castro lives in is in a blackout. A near-constant condition these days with the U.S. oil blockade, and power plants breaking down. Sandro Castro’s apartment is lit by an electric generator, but from his balcony, the surrounding houses are in near-total darkness. He shows me his on- bedroom bachelor pad, how he lacks paint for the wall, how his fridge is nearly empty except for the Cuban beer he’s always drinking. I point out that the appliance is a foreign brand that most Cubans could never hope to afford. His famous last name, Sandro Castro, wants people to know, doesn’t come with any special treatment in a Cuba on the edge of economic collapse.

CASTRO: We have to fight, as we say in Cuba. It’s tough, so tough.

OPPMAN: Even for a Castro- (SPANISH) It’s tough, even for a Castro?

CASTRO: Very tough. Very tough because you suffer through thousands of problems, IN a day, there might not be electricity, no water. Goods don’t arrive. It’s so hard, really hard.

OPPMANN: But being a Castro must help you.

CASTRO: My name is my name. I am proud of my name, logically.But I don’t see this help you are talking about. I’m one more citizen.

OPPMAN: Cuba faces unprecedented U.S. pressure to open politically and economically. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a Cuban-American, has been reaching out to Cuban officials, including members of the Castro family. 

In one of his videos. Sandro Castro pretends to receive a call from Rubio, who he then hangs up on. Rubio has said Cuba needs new leadership, and that could include Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel stepping down. Despite Fidel and Raul Castro’s support for Diaz-Canel over many years, Sandro Castro says he is no fan. 

Do you think President Diaz-Canel is doing a good job?

CASTRO: I would not say he is doing a good job. For me, he is not doing a good job. There are a lot of things he should have been doing for a while now and today that is hurting our lives. 

OPPMANN: Cuba’s leaders reject attempts to blame them for the crisis. And Sandro Castro says officials have questioned him about his often surreal and critical postings. As well, Cuban exiles regularly attack him online, he says. 

Why do you think there are people, though, that hate the Castro family so much?

CASTRO: It’s complicated. Many Cubans would have liked to have been capitalist. I think the majority of Cubans want to be capitalist, not communist. That has created differences, a hatred which is not productive. 

OPPMANN: Sandro Castro says he supports Trump’s calls to open the economy, if not his threats against the island. At the end of his video, he takes the U.S. leader on a tour of Havana. Hope from at least one member of the Castro family that a historic deal with the U.S., an opening on the island are possible. Patrick Oppmann, CNN Havana.

 

Conditions imposed by the state of Massachusetts on a $675 million tax-exempt bond offering by Harvard raise serious questions about unconstitutionally infringing on free exercise of religious liberty, some of the nation’s foremost legal scholars told the Washington Free Beacon.
The Free Beacon reported Sunday that Harvard, under financial pressure from the federal government, will try to borrow $675 million via the Massachusetts Development Finance Agency. A draft offering document used to help line up buyers for the bonds says that as a condition of qualifying for the Massachusetts tax-exempt financing, 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.”
“That’s got to be unconstitutional,” the John P. Murphy Foundation Professor of Law at Notre Dame Law School, Nicole Stelle Garnett, wrote in response to my query. Garnett, who is also a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, said the state is “imposing a condition on the funds that discriminates against religious conduct/free exercise in violation of Carson v. Makin,” a case the U.S. Supreme Court decided in 2022.
My Sunday story asked, “If an economist says a prayer before eating a meal at his desk, does that turn his office into a ‘place of religious worship?’ What if a Harvard Divinity School student wants to come talk with Ben Friedman, a Harvard economics professor who wrote a book titled Religion and The Rise of Capitalism. Is Professor Friedman supposed to bar the Harvard Divinity School student from the Pritzker building?”
Garnett said the stipulation “raises bizarre enforcement challenges. Maybe Harvard would reply that its Divinity School isn’t sectarian.”
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.
The Maurice & Hilda Friedman Professor of Law at Columbia, Philip Hamburger, who is author of the landmark 2002 book Separation of Church and State (published by Harvard University Press), wrote to me that he may use the example in the course he teaches on religious liberty. “You are right that the breadth of the limit raises free exercise and even free speech questions,” wrote Hamburger, who is also CEO of the New Civil Liberties Alliance.
Brenden Mann Foundation Chair in Law and Religion at Pepperdine Caruso School of Law, Michael Helfand, who is also a visiting professor at Yale Law School, wrote to me that “these sorts of provisions exist across state and across contexts, previously enacted because of an old, but now abandoned, interpretation of the Establishment Clause. 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. A state cannot exclude an institution from participating in such a government program because it would like to use the funds—made available to other private institutions—toward some sort of religious use.”
Garnett and Helfand maintain a website, religiousequality.net, that describes itself as “Exposing discriminatory laws and regulations to prevent the exclusion of religious organizations and activities from public programs.” Garnett said they might add this example to the website documenting discrimination.
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. The chairman of the Harvard economics department, Elie Tamer, did not respond to an email seeking comment. Lawyers for Harvard and for the Massachusetts Development Finance Agency did not provide comment before deadline.
The Harvard bond offering was approved by the state in February at an amount up to $750 million. It’s unclear why the amount of this offering is $675 million when a larger amount was approved by the state. One possibility is that Harvard plans a separate, taxable offering for the remaining amount of $75 million. Another possibility is that the offering was downsized after informally checking and discovering less interest from investors. It’s also possible Harvard found borrowing conditions better than expected and was able to raise more money with a smaller-sized offering because it had to pay lower interest rates.
The post Harvard’s Prayer-Free Pritzker Economics Building Is Called ‘Unconstitutional’ appeared first on .

