Washington Free Beacon

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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President Donald Trump on Tuesday threatened to revoke all federal funding from universities that allow “illegal protests,” referring to anti-Semitic demonstrations that have erupted on college campuses since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

“All Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on on [sic] the crime, arrested. NO MASKS!”

The warning comes as anti-Semitic incidents have surged on college campuses since Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, with Jewish students facing harassment and intimidation from protesters. More than 10,000 incidents occurred last year alone, according to the Anti-Defamation League. Anti-Israel demonstrations have often escalated into verbal and physical altercations, and universities have faced accusations of violating Title VI, which prohibits discrimination at federally funded institutions.

The Trump administration on Monday announced plans to strip Columbia University of more than $50 million in government contracts, accusing the Ivy League school of failing to address anti-Israel protests on campus.

In January, Trump signed an executive order calling for the deportation of anti-Semitic resident aliens, including student visa holders, who violate U.S. law. The order also directed federal agencies to investigate pro-Hamas intimidation and graffiti on college campuses and beyond.

The post Trump Threatens To Strip All Federal Funding From Universities That Allow ‘Illegal’ Anti-Semitic Protests appeared first on .

Last Wednesday, student radicals at Columbia stormed a campus building at Barnard, sending a security guard to the hospital in the process. A day later, a Columbia instructor canceled class so his students could attend an anti-Israel demonstration, a blatant violation of university policy.

That instructor, our Alana Goodman and Jessica Costescu report, who wasn’t named by the university, was Conor Cullen, who teaches philosophy at Columbia and who has been a vocal supporter of anti-Israel encampments on campus. He dismissed his contemporary civilization class after students asked for time off to “support the student protest movement” and attend an anti-Israel rally. Even Columbia’s administrators described the move as inappropriate and launched an investigation. Per Goodman and Costescu:

Cullen has long defended the anti-Israel protest movement that swept Columbia following Hamas’s mass attacks on Israeli civilians. He was among the untenured faculty that signed a letter expressing “solidarity” with the demonstrators and denouncing police and administrators’ efforts to dismantle the illegal pro-Hamas encampments at the university.

In another letter, Cullen defended the encampments and said the school had “disproportionately acted to silence one voice in particular—the voice of those protesting against the ongoing oppression and killing of Palestinians.” Cullen also signed a letter opposing a congressional investigation into campus anti-Semitism, claiming that lawmakers were “leveraging antisemitism in a wider effort to caricature and demonize universities as hotbeds of ‘woke indoctrination.’”

“To argue that taking a stand against Israel’s war on Gaza is antisemitic is to pervert the meaning of the term,” the letter read. “Labeling pro-Palestinian expression as anti-Jewish hate speech requires a dangerous and false conflation of Zionism with Jewishness, of political ideology with identity.”

The ordeal is the latest in a long line of anti-Semitism scandals at Columbia—scandals that spurred the Trump administration’s executive order to crack down on civil rights violations against Jews on elite college campuses. As part of that order, the administration’s multi-agency task force to combat anti-Semitism launched a review of more than $5 billion in federal funding commitments to Columbia. It could issue immediate stop orders impacting more than $51 million in active contracts.

READ MORE: Columbia University Instructor Cancels Class for Anti-Israel Protest, Day After Radicals Storm Campus Building

Roger Lao has worked in Democratic politics for more than 20 years, serving on a number of presidential campaigns. They haven’t gone well. From John Kerry to Hillary Clinton, Liz Warren to Kamala Harris, Lao has swung big at the national level—and repeatedly missed.

Now, he’s the executive director of the DNC: Committee chairman Ken Martin, who has pledged to usher in a “new DNC,” tapped Lao for the role on Monday. Politico described the move as a “stay-the-course approach,” an apt assessment, given that the party is coming off of a loss—and Lao knows how to lose.

Martin nonetheless hailed Lao’s “depth and breadth of experience” in a statement announcing the appointment, which has our wholehearted support.

