Washington Free Beacon

Democratic congressman Greg Landsman (Ohio) ignited online outrage after arriving late and barely engaging in a scheduled “Ask Me Anything” session on Reddit.

Landsman arrived more than 40 minutes late to the Wednesday AMA and briefly wrote about the 2024 election and the rights of “marginalized citizens,” the Cincinnati Enquirer reported. He then signed off, thanking participants for “all these thoughtful comments” and promising to return later.

“Are you serious? You barely answer two questions and ignore all the top questions? This AMA was a colossal failure,” one Redditor wrote, while another posted, “Extraordinarily disappointed in the meager, milquetoast responses.”

Landsman said after the event that he understood people’s anger but blamed the reaction to his event on Republicans.

“People are angry right now, as they should be,” Landsman told the Enquirer. “Look at what’s happening to their country with Trump, Elon and a Republican-controlled Congress that’s allowing them to do whatever they want—even if it’s clearly hurting people.”

Landsman, first elected in 2022 to represent the city of Cincinnati and some surrounding areas, has long faced accusations of hypocrisy. The congressman, who spent years demanding financial transparency and portraying himself as an ethics reformer, failed to disclose his own financial transactions for months, the Washington Free Beacon reported in September. In 2022, the state of Ohio filed a lien against Landsman, who helped pass seven tax and fee increases in June 2018 alone, for unpaid business taxes.

After Landsman’s Wednesday sign-off, two hours passed with no response from the congressman, leading dozens of users to voice their frustration in a thread titled “Landsman’s AMA was pathetic.”

“Arrived late, gave two non-answers in an hour, then bailed,” the thread’s original poster wrote. “He claims he’ll be back later. People are tearing him apart in the comments.”

Landsman returned hours later and answered seven more questions. “We tried to cover as many topics as we could in some longer posts,” he wrote.

The post Dem Rep Gets Slammed for ‘Meager, Milquetoast’ Reddit Q&A, Blames It on Republicans appeared first on .

China’s Belt and Road Initiative aims to boost Beijing’s geopolitical influence by building military bases, airports, and roads in developing countries. Roughly five years ago, however, Xi Jinping expanded the initiative’s scope to include green energy—and Michael Bloomberg’s eponymous philanthropy is going along for the ride.

Xi established the Belt and Road International Green Development Coalition in April 2019. Its founding charter stipulates that it’s controlled by Beijing’s ecology and civil affairs ministries and must comply with CCP laws. Those ministries use the organization to cultivate international support for Belt and Road under the guise of environmentalism. Bloomberg Philanthropies is an eager participant, our Thomas Catenacci reports.

The nonprofit’s head of environmental programs, Antha Williams, serves as an adviser to the co-chairs of the organization, who include a top CCP official. And while Bloomberg Philanthropies makes little mention of its role in the coalition, Michael Bloomberg himself is a fan, having pledged during his short-lived presidential campaign to “provide technical assistance to countries participating in China’s Belt and Road Initiative to ensure that they have clean alternatives to coal-fired power.”

“National security experts who spoke to the Free Beacon warned that such a collaboration creates a host of national security concerns and makes American institutions more vulnerable to Chinese influence campaigns,” writes Catenacci. “They added that the Belt and Road Initiative and BRIGC have been carefully constructed to boost China’s strategic power rather than to reduce emissions or address global warming.”

“The initiatives, for example, include the development of a ‘green Silk Road’ to make infrastructure projects more climate-friendly, the Green Innovation Conference promoting green technology development, and the Green Investment and Finance Partnership that boosts green investments in China. Those priorities were outlined at the most recent BRIGC convening in Beijing in March 2024 where officials stressed the importance of continued collaboration between all partners. Several American nonprofits participated in the meeting.”

The House Education Committee may have a new chairman, but its efforts to fight anti-Semitism at Columbia aren’t going anywhere. The committee’s new leader, Tim Walberg (R., Mich.), sent the Ivy League school a letter on Thursday requesting “a fresh round of disciplinary documents related to recent anti-Semitic demonstrations,” the Free Beacon‘s Adam Kredo reports. He also hammered Columbia for its “continued failure to address the pervasive antisemitism that persists on campus” during the ongoing fall semester.