The Department of Health and Human Services was sued on Monday over a scholarship reserved for “Native Hawaiian” students, one of the few race-based programs that has survived the Trump administration’s crackdown on racial preferences.
The Native Hawaiian Health Scholarship Program, which was soliciting applications as recently as March 15, provides financial aid to Native Hawaiian medical students who agree to practice medicine in Hawaii after graduation. Awardees receive tuition, a monthly stipend, and additional funds to cover books and supplies.
Filed in federal court by Do No Harm, a group that opposes identity politics in medicine, the lawsuit argues that the program’s eligibility criteria violate the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. It underscores the tenacity of diversity programs even one year into the Trump administration, which axed a host of similar initiatives across the federal government.
“In the last year, the Department of Health and Human Services has made historic strides toward ending racial bias in medicine and restoring meritocracy,” said Stanley Goldfarb, the chairman of Do No Harm and the father of Washington Free Beacon chairman Michael Goldfarb. “That this program still exists even after the efforts by this administration to course correct proves just how widespread institutional race discrimination has become.”
The Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Trump administration has tended to settle complaints against the programs of the Biden administration, using the terms of the settlement to effect changes in policy. Last week, for example, the Justice Department settled a lawsuit challenging the Biden administration’s alleged jawboning of social media companies. The settlement, filed in federal court in Louisiana, bars three government agencies from pressuring tech platforms to censor speech.
HHS could do something similar with the Do No Harm lawsuit, which names both the agency and HHS secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as defendants.
“There is no valid reason to make federal scholarships turn on race or ethnicity,” the lawsuit reads. “This Court should declare that the Program’s racial requirements are unconstitutional.”
The post HHS Sued For Race-Based Program Reserved For ‘Native Hawaiian’ Students appeared first on .

The Elitist Media network newscasts continue to suppress from their viewers those stories which run counter to their agenda. Tonight’s newscasts saw not one, but two major omissions.

First: the networks continue their collective blackout of the ethics scandal engulfing U.S. Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-FL). Last week, the House Ethics Committee found Rep. Cherfilus-McCormick guilty of 25 ethics violations. Not a single newscast among ABC, CBS, or NBC covered the Ethics Committee’s hearing, or its subsequent finding. 

Rep. Cherfilus-McCormick was indicted in federal court in November of 2025. Here again, the coverage was minimal. The only report on this matter to air on any one of the broadcast network newscasts aired on NBC Nightly News: 25 seconds on the indictment itself and nothing since.

IT’S (D)IFFERENT: Rep. Sheila Cherfilus McCormick is set to face a public Ethics Committee hearing, and yet the sole network newscast report on her charges aired last November. Compare the lack of coverage viz nature of the charges to that of George Santos. A clear double… pic.twitter.com/RJOjshVjcK
— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) March 26, 2026

TOM LLAMAS: Also tonight, a congressman is facing calls to resign after she was charged with stealing FEMA funds. Democratic Florida Congresswoman Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges she stole more than $5 million dollars of taxpayer money meant for disaster relief. She denied the charges, calling them intimidation tactics, and said she won’t resign.

The Cherfilus-McCormick extended to the Elitist Media’s Sunday shows, which also refused to cover the scandal.