READ MORE: DNC Chair Ken Martin Taps New Executive Director: Former Liz Warren Campaign Manager Who Lists His Pronouns in Chinese

On Oct. 7, 2023, some UNRWA staffers who also happened to be members of Hamas participated in the terror group’s attack on Israel. More than a year later, in February, UNRWA media adviser Adnan Abu Hasna participated in an online briefing with a Hamas-linked organization in Lebanon—and said the embattled aid organization was, in fact, one of the attack’s “victims.”

“At the end of the day, we at UNRWA were one of the victims of what happened on October 7th,” Abu Hasna said in Arabic during the briefing, titled, “UNRWA After the Ban Law and the Arrival of Trump: Dangers and Coping Mechanisms.” Speaking alongside him were Ahmed Al-Hajj, a Hamas official based in Lebanon, and Saleh Abdel Ati, a former member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a designated terror group.

“Abu Hasna’s participation in the briefing did not raise any red flags with UNRWA, even as it tries to rehabilitate its image in the wake of October 7,” our Adam Kredo reports. “In the months after the war in Gaza broke it, Israel revealed that scores of UNRWA employees are card-carrying Hamas foot soldiers. Hamas also used UNRWA-run facilities, including hospitals, to hide weapons, transport hostages, and plan further terror attacks on Israel.

“Abu Hasna, an UNRWA spokesman told the Washington Free Beacon, ‘is permitted to participate in public events to clarify the agency’s position. Participation in events does not endorse the organizers’ position, nor their political affiliation.’” Ok then.

READ MORE: UNRWA Official Calls Aid Agency a Casualty of Oct. 7 During Hamas-Affiliated Webinar

Away from the Beacon:

• Chuck Todd is finally ready to call out the Biden family’s misdeeds, saying the following on a podcast with Steve Schmidt: “I completely got so angry at Joe Biden, the man, when I read the transcript of the Hunter Biden trial. And when I realized that not one, not two, but three Biden children, and I count Beau’s widow, were all dealing with drug problems in 2018. And Joe Biden said, now’s a perfect time to run for president because who cares about our family?” Now you tell us!
• Tim Walz is considering a presidential run in 2028. No, we’re serious. “If I feel I can serve, I will,” he said Sunday. “And if nationally, people are like, ‘Dude we tried you, and look how that worked out,’ I’m good with that.” Sounds great.
• Hamasniks at the University of Michigan vandalized a rock meant to memorialize the Bibas family with messages of “Free Palestine.”

The post Meet the Columbia Professor Who Canceled Class So Students Could Protest Israel. Plus, Pocahontas’s Campaign Manager Fails Upward. appeared first on .

A Columbia University instructor who defended last spring’s illegal pro-Hamas encampments canceled his classes Thursday so students could attend an anti-Israel protest—one day after radicals stormed a campus building at Columbia’s sister school, Barnard College.

A source with knowledge of the circumstances told the Washington Free Beacon that the lecturer is Conor Cullen, who teaches philosophy at Columbia and has consistently supported anti-Israel encampments and protests on campus. He dismissed his contemporary civilization class after students asked for time off to “support the student protest movement” and attend an anti-Israel rally.

One of Cullen’s students, who declined to be named, said he and his classmate were “in shock” after the professor asked students to take a “blind vote” on whether to cancel the class.

Columbia called Cullen’s decision a “serious breach of University policy” and said it would be “investigated and addressed swiftly.”

“[W]e apologize to our students and community members for this unacceptable infringement on our core academic mission,” said Columbia in a statement.

On Wednesday, an anti-Israel mob stormed a Barnard building, assaulting and injuring a staff member. The radicals were protesting the expulsion of two Barnard students who were part of a group that rushed into a Columbia class and handed out flyers depicting a trampled Star of David.

Another anti-Israel rally protesting the Barnard students’ expulsion was scheduled for Thursday. That morning, Cullen “mentioned that a noticeably large chunk of students was missing from the class and that he suspected these students were skipping out to support the protests against the disciplinary action of these two Barnard (anti-semitic) students,” the unnamed student wrote in a letter to Columbia officials.

“He then opened up the class for discussion in which two students voiced their opinions in support of the class being canceled to support the student protest movement and the protest that was to occur on the main campus later today at 12:45,” the student continued. “Meanwhile, the rest of the class stayed silent, eyes looking to one another in shock.”