On the first day of that semester, student radicals blocked the entrance to Columbia, vandalized a statue, and clashed with police. Months later, in January, they stormed an Israeli history class and targeted Jews with anti-Semitic flyers that glorified Hamas and promised violence. Most recently, Columbia’s leading anti-Semitic student group clogged campus toilets with cement and soaked a business school building with red paint, tactics the student radicals learned months earlier at an anarchist training session held at the home of a Columbia literary society.

Those incidents, Walberg wrote, demonstrate that Columbia “has failed to uphold its commitments, both because the disciplinary process has failed and because the campus administration has refused to enforce its pre-existing rules.” Walberg went on to note that Columbia “receives billions in federal funding.” He gave Columbia two weeks to produce “all disciplinary records” related to the aforementioned incidents and a few others, including a September protest that saw students target a class taught by former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

Walberg’s letter shows that, while the education committee’s leadership has changed, its focus on anti-Semitism in higher education remains. During the last Congress, the committee, then led by Rep. Virginia Foxx (R., N.C.), subpoenaed Columbia after the school failed to turn over documents related to anti-Semitism. Columbia could face a similar fate should it stonewall Walberg’s request, though a representative for the school said it would cooperate.

Read more here.

During the 2024 presidential campaign, Democrats across the country lost sleep over the “uncommitted” movement that opposed Joe Biden and Kamala Harris over their on-and-off support for Israel. Judging by Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s latest official state trip, that movement still has a grip on the party.

Whitmer “took 17 local officials, businessmen, community leaders, and the head of the Michigan National Guard on a trip to the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to strengthen economic ties to the region,” our Chuck Ross reports. Included among those guests was Osama Siblani, the publisher of the Michigan-based Arab American News who is best known for hailing the leader of Hezbollah, expressing support for Hamas, and calling for the Jews to be sent “back to Poland.”

“It’s a controversial choice for Whitmer, considered a top contender for the Democratic presidential primary in 2028,” writes Ross. “Siblani is a vocal critic of Israel and was a leader in the ‘uncommitted’ movement that opposed Joe Biden and Kamala Harris over U.S. support for Israel in its war with the terrorist group Hamas. And Siblani has gone far beyond simple criticism of the Jewish state.” In 2022, for example, he urged Arabs to “fight within [their] means” against Israel, whether with “stones,” “guns,” or “their hands.” He later bragged that he refused to condemn Hamas during a call with the Biden White House in 2021.

“Siblani’s rhetoric should be no secret to Whitmer, who will leave office next year. The Anti-Defamation League and other Jewish groups have condemned Siblani’s remarks over the years and blasted the White House and Biden campaign last year for sending officials to meet with Siblani in Dearborn in hopes of gaining his political support.”

Away from the Beacon:

• Hamas, which is purportedly bound to a ceasefire agreement with Israel, attempted to launch a rocket at the Jewish state on Thursday. It landed inside Gaza and killed a 14-year-old boy.
• Kamala Harris holds a dominant lead over her fellow Democrats in the race to become California’s next governor. Residents of the Golden State: Get out while you can.
• During Linda McMahon’s confirmation hearing, Bernie Sanders emphasized the need to make the Department of Education “more effective.” Remind us: Who was in charge for the last four years?

The post Bloomberg Boosts China’s Belt and Road, New Congress Keeps the Pressure on Columbia, and Whitmer Embraces Michigan’s Top Hamasnik appeared first on .

The primary organization behind the anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement protests that swept through Los Angeles last week is headed by Carlos Montes, a longtime left-wing radical who cofounded a militant group, has praised terrorists, and has faced several FBI and police investigations.

In the late 1960s, Montes cofounded the Brown Berets, a paramilitary-style organization modeled after the Black Panthers that emerged during the Chicano movement. He was later accused of starting fires at a Los Angeles hotel where then-Gov. Ronald Reagan was speaking and had his home raided as part of a federal investigation seeking potential ties to terrorist organizations. While charges didn’t stick, Montes has been a staunch proponent of radical leftist movements for decades and has pushed pro-Hamas sentiment.

More recently, Centro Community Service Organization (CSO), under Montes’s leadership, has been the primary organizer behind the protests that gripped Los Angeles following President Donald Trump’s swearing in, a Washington Free Beacon review of social media posts found.

