Washington Free Beacon

When the Department of Education published guidance last month targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion programs on college campuses, the American Sociological Association (ASA) sprang into action.

With help from Democracy Forward, a nonprofit legal organization whose board is chaired by disgraced Democratic superlawyer Marc Elias, the association sued to block the enforcement of the Education Department’s Dear Colleague letter, which argues that a wide range of DEI initiatives—not just overt racial preferences—violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.

The complaint described a parade of horribles that would allegedly result from the guidance. The list of prohibited practices is so broad, according to the ASA, that honoring Martin Luther King Jr. could jeopardize a school’s federal funding—even though President Donald Trump invoked King in his Inaugural Address and issued a presidential proclamation urging educators to observe black history month.

“No federal law prevents teaching about race and race-related topics, and the Supreme Court has not banned efforts to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion in education,” the complaint reads. “This Letter radically upends and re-writes otherwise well-established jurisprudence.”

But regardless of the letter’s legality, ASA appears to be violating Title VI. That’s because the professional association, which received $1 million in federal funds last year, has a minority fellowship program that explicitly discriminates against white applicants.

The fellowship, advertised on ASA’s website, requires applicants to meet at least two of four criteria—one of which is identifying “as a member of an underrepresented racial or ethnic group among sociology PhDs.” Those groups include “Black/African American; Latino/a/x; American Indian or Alaskan Native; Asian or Pacific Islander; and Middle Eastern and North African/Southwest Asian and North African,” according to the eligibility criteria. Fellows receive a $20,000 stipend as well as funding for travel and professional development.

President Donald Trump has promised a scorched-earth campaign against DEI in higher education. The ASA fellowship illustrates how the institutions inclined to resist that campaign could find themselves vulnerable to it, weighed down by programs and policies that would have been major liabilities even without the Dear Colleague letter.

“The Fellowship Program looks to be precisely the kind of faddish, illegal discrimination by a large association that the President has told all agencies to make sure they no longer support,” said Dan Morenoff, the executive director of the American Civil Rights Project, a conservative public interest law firm. “ASA openly, currently treats applicants for its program differently because of their race.”

That brazenness could be an awkward stumbling block for Democracy Forward—one of the main firms resisting the Trump administration’s executive orders—which has put some of its star lawyers on the ASA case. Among them are Victoria Nugent, a well-known litigator on the D.C. Bar’s ethics committee, and Rachel Homer, a senior official in the Biden Education Department.

Founded by Marc Elias in the wake of the 2016 election, Democracy Forward boasts that it has taken “the Trump administration to court more than 100 times.” It has also published reports on “strengthening” DEI initiatives and accused Project 2025, the policy agenda put out by the Heritage Foundation, of attempting to “create a country that allows for more discrimination.”

“Their proposals will enable discrimination across society,” Democracy Forward wrote in a 2024 report, including in “education.”

Neither Nugent nor Homer responded to requests for comment. The American Sociological Association, which boasts nearly 10,000 members, did not respond to a request for comment.

Title VI was widely understood to ban race-based fellowships even before the Supreme Court outlawed affirmative action in college admissions. The Dear Colleague letter argued that the logic of that case, Students For Fair Admissions v. Harvard, applied to other initiatives as well, such as DEI programs that “stigmatize students … based on crude racial stereotypes.” Even eliminating standardized tests in order to “increase racial diversity”—a matter on which the Supreme Court has not yet ruled—would be illegal under the new guidance.

Filed jointly with the American Federation of Teachers, which lobbied for schools to remain closed during the COVID-19 pandemic, ASA’s lawsuit describes the Dear Colleague letter as “unlawfully vague” and says it could “chill speech and expression.” It also claims that efforts to ban affinity groups could shutter Hillels or historically black fraternities, undermining free association in the name of protecting civil rights.

Several of those objections have now been addressed by the department. In a frequently asked questions page about the Dear Colleague letter, the Department’s Office of Civil Rights said that “programs focused on … particular cultures, heritages, and areas of the world would not in and of themselves violate Title VI, assuming they are open to all students regardless of race.” The same goes for observances like MLK Day that “celebrate or recognize historical events and contributions.”