“Our professor then instructed the class to close their eyes and take a blind vote on whether to cancel class, not cancel class, or not vote,” the student wrote. “This resulted in him deciding to cancel the class as well as his 2:10 – 4:00 pm class section later in the day as well.”

The student said the cancellation was “not acceptable and should not be tolerated,” adding that the university community “needs to wake up!”

Two anti-Semitic student groups—Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) and Columbia’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter—led the Wednesday mob that stormed Barnard’s Milbank Hall. They clashed with security guards, sending one to the hospital, held a dean captive, covered up security cameras, broke into an office, vandalized walls, and forced class cancellations. The culprits got off scot-free after the administration vowed not to pursue disciplinary action, shielded them from police as they exited the building after occupying it for over six hours, and agreed to continue negotiations the next day in a private meeting.

The student radicals were aiming to pressure the Barnard administration to reverse its expulsion of two students involved in a separate anti-Semitic incident at Columbia. The pair were among a group of keffiyeh-clad student activists who rushed into an Israeli history class and targeted Jewish students with anti-Semitic flyers that glorified Hamas, showed a trampled Star of David, and advocated violence. A week later, anti-Israel student radicals with CUAD dumped cement into a campus building’s sewage system.

Cullen has long defended the anti-Israel protest movement that swept Columbia following Hamas’s mass attacks on Israeli civilians. He was among the untenured faculty that signed a letter expressing “solidarity” with the demonstrators and denouncing police and administrators’ efforts to dismantle the illegal pro-Hamas encampments at the university.

In another letter, Cullen defended the encampments and said the school had “disproportionately acted to silence one voice in particular—the voice of those protesting against the ongoing oppression and killing of Palestinians.” Cullen also signed a letter opposing a congressional investigation into campus anti-Semitism, claiming that lawmakers were “leveraging antisemitism in a wider effort to caricature and demonize universities as hotbeds of ‘woke indoctrination.’”

“To argue that taking a stand against Israel’s war on Gaza is antisemitic is to pervert the meaning of the term,” the letter read. “Labeling pro-Palestinian expression as anti-Jewish hate speech requires a dangerous and false conflation of Zionism with Jewishness, of political ideology with identity.”

CUAD, meanwhile, claimed Barnard disciplined two more students on Friday, expelling one and suspending another for nearly two years for participating in the storming of a Columbia campus building last spring.

“We WILL NOT let this stand. Barnard, you expel ONE of us, and a HUNDRED more will rise up!” CUAD wrote in an Instagram post. “In the face of unprecedented and disparate institutional repression, we must fight back and stand behind our peers. We must agitate, disrupt, and resist.”

In a statement to the Free Beacon, Barnard president Laura Rosenbury said the university cannot comment on ongoing disciplinary procedures.

“Under federal law, we cannot comment on the academic and disciplinary records of students. That said, as a matter of principle and policy, Barnard will always take decisive action to protect our community as a place where learning thrives, individuals feel safe, and higher education is celebrated. This means upholding the highest standards and acting when those standards are threatened. When rules are broken, when there is no remorse, no reflection, and no willingness to change, we must act,” Rosenbury said.

“Expulsion is always an extraordinary measure, but so too is our commitment to respect, inclusion, and the integrity of the academic experience. At Barnard, we always fiercely defend our values. At Barnard, we always reject harassment and discrimination in all forms. And at Barnard, we always do what is right, not what is easy,” she added.

CUAD noted that the most recent expulsion came one day after the Department of Justice’s task force to combat anti-Semitism warned Columbia that it may have failed to protect Jewish students and faculty from illegal discrimination, a violation of federal law. The task force announced Friday that Columbia was among 10 schools it would visit to meet with university leadership and impacted students to determine whether any disciplinary actions are justified for the schools’ failure to shield Jewish students and staff from illegal discrimination.

Columbia has become increasingly aggressive toward anti-Semitism since President Donald Trump took office. It promptly suspended one of the students who stormed the Israeli history in January, for example. By contrast, the university over the summer dropped the overwhelming majority of the suspensions leveled on students who participated in illegal anti-Israel protests last spring.