“Join plans for J20 rally: Legalization for All, No Deportations, Women and Reproductive Rights & Stand with Palestine!” Montes wrote on Facebook advertising an Inauguration Day protest. Several left-wing organizations endorsed the protest, including Unión del Barrio, a radical left-wing militant group offering “self-defense” training to combat ICE raids, the Free Beacon has reported.

Centro CSO organized more intense protests between Jan. 31 to Feb. 9 as Trump’s deportations began to take shape. Left-wing activists blocked major roads and highways, engaged in acts of felony vandalism, assaulted police officers, and a teenager was even stabbed.

Such protests are par for the course for Montes. On his personal website, the Centro CSO chief touts his leadership within the Brown Berets, where he served as a minister of information, and boasts about working alongside major figures in the Marxist-Leninist Black Panthers militant group.

Montes “worked to forge alliances with the Black Panther Party and supported the Free Huey Newton political prisoner’s campaign. Worked with Bunchy Carter and John Huggins of the Black Panther LA Chapter and established Black and Brown relations,” his website reads.

In 1970, Montes went “underground” due to “​​heavy repression and threats”—until Los Angeles police arrested him in 1977, according to his website. He was among a group of Chicano radicals accused of starting fires in a Los Angeles hotel as Reagan was giving a speech in 1969—one year before Montes went into hiding. He was ultimately found not guilty.

In 2011, Los Angeles police descended on Montes’s home in an early morning raid. They had a warrant to search through his computer, phones, and other devices as well as look for guns—illegal for him to own because of a felony conviction for throwing a soda can at a police officer during a 1969 protest.

Montes claimed that when he was put in the back of a squad car, a plainclothes FBI agent asked him about the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO)—a Marxist-Leninist organization working to “build a new, revolutionary, communist party” in the United States.

The raid was apparently part of an FBI investigation into the FRSO’s Anti-War Committee, Los Angeles Magazine reported. The bureau launched the probe after two FRSO members told an undercover informant that the committee raised money for two designated terrorist organizations: the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

Montes claimed the Obama administration’s FBI investigation was part of an effort to suppress and harass legitimate protesters.

Most of the charges against Montes were dropped, but he pleaded no contest to a felony perjury charge stemming from a firearms violation: He had falsely sworn that he’d never been convicted of a felony while buying a shotgun. He was sentenced to three years probation and 180 hours of community service.

Despite his arrests, Montes has been a consistent champion of left-wing causes. His website claims he “participated in solidarity with the El Salvadorian revolutionary struggle” in 1992 and formed an activist group in Cuba. He backed the 1994 armed Zapatista uprising in Mexico, though it isn’t clear what support he gave. Montes joined socialist celebrations in Nicaragua in 2022 and in Venezuela in 2023.

In the late 1990s, Montes assumed control over the Los Angeles activist group, Community Service Organization, and reorganized it into Centro CSO. He’s used the group to organize protests against law enforcement, to push “full legalization” for illegal immigrants, and to bring “an end to ICE repression.” Centro CSO has committed to organizing “for the rights of the undocumented, quality public education, and supporting, in solidarity, other communities seeking social justice.”

While the group is not a legally established nonprofit, it does solicit donations. A recent GoFundMe page lists Montes as the beneficiary of the nearly $9,000 raised.

Centro CSO was a driving organizer behind nearly a dozen highly disruptive anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles last week, the Free Beacon’s review found. While the Legalization For All Network made the formal call to action, the group’s website listed Centro CSO as the only Los Angeles organizer.

“STOP ATTACKS ON IMMIGRANTS!! WEEK OF ACTION 1/31-2/9,” read a Legalization For All Instagram post that listed Centro CSO as a collaborator. “Join chapters of the L4A Network in holding protests and other actions from coast to coast to fight back against Trump’s racist executive orders and demand no more deportations!!!”

Some protests encouraged students from local schools to walk out of their classes, while others were supported by FRSO, which Montes is a member of. FRSO’s Los Angeles chapter frequently credited Centro CSO for the demonstrations, including the major Feb. 2 protest in which thousands of protesters shut down the 101 Freeway and clashed with law enforcement before dispersing in the evening.