However, the guidance goes on, “schools must consider whether any school programming discourages members of all races from attending.” They “cannot engage in any programming, graduation ceremonies, housing, or any other aspect of school life that allows one race but not another.”

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Donald Trump made history on Tuesday by giving the longest speech of any president to a joint session of Congress. He touted his “swift and unrelenting” efforts to restore “common sense” in the first month of his presidency, which he hailed triumphantly as “the most successful in the history of our nation” second only to George Washington. “We’re just getting started,” he said. “The American dream is surging bigger and better than ever before.”

Democrats apparently disagreed. They were bitter throughout, clinging to protest signs. They refused to stand or applaud during the address and frequently interrupted by shouting “lies” or “you’re lying.” The signs read “False” and “Musk Steals,” referring to immigrant billionaire and White House adviser Elon Musk, who saluted from the gallery as Republicans cheered and former Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi fidgeted with an umbrella in her seat, looking peeved and somewhat human. Al Green, the 77-year-old Democratic congressman from Texas, was forcibly removed for jeering obnoxiously and waving his cane after Trump bragged about winning the popular vote. Several others exited the chamber after standing up in black shirts that said “Resist” on the back. Some didn’t even bother showing up. Others, according to CNN’s Manu Raju, chose to “color coordinate their outfits,” with several Democratic women wearing “pink for power.”

It wasn’t a great look. Even former Biden spokesman Ian Sams, one of the biggest failures in the history of American politics, thought the Democratic plans to disrupt Trump’s speech were some “dumb shit.” Speaking of which, a bunch of leading Democrats posted bizarrely identical videos on social media ahead of the address in which they said “shit that ain’t true” and screamed into tiny microphones. Many agreed that it wasn’t any less dumb watching their protest plans come to fruition. “Why are democrats just sitting there?” wrote MSNBC host and former Kamala Harris adviser Symone Sanders. “The signs are not landing. It is giving bingo! Sigh.”

Trump invited Democrats to join Republicans in “celebrating so many incredible wins for America.” He already knew they would decline. “There is absolutely nothing I can do to make them happy,” he said of his partisan antagonists. They proved him right by refusing to applaud during the highlight of the evening, when Trump announced that DJ Daniels, a 13-year-old boy who survived brain cancer and dreams of being a police officer, would become an honorary member of the U.S. Secret Service. Daniels even received his own badge, which he displayed triumphantly to thunderous applause as his father lifted him up from his seat. MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace, in the running for the liberal network’s most unhinged personality following the departure of Joy Reid, said she hoped Daniels would grow up to be a cop who doesn’t kill himself after having to “defend the United States Capitol against Donald Trump’s supporters.”

Democrats also remained seated when Trump informed another guest, Jason Hartley, a high school senior who lost his father, that his application to West Point had been accepted. Daniels walked over and gave him a high five, adorably. It wasn’t immediately clear how these touching moments were eerily evocative of Adolf Hitler’s rise to power. Trump also welcomed the family members of female victims murdered by illegal immigrants who entered the country on Biden’s watch. Democrats didn’t applaud them either, obviously. Trump delivered his most memorable line of the night while discussing his administration’s success in reducing illegal border crossings to record levels, scolding former president Joe Biden and his Democratic allies for insisting it could only be done with legislation. “It turned out all we needed was a new president,” Trump said.

Trump slammed his predecessor as “the worst president in history,” which Democrats didn’t like either. Perhaps they were suffering some post-traumatic stress related to Biden’s final State of the Union address in March 2024. After the speech, Democrats and their journalist friends went on television and proclaimed that the octogenarian was sharp as a tack and perfectly capable of serving another four years. He was not, which is something to consider when evaluating their reactions to this speech. CNN host Jake Tapper, for example, dismissed Trump’s address as an angry “campaign speech” with some “touching moments.”