The network news also refused to cover the Department of Justice suing Minnesota over its transgender athlete policy which, to be clear, allows boys to compete in girls’s sports- which is in clear violation of federal law. Per CBS News:

In the lawsuit filed Monday, the Justice Department alleges the state Department of Education and the Minnesota State High School League are violating Title IX, a federal law against sex discrimination in educational programs that receive federal money.

“The Trump Administration does not tolerate flawed state policies that ignore biological reality and unfairly undermine girls on the playing field,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement.

League officials said they do not comment on threatened or pending lawsuits.

The administration has filed similar lawsuits against Maine and California, and has threatened the federal funding of some universities over transgender athletes, including San Jose State in California and the University of Pennsylvania.

The network news breathlessly reported every Biden-era lawsuit against red states seeking to ban boys from competing in girls’ sports, framing them as a defense of trans youth. It was (D)ifferent back then.

Now that the show is on the other foot, the networks appear to not be as interested in covering brazen corruption scandals and lawsuits pertaining to “trans student rights.” Such are the double standards.

 

On Monday’s Morning Joe, the MS NOW program’s co-host Jonathan Lemire claimed the Israeli military killed the Iranian Parliament Speaker, who had emerged as the apparent key negotiator and possible new leader in Iran according to the White House.

Around 10 minutes after his statement, host Joe Scarborough asked Lemire to clarify his comments, to which he clarified the report of the Speaker’s death may be untrue and shifted his tone to mention that the Parliament Speaker may have no power anyway, a flip from his original smug comments on negotiations.

A focus of the premier liberal morning talk program was on how a war with Iran would end through negotiations. David Ignatius, a columnist at The Washington Post, discussed many diplomatic options, but called the president “overoptimistic.”

 

Only 15 minutes into Monday’s Morning Joe, MS NOW’s Jonathan Lemire falsely claimed the Israelis killed the Iranian Parliament Speaker, a figure who has risen as an apparent negotiator with the US.
Lemire framed it as a rebuke to White House claims of negotiations with Iran. pic.twitter.com/mjQM7mEh75
— Nick (@nspin310) March 30, 2026
 

Lemire, a former Politico reporter, in an attempt to display negotiations may have taken place, quickly stated:

The White House had floated that the parliament’s speaker there may be the person who could lead the Iranian side of these negotiations. Well, reportedly, the Israeli military killed him over the weekend.

With no citation or anything, Lemire just decided to throw out such a big claim that was really not reported anywhere, except for a little post by frequent Morning Joe guest Richard Haass and a post from a random pro-Israel twitter account. Lemire may need to learn to become more media literate.

Around 10 minutes after Lemire’s comments, Scarborough tried to get Lemire to do a little fact check:

Hey, John Lemire, I got quite a few questions coming in to my phone after you mentioned that the parliamentary speaker may have been killed over the weekend by Iran. Tell us about your reporting.

 

Joe Scarborough asked Lemire to fact-check his own earlier comments, to which he blamed on the fog of war.
Unsurprisingly, Lemire shifted his original comments to now say that the Iranian Parliament Speaker is apparently alive, but actually does not have any negotiation power. https://t.co/IkDwXeUOJo pic.twitter.com/Wo38M2s8Sx
— Nick (@nspin310) March 30, 2026
 

Lemire walked back his comments, with an attempt to distance himself while he placed blame for his false share of information on the fog of war: 

Yeah, so it’s a mixed – I said reportedly killed. An Israeli news site has said that he was hit by an airstrike and killed. There’s some confusion now, whether that’s true or not, it points to the two things. The first of all, the fog of war. We all know the former President of Iran was reportedly killed in the first days of the strike. Turns out he’s not. He’s alive. So, it’s unclear whether this person is still with us or not.

Unsurprisingly, Lemire shifted his original comments to now say that since the Iranian Parliament Speaker was apparently alive, he actually did not have any negotiation power: “It’s also unclear whether he’d be actually empowered to have any authority to have negotiations. The White House had propped him up a few days ago. We will see if that’s the case.”

In his continued attempt to save face, Lemire placed blame on all Israeli actions and a “growing divide” between the US: 

But also, Joe and Mika, we should – it’s a reminder that a growing concern among some observers of this war is the divide and perhaps growing divide between Israeli war aims and U.S. war aims. So, that’s something we need to watch as well. And it’s unclear when any real diplomacy would begin.

Oh, so the US and Israelis weren’t on the same page because of a fake strike on an Iranian figure that did not happen?

From the seeming ruin of negotiations to there being no real negotiations since the Iranian Speaker had no real power, the real time flip in opinion from Lemire was fascinating but unsurprising. 