“Tens of thousands of Chicanos hit the streets of Los Angeles to demand an end to the attacks on Raza! They want an end to deportations! They want Migra out of our barrios!” Centro CSO wrote on Instagram that day.

While ICE has not conducted any targeted operations in Los Angeles since Trump took office, the agency is scheduled to conduct a “large scale” deportation raid in the city by the end of February, according to an internal government document reviewed by the Los Angeles Times. ICE has focused on removing dangerous aliens with criminal records, resulting in 11,000 arrests as of Monday.

Montes and Centro CSO have also participated in dozens of anti-Israel demonstrations, including pro-Hamas protests. In the wake of the terrorist group’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack, Centro CSO announced that it stood “in complete solidarity with the Palestinian people in their resistance against Israel.”

“We in Centro CSO in Boyle Heights and our sister chapter, CSO Orange County unequivocally stand in solidarity with our Palestinian brothers, sisters and families in their resistance against apartheid and occupation by Israel,” Centro CSO wrote in an Oct. 25, 2023, statement. “We support the resistance against the genocidal regime that has dispossessed Palestinians for 75 years.”

On the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack, Centro CSO organized a protest celebrating the massacre and blamed Israel for committing “genocide.” Photos and video of the event consistently showed Montes as a leading figure at the protest.

“This October marks one year of since Israel’s Zionist genocide in Palestine. Join us in the streets of Boyle Heights to stand against the Zionist occupation that has been backed by the U.S. and stand in solidarity with Palestinians!” the group wrote on Instagram.

Earlier, in 2017, Montes posted an article to his Facebook page praising the PFLP, including its secretary general, Ahmad Sa’adat, and Ahed Abu Ghoulmeh, the PFLP leader responsible for the 2001 murder of Israeli minister Rehavam Ze’evi

Centro CSO did not respond to a request for comment. Montes directed an inquiry to a representative, who reacted to a Free Beacon text with a heart emoji.

The post Former Militant Group Leader, Once a Suspect in an FBI Terror Funding Probe, Now Leads Anti-ICE Protests in LA appeared first on .

The House Committee on Education and the Workforce requested a fresh round of disciplinary documents related to recent anti-Semitic demonstrations at Columbia University. The committee’s new chairman, Rep. Tim Wahlberg (R., Mich.), hammered the Ivy League school for its “continued failure to address the pervasive antisemitism that persists on campus.”

Wahlberg made the request in a Feb. 13 letter to Columbia interim president Katrina Armstrong and Columbia board of trustees co-chairs David Greenwald and Claire Shipman. He instructed them to turn over a litany of internal records related to anti-Semitic incidents that unfolded during the ongoing fall semester.

On the first day of that semester, student radicals blocked the entrance to Columbia, vandalized a statue, and clashed with police. Months later, in January, they stormed an Israeli history class and targeted Jews with anti-Semitic flyers that glorified Hamas and promised violence. Most recently, Columbia’s leading anti-Semitic student group clogged campus toilets with cement and soaked a business school building with red paint, tactics the student radicals learned months earlier and an anarchist training session held at the home of a Columbia literary society.

Those incidents, Wahlberg wrote, demonstrate that Columbia “has failed to uphold its commitments, both because the disciplinary process has failed and because the campus administration has refused to enforce its pre-existing rules.” Wahlberg went on to note that Columbia “receives billions in federal funding.” He gave Columbia two weeks to produce “all disciplinary records” related to the aforementioned incidents and a few others, including a September protest that saw students target a class taught by former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

Wahlberg’s letter shows that, while the education committee’s leadership has changed, its focus on anti-Semitism in higher education remains. During the last Congress, the committee, led by Rep. Virginia Foxx (R., N.C.), subpoenaed Columbia after the school failed to turn over documents related to anti-Semitism. Columbia could face a similar fate should it stonewall Wahlberg’s request, though a representative for the school said it would cooperate.

“Since assuming her role in August, Interim President Armstrong and her leadership team have taken decisive actions to address issues of antisemitism,” the representative said in a statement. “Under the University’s new leadership, we have established a centralized Office of Institutional Equity to address all reports of discrimination and harassment, appointed a new Rules Administrator, and strengthened the capabilities of our Public Safety Office.”

Wahlberg’s letter comes as the Ivy League institution faces scrutiny not just from Congress but also the White House.