Trump said the Biden administration left him with “an economic catastrophe and inflation nightmare” that would take time to reverse. He promised to “make America affordable again” by reducing energy costs, cutting taxes, and eliminating government waste, rolling off a list of “appalling” examples, including millions of dollars for LGBTQI+ initiatives “in the African nation of Lesotho, which nobody has ever heard of,” and millions more “for making mice transgender,” which he insisted was “real.” He pledged to “end the tyranny” of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. “Our country will be woke no longer,” he said. “Wokeness is trouble. Wokeness is bad. It’s gone.” He referred to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.), best known for pretending to be Native American, as “Pocahontas.”

The president didn’t just promote his accomplishments and lay out his vision for a second term. He also broke news, revealing that CIA intelligence had assisted Pakistan in the capture of a senior ISIS commander, Mohammad Sharifullah, believed to have plotted the deadly Abbey Gate bombing during the Biden administration’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan. He went on to divulge that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky was willing to sign an agreement giving the United States access to revenues from Ukrainian minerals and was eager to negotiate an end to his country’s war with Russia. Journalists and other Democrats had spent the last several days berating Trump over his contentious meeting with Zelensky in the Oval Office last week.

Even then, Democrats still weren’t happy. They had a rough night, but it could have been worse. Axios reported that Democrats were mulling a plan to win back working class voters by walking out en masse when Trump discussed his ban on male athletes competing in women’s sports. Fortunately for them that didn’t happen. Alas, the #Resistance continues.

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Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R., La.) directed the House sergeant at arms to remove Rep. Al Green (D., Texas) from the floor after Green repeatedly disrupted President Donald Trump’s congressional address Tuesday night.

“Mr. Green, take your seat. Take your seat, sir,” Johnson instructed Green after the Democrat began protesting just minutes into Trump’s address. Green had yelled a number of times that Trump had “no mandate” for his agenda.

“Finding that members continue to engage in willful and concerted disruption of proper decorum, the chair now directs the sergeant at arms restore order,” Johnson said. “Remove this gentleman from the chamber.”

The sergeant at arms proceeded to escort Green out of the chamber to thunderous applause from Republicans.

Green is best known for filing impeachment articles against Trump less than a month into his second term and preemptively denying sexual assault accusations against himself.

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When former president Joe Biden delivered his State of the Union address last year, media pundits quickly lauded his “fiery” and “passionate” speech.

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell took aim at the “punditocracy” for suggesting Biden was not “quick enough,” saying, “It turns out he’s the quickest we’ve ever had at that microphone.” Political strategist Sarah Longwell went as far as to say, “Look, if that’s what dementia is, I hope that’s how I have dementia when I’m older because he was on his game.”

Just months later, Biden ended his reelection bid, the octogenarian’s obvious mental decline too much to overcome.

The hot takes serve as a cautionary tale as President Donald Trump addresses Congress in the opening months of his second term. Long before Trump’s speech ended, Longwell tweeted, “I know we’re all kind of used to how dumb Trump sounds at this point” and urged her followers to “pour one out for the fact-checkers tonight.”

It’s unclear whether those instant reactions will age as poorly as they did a year ago.

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A research scholar at Yale Law School also moonlights as a member of a U.S.-sanctioned terrorist fundraising entity, according to web postings reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon. 

Those postings reveal that Helyeh Doutaghi, the deputy director of Yale Law School’s Law and Political Economy Project, is a member of Samidoun, an organization sanctioned by the U.S. government in October in an announcement that described it as a “sham charity” and a “front organization” for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a foreign-designated terrorist organization. 

Samidoun’s website indicates that Doutaghi, whom it describes as “a doctoral student of international law and a member of the international Samidoun Network,” delivered a speech in Iran at a Samidoun-sponsored screening of the film Fedayin: Georges Abdallah’s Fight. Abdallah, the founder of the Lebanese Armed Military Forces, was sentenced by a French court to life in prison in 1987, convicted of complicity in the 1982 murders of U.S. military attaché Charles Ray and Israeli diplomat Yacov Barsimantov, as well as involvement in the attempted 1984 assassination of the then-American consul general in Strasbourg, Robert Homme. 

The relationship between Doutaghi and Samidoun was first reported by the Substack Jewish Onliner and the Buckley Beacon.  