Cullen did not respond to a request for comment.

The post Columbia University Instructor Cancels Class for Anti-Israel Protest, Day After Radicals Storm Campus Building appeared first on .

The Trump administration’s multi-agency task force to combat anti-Semitism is launching a review of Columbia University’s contracts and grants, citing the Ivy League institution’s “apparent failure” to protect Jewish students. It will probe more than $5 billion in federal funding commitments and could issue stop orders impacting more than $51 million in active contracts.

The Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Education, and the U.S. General Services Administration announced the move in a Monday night press release. It came almost immediately after Secretary of Education Linda McMahon’s confirmation.

“Americans have watched in horror for more than a year now, as Jewish students have been assaulted and harassed on elite university campuses. Unlawful encampments and demonstrations have completely paralyzed day-to-day campus operations, depriving Jewish students of learning opportunities to which they are entitled,” McMahon said in a statement.

“Institutions that receive federal funds have a responsibility to protect all students from discrimination. Columbia’s apparent failure to uphold their end of this basic agreement raises very serious questions about the institution’s fitness to continue doing business with the United States government.”

McMahon has said she “wholeheartedly” supports President Donald Trump’s call to close the Department of Education. In the meantime, however, she’s pledged to focus on tackling campus anti-Semitism and DEI initiatives. Before her confirmation, in late January, Trump directed all federal agencies “to combat the explosion of anti-Semitism on our campuses and in our streets since October 7, 2023.” The Justice Department launched an anti-Semitism task force to “root out anti-Semitic harassment in schools and on college campuses” shortly thereafter.

The funding review comes as anti-Semitic student radicals continue to plague Columbia. Just last week, two anti-Semitic student groups, Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) and Columbia’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter, stormed a campus building at Columbia’s sister school, Barnard College. They clashed with security guards, sending one to the hospital, and caused $30,000 in damages—all in protest of Barnard’s decision to expel two students who interrupted an Israeli history class and targeted Jewish students with anti-Semitic flyers.

Weeks earlier, members of CUAD dumped cement into a campus building’s sewage system.

This is not the task force’s first action targeting Columbia. On Friday, the task force announced that it would visit Columbia and nine other schools that have struggled to combat anti-Semitic incidents following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, terror attack.

Columbia addressed the funding review in a statement, saying it “is fully committed to combatting antisemitism and all forms of discrimination, and we are resolute that calling for, promoting, or glorifying violence or terror has no place at our University.”

“We look forward to ongoing work with the new federal administration to fight antisemitism, and we will continue to make all efforts to ensure the safety and wellbeing of our students, faculty, and staff,” the statement concluded.

The post Trump Admin To Review $5 Billion in Columbia Grant Funding, Citing Ivy League School’s ‘Apparent Failure’ To Address Anti-Semitism appeared first on .

“This is a new DNC,” party chairman Ken Martin proclaimed when he won his seat in February. On Monday, he appointed the DNC’s new executive director: a longtime political operative who has worked for at least four losing Democratic presidential campaigns and who lists his pronouns in Chinese on social media.

Martin appointed Roger Lau on Monday to serve as the DNC’s next executive director in a move Politico described as a “stay-the-course approach” following the party’s devastating losses in the 2024 elections. Indeed, Lau has experience working for losing political campaigns. He served as senior adviser to the Harris Victory Fund last year, managed Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D., Mass.) failed presidential campaign in 2020, worked as a state director for Hillary Clinton’s failed 2008 presidential campaign, and cut his teeth in politics as a staffer for John Kerry’s failed 2004 presidential campaign.

Martin hailed Lau’s “depth and breadth of experience” in a statement Monday announcing his appointment of the longtime Massachusetts political operative. Martin said Lau will “support the Democratic Party in holding the Trump administration accountable and fighting for working families.

“At such a critical moment, we are excited to have experienced, aggressive operatives who are ready to roll up their sleeves and defend Democratic values up and down the ballot,” Martin told Politico in a statement, which also announced Libby Schneider as the DNC’s next deputy executive director. Schneider previously served as the party’s chief of staff during the 2024 elections.