Earlier this month, President Donald Trump’s Department of Education opened investigations into “widespread antisemitic harassment” at Columbia and four other schools. The move came shortly after Trump signed an executive order pledging to “combat anti-Semitism vigorously, using all available and appropriate legal tools, to prosecute, remove, or otherwise hold to account the perpetrators of unlawful anti-Semitic harassment and violence.”

“Too many universities have tolerated widespread antisemitic harassment and the illegal encampments that paralyzed campus life last year, driving Jewish life and religious expression underground,” acting assistant secretary for civil rights Craig Trainor said in a statement announcing the investigations.

“The Department is putting universities, colleges, and K-12 schools on notice: this administration will not tolerate continued institutional indifference to the wellbeing of Jewish students on American campuses, nor will it stand by idly if universities fail to combat Jew hatred and the unlawful harassment and violence it animates.”

The Biden administration launched similar probes into anti-Semitism in higher education, but it settled many of those probes without forcing the schools to admit wrongdoing or face significant punishment. Trainor said those settlements “did shamefully little to hold those institutions accountable” and pledged to take a tougher approach.

The post House Ed Committee Hammers Columbia’s ‘Continued Failure’ To Protect Jews, Requests Fresh Disciplinary Docs appeared first on .

The University of California, Los Angeles, is temporarily suspending its Students for Justice in Palestine and Graduate Students for Justice in Palestine chapters after members harassed Hollywood talent agent and regent Jay Sures and his family while vandalizing his home.

Some 50 masked protesters pounded drums and blocked Sures’s street and driveway in the early morning of Feb. 5, with police responding at 6:15 a.m., according to the SJP groups’ social media posts and police reports. The protesters imprinted red handprints on the outside walls of Sures’s house and plastered fliers on his garage door, Deadline Hollywood reported.

While announcing the chapters’ suspension, UCLA chancellor Julio Frenk said the protesters even surrounded the vehicle of one family member. They also held a sign that read, “Jonathan Sures you will pay, until you see your final day.”

L.A. happening now – the “Free Palestine” mob is targeting Jewish UC Regent and UTA Talent Exec Jay Sures at his home, openly threatening him.

This is NOT a protest but rather clear and targeted modern day Nazi intimidation of Jews.

Where are you, @MayorOfLA? pic.twitter.com/jRIQKNpT5r

— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) February 5, 2025

Sures is one of the University of California’s 18 regents who make up the system’s governing board and has spoken out in defense of Israel. He is also vice president of United Talent Agency of Beverly Hills, a powerful Hollywood broker.

“Rigorous, healthy dialogue is central to everything we do to advance knowledge. What there should never be room for is violence,” Frenk wrote in a statement Wednesday. “No one should ever fear for their safety.”

The university is “conducting an administrative review, and this suspension will remain in effect during the review,” he added. “If these reports prove true as part of this review, disciplinary action may be taken.”

UCLA’s SJP chapter posted imagery of the protest to its Instagram story with the caption “fuck jay sures,” and “20 likes and we’ll drop [the address],” according to a screenshot captured by Sia Kordestani, the West Coast director of the European Leadership Network.

Right now, Students for Justice in Palestine UCLA and their off-campus goons are doxxing the home address of Jonathan “Jay” Sures, a UC Regent and United Talent Agency exec.

Why? Because HE’S JEWISH.

They’re showing up to his Los Angeles home with death threats. pic.twitter.com/baqNmImDMw

— Sia Kordestani (@SiaKordestani) February 5, 2025

The graduate student group, meanwhile, wrote that on its own Instagram account that Sures “has attempted to intimidate faculty and students who spoke out against the genocide in Gaza, but we refuse to stay silent.”

Sures told Deadline that he believes the students targeted him and his family for being Jewish and outspoken about anti-Israel sentiment on campus.

In the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre, the UC Ethnic Studies Faculty Council accused university administrators of stoking “anti-Muslim, anti-Palestinian sentiments” by calling the attack “terrorism” and suggested that the assault was justified because of “Zionist militarism.”

In response, Sures said the council’s letter was “rife with falsehoods about Israel and seeks to legitimize and defend the horrific savagery of the Hamas massacre of October 7.”