Reached for comment, a spokesman for Yale Law School told the Free Beacon that the law school takes the allegations “extremely seriously” and that Doutaghi has been placed on administrative leave. 

“We take these allegations extremely seriously and immediately opened an investigation into the matter to ascertain the facts,” the spokesman, Alden Ferro, told the Free Beacon. “Helyeh Doutaghi’s short-term position as an associate research scholar with the LPE Project expires next month. Until then, she has been placed on an immediate administrative leave pending the outcome of this investigation.”

Doutaghi, according to Samidoun, also traveled with a Samidoun group on a 2023 “fact-finding mission” to Venezuela to observe the impact of “U.S. sanctions and coercive economic measures.” The mission was co-sponsored by three entities, including the International People’s Tribunal on U.S. Imperialism: Sanctions, Blockades, Coercive Economic Measures, of which Samidoun was a co-sponsor. 

Doutaghi’s connection to Yale Law School is raising eyebrows on Capitol Hill and in the White House, where lawmakers and administration officials have pledged to crack down on anti-Semitism and extremism on university campuses, which receive billions of dollars in federal funding. “Schools like Yale that coddle anti-Semitic extremists in their student body or faculty should not see a dime of federal funding,” said Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.), the chairman of the Republican Conference and of the Senate Intelligence Committee. 

The Department of Education and Department of Health and Human Services, along with the Government Services Administration, announced on Monday that they are investigation $51 billion in federal grants to Columbia University, citing the school’s “ongoing inaction in the face of relentless harassment of Jewish students.” President Donald Trump, for his part, said in a social media post that “Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came.” 

Doutaghi, who holds an undergraduate degree from Ottawa’s Carleton University and a master’s from King’s College London and who taught at Carleton University before she arrived at Yale, according to her online biography, does not appear to be an American citizen. Yale Law School did not comment on Doutaghi’s immigration status. 

Yale Law School’s Law and Political Economy Project, where Doutaghi serves as deputy director, is supported by a $600,000 grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, which says it “invests in creative thinkers and problem solvers who are working to ensure everyone has a meaningful opportunity to thrive.” 

The grant to Yale Law School is intended to develop the philosophy of law and political economy as a response to neoliberalism in order to cultivate a “wide-ranging shift that will change the way law is studied and taught, the public discussion of legal and political institutions and power, and law’s role in policymaking and political mobilization,” the Hewlett Foundation says.   

The Hewlett Foundation did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Doutaghi was also scheduled to speak on a panel in October alongside PFLP and Samidoun leader Khaled Barakat, who was personally sanctioned by the U.S. government in October. At the time, the Biden administration indicated that Barakat’s “fundraising and recruitment efforts support the PFLP’s terrorist activity against Israel” and that “Barakat has previously publicly acknowledged Samidoun’s affiliation with the PFLP, despite direction from PFLP leadership to maintain the confidential nature of the relationship.”

The panel was postponed indefinitely, however, due to what Samidoun described as “the recent Zionist escalation and atrocities against Iran and Lebanon, which represent an existential threat to all peoples in the region and to the planet.” The panel was to discuss how Israel “intensified the ongoing genocide by assassinating Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas,” which Samidoun described as “a blatant violation of Iranian sovereignty under international law” that “propelled the struggle for liberation in the Arab-Iranian region against Zionist-imperialist aggression into a new phase.” 

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Indivisible, the left-wing group behind the viral anti-DOGE town hall protests in deep-red House districts, emailed Democratic congressional offices to inform them of similar protests the group plans to spearhead when Congress breaks for recess in roughly two weeks.

The message takes credit for the viral February protests that drove headlines in the New York Times, Washington Post, and CBS News, all of which suggested that the demonstrations were proof of broad “backlash” over Elon Musk’s efforts to slash government spending. The pieces did not mention that Indivisible and another left-wing group, MoveOn, led the demonstrations.

Now, Indivisible is gearing up to generate similar scenes when both the House and Senate adjourn in mid-March, with the group teasing “even bigger” protests.