The transcript is below. Click “expand”:

MS NOW’s Morning Joe

March 30, 2026

6:14:59 AM Eastern

(…)

DAVID INGATIUS: These diplomatic options may increase as other countries lean hard into trying to get cooperation from Pakistan, from Iran. We may end up with a different situation in a few days. But right now, Joe, I think the president is being overoptimistic.

JONATHAN LEMIRE: The White House had floated that the parliament’s speaker there may be the person who could lead the Iranian side of these negotiations. Well, reportedly, the Israeli military killed him over the weekend.

(…)

6:24:30 AM Eastern

JOE SCARBOROUGH : Hey, John Lemire, I got quite a few questions coming in to my phone after you mentioned that the parliamentary speaker may have been killed over the weekend by Iran. Tell us about your reporting.

LEMIRE: Yeah, so it’s a mixed – I said reportedly killed. An Israeli news site has said that he was hit by an airstrike and killed. There’s some confusion now, whether that’s true or not, it points to the two things. The first of all, the fog of war. We all know the former President of Iran was reportedly killed in the first days of the strike. Turns out he’s not. He’s alive. So, it’s unclear whether this person is still with us or not.

It’s also unclear whether he’d be actually empowered to have any authority to have negotiations. The White House had propped him up a few days ago. We will see if that’s the case. 

But also, Joe and Mika, we should – it’s a reminder that a growing concern among some observers of this war is the divide and perhaps growing divide between Israeli war aims and U.S. war aims. So, that’s something we need to watch as well. And it’s unclear when any real diplomacy would begin.

SCARBOROUGH : I mean, the expansion of the war in Lebanon, it just continues. And again, it adds to any potential blowback that we’re going to see in the years to come. Just continues to add to the blowback that all of us, not Israel, all of us could be facing in the years to come. 

(…)

A federal court tossed out a lawsuit filed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez’s official campaign photographer alleging the Washington Free Beacon violated his copyright when it used a cutout of a portrait he took in a Free Beacon series spotlighting the congresswoman’s illegal parking and reckless driving.
The opinion, handed down Monday by Judge Leonie Brinkema of the Eastern District of Virginia, found that the Free Beacon’s use of the photo, taken by photographer Jesse Korman, was protected by the doctrine of fair use and granted the Free Beacon’s motion to dismiss the case. Korman, who filed the lawsuit four years after the photograph was used, argued the Free Beacon’s use of the photograph had substantially damaged the market for his photograph and had demanded a fee of $15,000.
“Here, Free Beacon’s articles and accompanying images are paradigmatic examples of social commentary and political criticism,” Brinkema wrote. “Imposing a requirement on journalists to receive permission from, and pay royalties to, copyright holders to use their photographs as part of political criticism regarding the public figures depicted would frustrate the balance Congress struck between robust copyright protections and the free flow of ideas.”
The Free Beacon used the portrait in a 2021 series spotlighting the congresswoman’s white Tesla parked illegally outside a Washington, D.C., Whole Foods. “One source familiar with the parking situation at the Navy Yard Whole Foods described the illegal parking job as ‘pathetic’ because the grocery store offers free parking for its élite customers,” Free Beacon reporter Andrew Stiles noted.
Korman has filed at least a dozen copyright infringement lawsuits, according to public records. He filed a lawsuit against Fox News in 2019 over its use of a photograph of AOC. The network settled with him in 2020.
The Free Beacon argued that the use of Korman’s work was transformative and therefore permitted under the fair use doctrine. While Korman’s photograph was intended to portray the socialist lawmaker in the best possible light, the Free Beacon was using it to criticize her. Brinkema agreed, stating in her opinion that “Free Beacon was not using the image of AOC to depict AOC, nor was it using the photograph to portray AOC in a positive light or to facilitate her political campaign. Rather, Free Beacon used the photograph as part of its criticism of AOC’s politics, focusing on the hypocrisy of claiming to be one of the common folk but actually being an elitist.”
“These are plainly transformative uses,” she concluded.
An example of AOC’s use of the photograph in question. (FastCompany.com)
Brinkema also indicated that Korman, who was seeking “damages, disgorgement of profits attributable to the infringement, an order enjoining Free Beacon from any infringing use of Korman’s works, and attorney’s fees,” did not demonstrate he had suffered any financial damages.
The post Washington Free Beacon Victorious Over AOC Campaign Photographer As Federal Court Tosses Copyright Infringement Lawsuit appeared first on .