“The UC Ethnic Studies Faculty Council letter does not come in a vacuum, but at a time when Jewish students across the country, including on all our UC campuses, are experiencing increasing antisemitic threats and intimidation,” Sures wrote at the time. “Your blatant and baseless rhetoric feeds into this hostile environment.”

Frenk’s suspension order comes less than a month after President Donald Trump was sworn in. His administration has launched several investigations and a task force targeting campus anti-Semitism, and colleges have begun taking a more aggressive stance to combat harassment. The day after Trump’s inauguration, for example, Harvard University resolved a lawsuit with Jewish students by adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of anti-Semitism and agreeing to discipline students who target “Zionists.”

Before Trump was sworn in, however, UCLA faced accusations that it was allowing anti-Semitism to run rampant. In August, a federal judge slammed the university for standing by as anti-Israel activists prevented Jewish students from accessing portions of campus.

The University of California was also among the universities that was granted toothless settlements by the Biden administration. In December, the Department of Education agreed to settle civil rights complaints that alleged widespread discrimination against Jewish students if the University of California agreed to develop voluntary campus “climate surveys” and take other underwhelming measures.

The post UCLA Suspends Students for Justice in Palestine Chapters After Agitators Vandalize Jewish Chancellor’s Home appeared first on .

Linda McMahon, President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Education Department, sailed through her confirmation hearing Thursday, pledging to tackle anti-Semitism and end diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.

In her opening remarks, McMahon, the former World Wrestling Entertainment chief executive and Small Business Administration head during Trump’s first term, told the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions that if confirmed, “the department will not stand idly by while Jewish students are attacked and discriminated against.”

“November proved that Americans overwhelmingly support the president’s vision, and I am ready to enact it,” McMahon said. “Education is the issue that determines our national success and prepares American workers to win the future.”

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.”

Secretary of Education nominee Linda McMahon at her confirmation hearing Thursday pledged to work to protect students from violent campus mobs, adding she will dig into the backlog of antisemitism complaints against universities if she is confirmed. pic.twitter.com/aRpaXRR0UR

— The College Fix (@CollegeFix) February 13, 2025

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

McMahon faced several disruptions from protesters, but proceedings were otherwise relatively tame. Senators on both sides of the aisle appeared open to confirming her next week. The committee is scheduled to vote on her nomination on Feb. 20. If it succeeds, it will proceed to the Senate floor.

The former WWE chief detailed her solutions to improve basic reading and math comprehension, curb censorship, and reinstate American values in schools.

“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 touched on a number of other hot-button issues, such as emphasizing the importance of school choice and career-focused education. She argued that biological boys should not be allowed to compete in women’s sports.

McMahon also defended Trump’s pledge to root out waste, fraud, and abuse across government, including at the Department of Education. Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency announced Monday that the Department of Education had already slashed nearly $900 million, including over $100 million for DEI contracts.

Assessing “programs, how they can have the best oversight possible, how we can really take the bureaucracy out of education, and focus on teaching our children to read and to do math and to appreciate our history is certainly my goal,” 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.

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 Trump administration also launched a task force “to root out anti-Semitic harassment in schools and on college campuses.”

The post Linda McMahon Takes Aim at Campus Anti-Semitism, DEI During Smooth Confirmation Hearing appeared first on .

One of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s (D.) guests on an official state trip to the Middle East this week is an anti-Israel activist who hailed the leader of Hezbollah as a “hero” and recently called for Jews to be sent “back to Poland.”

Whitmer took 17 local officials, businessmen, community leaders, and the head of the Michigan National Guard on a trip to the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to strengthen economic ties to the region. A press release and photos from the first day of the trip show that one of Whitmer’s hand-picked guests was Osama Siblani, the publisher of the Arab American News.

It’s a controversial choice for Whitmer, considered a top contender for the Democratic presidential primary in 2028. Siblani is a vocal critic of Israel and was a leader in the “uncommitted” movement that opposed Joe Biden and Kamala Harris over U.S. support for Israel in its war with the terrorist group Hamas. And Siblani has gone far beyond simple criticism of the Jewish state.

Siblani has for years defended and praised Hamas and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed terrorist groups. At a rally in Dearborn he organized on Sept. 25, Siblani hailed then-Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah as a “hero.”