“During the February recess, Indivisibles put Republicans on notice by organizing nearly 200 events across the country and directly challenging them for supporting unelected billionaires like Elon Musk over their own constituents,” Indivisible’s email states. “For the March recess, we need to go even bigger to get the word out about Republicans moving full speed on the Trump Tax Scam.”

For any member of Congress who declines to hold town hall meetings, Indivisible says it will encourage its members “to organize an empty chair town hall to provide a forum for discussing the impact of Republicans’ reckless agenda and how Democrats and everyday Americans must fight back.” It asked congressional Democrats to reply with information regarding their own town halls “to hopefully minimize the amount of calls and confusion over town hall scheduling.”

“Thank you in advance and for everything your boss is doing to leverage their power in this moment,” the email concludes.

After the NRCC chair reportedly discourages in-person town halls, Indivisible tells Dem congressional offices that they plan organize an “empty chair town hall” for any member who refuses to schedule one. pic.twitter.com/Wi508dasJP

— Andrew Solender (@AndrewSolender) March 4, 2025

The message comes as House Republican leaders encourage their members to skip in-person town halls in favor of online events. Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) endorsed that approach on Tuesday, saying the party should not give a “forum” to “professional protesters.”

It’s unclear how aggressively Indivisible will target Democratic members. The group’s updated “Musk or Us March Recess Toolkit” urges activists to “call out any missing-in-action Democrats who refuse to host a town hall.” That language is more aggressive than the February version of the toolkit, which included a more general call to “push wavering Democrats to hold the line.”

So far, though, Indivisible’s work targeting congressional Democrats has largely come through phone banks rather than in-person demonstrations. During a February closed-door meeting for House Democrats, minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.) complained that both Indivisible and MoveOn had facilitated thousands of phone calls to Democratic offices. One senior member of the caucus told Axios that Jeffries was “very frustrated” with the groups.

That could explain why Indivisible urged congressional Democrats to disclose their own town hall information in hopes of avoiding “the amount of calls and confusion over town hall scheduling.” Indivisible did not respond to a request for comment on how it intends to protest House and Senate Democrats who do not host town halls during the upcoming recess, which runs March 13-21 in the House and March 17-21 in the Senate.

Indivisible has a long history of protesting Republican town halls when President Donald Trump is in office. It did so in 2017, prompting a similar call from GOP leaders to hold tele-town halls instead of physical events. The Times referenced those protests in a Tuesday piece, titled “Republican House Members Told To Stop Holding In-Person Town Halls,” but again failed to mention Indivisible’s role in organizing them.

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MSNBC, the embattled left-wing network sometimes referred to as “MSDNC,” hired another liberal journalist with close ties to the Democratic Party. Jackie Alemany is leaving the similarly embattled Washington Post, where her reporting focused on the Jan. 6 incident and Donald Trump’s various legal challenges. She is joining MSNBC as a Washington correspondent and cohost of a new weekend show alongside Jonathan Capehart, a partisan Democrat, and Eugene Daniels, the recently hired “Kamala Harris expert” known for his bold fashion sense and love of Beyoncé.

Alemany is married to Jake Levine, a professional climate activist who served as an adviser to prominent Democrats, including former president Barack Obama, California governor Gavin Newsom, and former president Joe Biden. He’s passionate about electric scooters, the “Squad,” and Colin Kaepernick.

The couple’s wedding in the Hamptons was featured in Vogue. The groom’s childhood friend, alleged “musical artist” Geordie Kieffer, performed in assless chaps. It’s unclear whether Kieffer’s setlist included his hit song “Sex Party,” a groovy number about hosting an intimate gathering involving “handcuffs, ball gags, whips and a chain,” and a “big fat pile of cocaine.”

Levine and Alemany’s engagement party was cohosted by Jamie Gorelick, who served in Bill Clinton’s Justice Department and as chair of the Homeland Security Advisory Council under President Biden. MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski attended, as did former Democratic congressman Henry Waxman (Calif.), according to Politico‘s Playbook newsletter. Alemany is the daughter of Ellen Alemany, a Democratic donor and titan of the finance industry who served in top leadership roles at CitiBank, RBS Americas, CIT Group, and First Citizens Bank, where she reportedly earned almost $29 million over a two-year period.