Lau touts his decades-long experience leading and working for losing presidential campaigns on his LinkedIn page, where he displays his pronouns in English and Spanish, as well as a Chinese character that translates to “he.”

Amid the scores of losing campaigns on his resume, Lau has made a point to clarify on his LinkedIn page that he has secured at least one win during his 22 years in the field. He served as campaign manager for former Rep. Niki Tsongas’s winning bid for the special election in Massachusett’s Fifth Congressional District in 2007. The district hadn’t voted for a Republican for over three decades at that point, but the special election was an unexpected nail-biter, with Tsongas’s challenger coming within 6 points of flipping the seat red.

“We won!!” Lau noted on his LinkedIn page.

Martin appointed Lau to serve as the DNC’s executive director just weeks after winning his chairmanship and promising to usher the party into a new era. “We’re taking the gloves off,” Martin said in early February, with party operatives describing the new chairman as a “knife-fighter.”

But Lau embodies many of the same characteristics that defined the Democrats’ defeat in 2024. He said in October that it was “very cool” when vice presidential candidate Tim Walz live streamed one half of a Madden NFL video game with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.). The final score was zero to zero. In addition to disclosing his Chinese pronouns on social media, Lau made far-left identity politics a central focus of Warren’s 2020 presidential campaign in the leadup to her disastrous Super Tuesday performance that year.

Lau noted in a Warren campaign memo two days before the Super Tuesday primaries in 2020 that their campaign had invested more than $700,000 in radio, print, and mail advertisements to reach “Latinx” and other minority constituencies ahead of the critical primary contests.

It didn’t work. Warren failed to win a single state on Super Tuesday, and she came in third in her home state of Massachusetts after winning just 21 percent of the vote.

Warren ended her campaign just four days after Lau sent the memo. “Thank you for dreaming so fucking big, thank you for dreaming so fucking hard,” a choked-up Lau told Warren’s campaign staff during a conference call after the senator announced her exit from the race.

Warren tapped Lau to serve as her senior Senate adviser following her failed presidential bid. From there, Lau publicly attacked Republican lawmakers for sponsoring a resolution that condemned the Chinese Communist Party for misleading the world about the burgeoning COVID-19 pandemic. Lau said the resolution could incite hate crimes against Asian Americans.

“This is just so wrong,” Lau wrote as Republicans mustered support for the anti-CCP resolution. “It’s lazy scapegoating, hateful fear mongering, & just flat out dangerous. Asian Americans have been victims of hate crimes that have been incited by ignorance like this. This is a global crisis & we’re all in this together. We’re better than this!”

The post DNC Chair Ken Martin Taps New Executive Director: Former Liz Warren Campaign Manager Who Lists His Pronouns in Chinese appeared first on .

Claim: “[It] doesn’t really matter who is in the Oval Office for me. My job is to find out information.”

Who said it: Eugene Daniels, the former Politico reporter and Beltway fashion icon who was recently hired to cohost a weekend show on MSNBC. Daniels made the comments in a fawning New York Times profile that described him as “the face of the White House press corps” that is “under attack” by the Trump administration.

Context: Daniels was supposed to be the “breakout star” of the 2024 election. He ended up being one of the biggest losers. Daniels was widely praised (by other journalists) as an “expert in all things Kamala Harris.” Having covered the vice president since the start of the Biden administration, he was well-positioned when Harris took over as the Democratic nominee. If she’d won the election, Daniels would have become a hot commodity on cable news, given his status as an unofficial Harris spokesman. In that sense, Daniels is slightly different from his future MSNBC colleagues Symone Sanders and Jen Psaki, who were explicitly paid to speak on behalf of powerful Democrats. In any event, Daniels would have been a fixture at state dinners and other White House events, allowing the self-described “walking Beyoncé encyclopedia” to showcase his “bold” fashion sense.