“They want us to be afraid of praising our leaders and martyrs, but today we say to them that our martyrs are heroes and our leaders are great, especially the great Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah,” Siblani said of the Hezbollah leader who was assassinated in an Israeli airstrike days later.

After chants of “death to Israel” broke out during Siblani’s speech, Siblani responded, “Believe me, they will take care of the job,” an apparent reference to Hezbollah, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute.

And he issued a message to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Jews: “We will take you back to Poland.”

In 2022, Siblani urged Arabs to “fight within [their] means” against Israel, whether with “stones,” “guns,” or “their hands.” He has bragged that he refused to condemn Hamas during a conference call with Biden White House officials in 2021.

Siblani’s rhetoric should be no secret to Whitmer, who will leave office next year. The Anti-Defamation League and other Jewish groups have condemned Siblani’s remarks over the years and blasted the White House and Biden campaign last year for sending officials to meet with Siblani in Dearborn in hopes of gaining his political support.

Whitmer may like to stay in Siblani’s good graces, given his influence within Michigan’s large Arab and Muslim community and her apparent presidential ambitions. Siblani has published Arab American News, the largest Arab-language newspaper in the country, since 1984 and frequently hosts rallies and other events in Dearborn, one of the nation’s largest Muslim-majority cities.

Democrats consider Michigan part of its “Blue Wall” path to winning the electoral college, making the state’s Arab and Muslim vote key to victory. But Whitmer’s coziness with a terrorist sympathizer may not play well in other battleground states.

Whitmer has catered to Siblani throughout her tenure. In 2022, she met with Siblani at his newspaper’s office after he publicly criticized her for visiting Israel. “Governor Whitmer will hear from us soon on her wrong and offensive trip to Israel as its army brutally killing [sic] innocent Palestinians including children while carpet bombing Gaza,” Siblani said.

He published photos after their one-on-one meeting and said Whitmer accepted his invitation to visit Arab countries.

It’s unclear who paid for Siblani’s attendance on the trip.

Whitmer’s other guests on the Middle Eastern trip include Maj. Gen. Paul D. Rogers, the adjutant general of the Michigan National Guard, and a variety of city and county officials from around Michigan.

Several other attendees have been highly critical of Israel, including Wayne County executive Warren Evans and deputy county executive Assad Turfe. Last year, Evans and Turfe were spotted in the front row at anti-Semitic preacher Louis Farrakhan’s speech in Detroit, where the Nation of Islam leader claimed that the United States is “enslaved” to Jews.

Whitmer’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

The post He Said He’d Take Jews ‘Back to Poland.’ Gretchen Whitmer Took Him on an Official State Trip to the Middle East. appeared first on .

President Donald Trump on Thursday announced a new round of reciprocal tariffs on U.S. competitors and allies alike, mirroring the higher rates that other countries impose on American exports.

The tariffs will not take effect immediately—a deliberate move to give countries time to negotiate new trade terms with the United States, a White House official told CNN. Trump has directed his administration officials to “quickly” submit a report detailing the tariffs, which will be tailored to each trading partner.

“It doesn’t matter whether it’s strategic competitors, like communist China, or allies like [the] European Union or Japan or Korea,” a Trump official said. “Every one of those countries is taking advantage of us in different ways, and the president characterizes this as a lack of reciprocal trade.”

The reciprocal tariffs mark Trump’s latest effort to counter foreign “unfair trade practices” and generate revenue to fund promised tax cuts. Since returning to the Oval Office, Trump has levied 10 percent additional tariffs on Chinese goods and 25 percent tariffs on all aluminum and steel imports. “Very simply, it’s if they charge us, we charge them,” Trump said Sunday.

Trump has pledged to take the U.S. economy back to its “golden age” while using tariffs to pressure Mexico and Canada to curb drug trafficking and illegal immigration. The president earlier this month paused his 25 percent tariffs on Mexico and Canada for 30 days after the two countries agreed to deploy troops and personnel to secure their borders with the United States.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday that other countries have been “ripping off” the United States, calling Trump’s tariffs “a great policy that will benefit American workers and improve our national security.”

The post Trump Announces Reciprocal Tariffs on Allies, Competitors To Address ‘Unfair Trade Practices’ appeared first on .