“I’m thrilled to join MSNBC’s cohort of exceptional reporters and journalists in covering Washington during this critical period for fair and unflinching journalism,” Alemany said in a statement. “MSNBC continues to provide much needed context and insight to consequential stories.” (Fact check: What???)

Alemany joins the network amid a massive overhaul under new president Rebecca Kutler, the former CNN executive best known for spearheading the launch of CNN+, the $300 million streaming service that folded in less than a month. MSNBC is desperate to improve its abysmal ratings in the 75-and-under demographic and faces added pressure after parent company Comcast announced its plan to spin off the declining network into a separate company by the end of the year. Kutler has already made sweeping changes to the MSNBC programming schedule after firing Joy Reid, the obnoxious Harvard grad who had some of the worst ratings at the network.

MSNBC’s revamped lineup will include several new panel shows. Reid’s weekday program is being replaced by a trio of weekend hosts: Symone Sanders, the former Kamala Harris adviser, Michael Steele, the anti-Trump “Republican,” and Alicia Menendez, the daughter of convicted felon “Bullion Bob” Menendez. MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, who earns an annual salary of $25 million to work one night a week, complained that firing Reid and replacing her with three non-white hosts was an “unnerving” and “indefensible” act of racism.

Alemany, who also went to Harvard and shot 6-26 from the three-point range as a member of the women’s basketball team, will take over the weekend time slot alongside Capehart and Daniels, who was hired last week from Politico. Daniels made a name for himself in 2024 as the Harris campaign’s unofficial spokesman. Capehart, an MSNBC veteran, recently moderated a forum for candidates running for chair of the DNC. He asked the candidates to raise their hands if they believed “racism and misogyny played a role in VP Harris’s defeat,” and commended them when all eight candidates complied. “That’s good, you all pass,” he said.

It is not uncommon for professional journalists to be intimately involved with professional Democrats. Karine Jean-Pierre’s longtime partner, Suzanne Malveaux, was a veteran correspondent at CNN when Jean-Pierre was named White House press secretary under President Biden. CNN host Dana Bash was married to Democratic operative Jeremy Bash from 1998 to 2007. Washington Post opinion columnist Ruth Marcus is married to Jon Leibowitz, who chaired the Federal Trade Commission under President Obama.

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A Democratic megadonor and cofounder of a “socially conscious” climate finance firm, Joseph Sanberg, was arrested Monday on federal charges of conspiring to defraud investment funds of at least $145 million.

The Department of Justice accused Sanberg—the cofounder and largest shareholder of Aspiration Partners Inc., a “climate-friendly banking alternative that’s good for your wallet and the planet”—of orchestrating a scheme with Ibrahim Ameen AlHusseini to mislead investors through falsified financial documents.

The pair hired a graphic designer from Lebanon to create fake brokerage accounts and bank statements that falsely inflated AlHusseini’s financial assets, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California. Sanberg leveraged AlHusseini’s fabricated financial standing to secure $145 million in loans, prosecutors said.

AlHusseini pleaded guilty to wire fraud on Monday and admitted to pocketing $12.3 million from the scam. He and Sanberg each face up to 20 years in prison.

Since 2009, Sanberg has contributed more than $370,000 to Democratic campaigns and allied progressive committees, financial disclosures reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon show. In 2020 alone, he shelled out over $50,000 to the Biden Victory Fund and another $10,000 for the progressive Justice Democrats PAC.

AlHusseini, who was a CodePink board member at the time of his October arrest, is a fellow Democratic megadonor who’s donated more than $200,000 since 2020 alone. A criminal complaint against him was dismissed in November in exchange for providing prosecutors with information on Sanberg and others, the Justice Department revealed Monday.