Most casual observers would describe his reporting on the Harris campaign as excessively adulatory and promotional. He gushed about the “exhilarating” and “insane” level of “excitement” in the early days of Harris’s candidacy. He argued Harris was the best debate opponent Trump had ever faced since 2015. Generally speaking, Daniels diligently regurgitated the campaign’s talking points with pizzazz. He commended himself for being “tough” on Harris during a panel discussion hosted by the National Association of Black Journalists. For example, he asked her if Trump and J.D. Vance’s comments about Haitian migrants in Ohio were “a case of irredeemable racism that can’t be mitigated by any rational action.” Daniels’s reporting output since Trump took office, including a boring interview with Rep. Jamie Raskin (D., Md.) about how Democrats are fighting back against the administration, appears to suggest it actually does matter that a Republican is president.

On Daniels’s watch as president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, the Trump administration took away the group’s power to determine which media outlets were allowed to cover presidential events. Daniels selected comedian Amber Ruffin to perform at the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Few normal Americans have ever heard of Ruffin. She apparently writes jokes for Seth Meyers, the liberal activist and former comedian. She coauthored the New York Times best-selling book You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey: Crazy Stories about Racism. She has described President Trump as a “toddler with his pants down.” Daniels called Ruffin an “ideal fit for this current political and cultural climate.” 

Verdict: Based on the available evidence, Daniels’s suggestion that he wasn’t personally and professionally devastated by Harris’s defeat is simply not credible. We rate this claim Four Clintons.

 

The post FACT CHECK: MSNBC Host Says ‘It Doesn’t Really Matter Who Is in the Oval Office’ appeared first on .

The Senate voted to confirm Linda McMahon as secretary of education on Thursday following a smooth confirmation hearing. She pledged to tackle campus anti-Semitism and end DEI initiatives.

McMahon, the former World Wrestling Entertainment chief executive and Small Business Administration head during President Donald Trump’s first term, won confirmation with a 51 to 45 vote.

“Under the Biden-Harris administration, the Department of Education focused on everything but student success,” said Sen. Bill Cassidy (R., La.), chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. “We need a strong leader at the Department who will get our education system back on track. Secretary McMahon is the right person for the job.”

McMahon’s ascension follows Trump’s swift rollout of executive orders targeting anti-Semitism and DEI in higher education. Just two weeks into Trump’s term, the Department of Education opened investigations into “widespread antisemitic harassment” at Columbia University and four other schools in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attacks. The department also scrapped $15 million in federal grants for diversity programs at three universities. The Department of Justice, meanwhile, launched a task force “to root out anti-Semitic harassment in schools and on college campuses.”

During her confirmation hearing, McMahon said universities that fail to protect Jewish Americans’ safety would face defunding. She also pledged to revoke foreign students’ visas if they praised Hamas and indicated she’d be open to forming an anti-Semitism commission “to evaluate the progress of universities on this issue.”

“I think that, by far, what we saw happening on our campuses was absolutely deplorable. Kids locked in libraries, afraid to come out. Now, I believe in freedom of speech on campus—open debate—and we should encourage that, but we cannot allow violence happening on our campuses. That puts all students in an unsafe place,” McMahon said.

“And if I were confirmed as the secretary of education, I would want to make sure that the presidents of those universities and those colleges are taking very strong measures not to allow those to happen. They can call in the police; they can do whatever they need to do, set standards, and to make sure those standards are upheld. We cannot allow that kind of violence to take place on our college campuses,” she added.

McMahon also criticized DEI initiatives, arguing that they promote segregation within universities.

“It was put in place ostensibly for more diversity, for equity and inclusion, and I think what we’re seeing is that it’s having an opposite effect. We are getting back to more segregating of our schools instead of having more inclusion in our schools,” she said. “When there are DEI programs that say black students need separate graduation ceremonies, or Hispanics need separate ceremonies, we are not achieving what we wanted to achieve with inclusion.”

Democrats, meanwhile, pressed McMahon on Trump’s pledge to dismantle the Department of Education. McMahon maintained that any move to eliminate the department would require congressional approval and reassured senators that federal funding for schools and universities would remain unaffected.

“Fund education freedom, not government-run systems. Listen to parents, not politicians. Build up careers, not college debt. Empower states, not special interests. Invest in teachers, not Washington bureaucrats,” McMahon said.

McMahon previously spent a year on the Connecticut board of education and is a longtime trustee at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn. She also served as chair of the America First Policy Institute.

The post Linda McMahon Confirmed As Education Secretary appeared first on .

MSNBC didn’t fire Ayman Mohyeldin, the Hamas-aligned host of a poorly rated weekend show—they just demoted him. The left-wing network announced last week it was canceling Ayman, which aired Saturdays and Sundays at 7 p.m., as part of its ongoing restructuring in the face of financial difficulties. But the controversial host isn’t going anywhere.

“I’m not leaving the network, in fact, quite the opposite,” a defiant Mohyeldin told a handful of viewers over the weekend. “Despite the challenging and fearless ways we have covered stories on this show for more than two years, MSNBC has offered to extend my tenure at the company.” Mohyeldin will cohost a new weekend program, launching in April, alongside two other personalities that have yet to be announced.

“Soon, this show, the name, the format will change, and I will be joined by two new incredible hosts who will be announced soon enough,” Mohyeldin said. “But one thing that won’t change is my promise to you, the viewers, that I won’t stop talking about the difficult stories and challenging topics that others don’t cover.” Mohyeldin acknowledged how “saddened” he was by the firing of his “dear friend, ally, and colleague, the fearless Joy Reid,” but declined to echo star host Rachel Maddow, who accused MSNBC of deliberately suppressing non-white voices.

The demoted host’s comment about “challenging topics that others don’t cover” was presumably in reference to his long history of antagonism toward Israel. Mohyeldin has been the foremost Hamas cheerleader on MSNBC since the departure of fellow anti-Israel activist Mehdi Hasan in 2023. Otherwise his show is relatively standard fare for MSNBC, examining topics such as “how Democrats should resist Trump’s agenda” and how the “GOP’s attack on DEI” has gone too far.

In September 2024, Mohyeldin moderated several panels at a Georgetown University conference in Qatar, which has provided a safe harbor to Hamas leaders. The conference featured a number of anti-Israel activists who had praised Hamas and defended the group’s terrorist attack on Oct. 7, 2023. Mohyeldin has also been criticized for denouncing Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle, whose life and tragic death inspired the hit film American Sniper, as a “racist” who went on “killing sprees” in Iraq. Anti-Hamas advocates have been urging MSNBC to cut ties with Mohyeldin since 2015 after he falsely claimed to have witnessed Israeli authorities shoot an unarmed Palestinian terrorist who rushed a security checkpoint in Jerusalem. Ayman’s colleague Jose Diaz-Balart had to explain that video footage clearly showed the attacker was wielding a knife.

Mohyeldin’s new (albeit slightly less prestigious) gig at MSNBC undermines Maddow’s claim that the network is waging an “indefensible” war on non-white hosts such as Reid, who was fired for having terrible ratings. Reid’s program at 7 p.m. on weekdays will be replaced by another panel show cohosted by three non-white hosts, including Symone Sanders, a former Kamala Harris adviser, and Alicia Menendez, the daughter of convicted felon and former U.S. senator Bob Menendez. Maddow was slammed for criticizing the network, which is struggling to cut costs in part to afford the $25 million annual salary it pays her to appear on television once a week. Mohyeldin is believed to earn about $500-750K per year to work at least two days a week, one of many examples of the alarming racial pay gap at MSNBC.

Al Sharpton, the notorious anti-Semite, will also remain at the network despite being mired in controversy. The racial agitator appears to have suffered no meaningful consequences after the Washington Free Beacon reported in November that the Harris campaign donated $500,000 to Sharpton’s nonprofit group several weeks before he interviewed the candidate on MSNBC. Sharpton is best known for inciting an anti-Semitic riot in 1991 when he denounced Jews in Brooklyn as “diamond merchants” who have the “blood of innocent babies on their hands.” He has also compared the state of Israel to “hell.”

Crucial context: Mohyeldin is married to Kenza Fourati, a French-Tunisian model who appeared in the 2011 edition of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.

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