In addition to cofounding Aspiration, Sanberg also launched anti-poverty efforts, including the nonprofit Golden State Opportunity and CalEITC4Me, “one of the state’s largest anti-poverty programs.” He also founded Working Hero PAC, “a people-powered political organization focused on electing progressive candidates.” According to his website, Sanberg is a “prominent fighter” for raising the minimum wage, taxing the ultra-wealthy, canceling student debt, delivering Medicare for All, and passing a Green New Deal.

Aspiration, meanwhile, brands itself as a climate-conscious rival to conventional finance, with carbon offset efforts, such as planting trees, at the core of its business model. Superstar celebrities, including Robert Downey Jr., Orlando Bloom, and Leonardo DiCaprio, who joined Aspiration’s board of advisors in 2019, have endorsed the company.

“When it comes to climate change, your money is power. Every dollar you keep out of reach from oil, gas and fossil fuel companies helps defend earth,” Aspiration’s website reads. “By moving money to Aspiration, you’re giving the climate a fighting chance—and your deposits a cleaner, greener home.”

Another Aspiration cofounder, former CEO and failed Arizona congressional candidate Andrei Cherny, faced scrutiny in 2024 as federal investigators probed whether the company misled customers about its carbon offsets. In 2021, ProPublica reported that only 12 million of the 35 million trees Aspiration claimed it had planted were actually in the ground.

“Clean rich is the new filthy rich,” read Aspiration billboards in New York, Texas, and California, according to ProPublica.

In 2019, Sanberg flirted with the idea of running for president, telling the Los Angeles Times that “no one” was “running a campaign to end poverty.”

“I would uniquely talk about poverty,” he said. “About poverty every hour of every single day and in a different way, which is poverty [for] the eight out of 10 Americans [who] are living paycheck to paycheck.”

Sanberg did not respond to a request for comment.

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The State Department on Tuesday officially designated Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO), cementing President Donald Trump’s executive order from January.

“Terrorist designations play a critical role in our fight against terrorism and are an effective way to curtail support for terrorist activities,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement, adding that the United States “will not tolerate” countries that do business with “terrorist organizations like the Houthis.”

Trump added the Houthis to the FTO list in an executive order shortly after returning to the White House, the Washington Free Beacon first reported. “The Houthis’ activities threaten the security of American civilians and personnel in the Middle East, the safety of our closest regional partners, and the stability of global maritime trade,” the order reads.

The Houthis have repeatedly targeted American and Israeli vessels in the Red Sea since the Israel-Hamas war broke out in October 2023.

“Since 2023, the Houthis have launched hundreds of attacks against commercial vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, as well as U.S. service members defending freedom of navigation and our regional partners,” Rubio said in the Tuesday statement.

Trump designated the Houthis as an FTO during his first term, but former president Joe Biden reversed the designation within weeks of taking office in 2021. He then gave the group a weaker designation last year. The Trump White House in January criticized the Biden administration’s “weak policy,” vowing to “eliminate the Houthis’ capabilities.”

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Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said Tuesday that “Ukraine is ready to come to the negotiating table,” following a clash with President Donald Trump in the White House that cast doubt on a lasting ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia.

“I would like to reiterate Ukraine’s commitment to peace,” Zelensky wrote on X. “None of us wants an endless war. … My team and I stand ready to work under President Trump’s strong leadership to get a peace that lasts.”

The Ukrainian president statement follows a tense meeting with Trump last week, after which Trump said that “Zelenskyy is not ready for Peace if America is involved, because he feels our involvement gives him a big advantage in negotiations.”

Zelensky “disrespected the United States of America in its cherished Oval Office. He can come back when he is ready for Peace,” Trump added.

The Trump administration on Monday paused all U.S. aid to Ukraine, urging Zelensky to show a “good-faith” commitment to peace negotiations with Russia, the Wall Street Journal reported. Trump “has been clear that he is focused on peace. We need our partners to be committed to that goal as well,” a White House official said in a statement.

Zelensky in his Tuesday statement acknowledged that his Friday meeting with Trump “did not go the way it was supposed to be,” calling it “regrettable.”

Zelensky also affirmed his mineral deal with the United States, originally scheduled for Friday, saying that “Ukraine is ready to sign it in any time and in any convenient format.”

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