Democratic senator Tina Smith (Minn.) announced Thursday that she will not seek reelection in 2026, complicating her party’s effort to retake the Senate and sparking a frenzy of interest from Democrats in the state.

Smith in a video posted on X said she will retire at the end of her term, in January 2027. The announcement comes after Michigan senator Gary Peters, who led Senate Democrats’ campaign efforts in the past two election cycles, said in late January that he will not run in next year’s midterm elections.

Reports immediately broke that multiple Minnesota Democrats, including failed 2024 vice-presidential candidate and Minnesota governor Tim Walz, are weighing Senate runs. If Walz runs, he will have to face off against his own lieutenant governor, Penny Flanagan, who announced on Instagram that she will seek the open seat.

Anti-Semitic congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who has said American support for Israel is “all about the Benjamins” and criticized the Jewish state after Hamas’s October 7 attack on it, is also considering running, with spokesman Connor McNutt telling Axios that Omar “will be talking with Minnesotans” about the “future of the Senate seat.”

Other Democrats reportedly considering a bid include congresswoman Angie Craig, state attorney general Keith Ellison, Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey, and disgraced former senator Al Franken. On the Republican side, 2024 nominee Royce White has expressed interest.

Democrats face an uphill battle to regain control of the Senate, needing to defend 2 open seats and achieve a net gain of 4 to overturn the 53-47 Republican majority.

While no Republican has won a Minnesota Senate race since 2006, President Donald Trump delivered the strongest performance in the state for a GOP presidential candidate in two decades, securing around 47 percent of the vote.

Smith, 66, was appointed to the Senate in 2018 after Franken resigned amid sexual misconduct allegations. She won a special election that year to complete Franken’s term and was reelected in 2020 for a full six-year term.

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Military leaders at the highest levels of the California National Guard pledged loyalty to the LGBT community during an official ceremony led by the general whom Gov. Gavin Newsom (D.) later appointed to lead the force in 2022. One attendee told the Washington Free Beacon that members felt pressured to appear at the ceremony, which felt “culty.”

The California National Guard is tasked with safeguarding the state from natural disasters such as the fire that scorched Los Angeles in January, but at least four of its generals took a break from those duties to profess their allyship with the LGBT community during a June 27, 2016, event at the guard’s Sacramento headquarters, photos unearthed by the Free Beacon show. Pictures of the ceremony show the generals signing a wide-ranging “Ally Affirmation” statement pledging to challenge anyone who utters an “anti-LGBT joke or remark” in their presence.

The generals also committed to educate themselves and others about “oppression, discrimination, heterosexism, biphobia, transphobia, and homophobia” and to “come out as an ally and tell my family, friends, and colleagues know [sic] that I support equality for LGBT people.”

A retired guardsman who attended the ceremony described it as “very awkward and culty” and said he and other audience members felt pressured to attend out of fear of retaliation.

“The room was full because everybody knew who it was important to,” the retired guardsman told the Free Beacon. “If I didn’t outwardly support this, I was kind of a dead man.”

A former senior leader of the California National Guard told the Free Beacon the ceremony was the brainchild of Major General Matthew Beevers, who at the time served as deputy head of the guard and was pictured onstage during the event. The former leader said Beevers oversaw the guard’s Sacramento headquarters in 2016, worked closely with Newsom, and “knew his proclivity towards this kind of thing.” Newsom, who was the lieutenant governor of California at the time of the ceremony, had already declared his candidacy in the 2018 gubernatorial election, which he ultimately won in a 22-point victory.

“It was very opportunistic, and all of that was designed to curry favor with the person of the governor himself and the governor’s staff, so that Matthew Beevers could eventually become the adjutant general,” the former military leader said. “He believed you don’t have to be good at emergency response or fighting and winning our nation’s wars. You just have to be super woke.”

Newsom appointed Beevers to lead the California National Guard in August 2022. Beevers, who has faced allegations of referring to his Jewish subordinates as “kike lawyers,” secured the promotion after several years of performative virtue-signaling in his capacity as a senior military commander. In addition to organizing the “Ally Affirmation” event, Beevers participated in a “Walk a Mile in Her Shoes” march in 2014, attended Pride parades across California every year from 2018 through 2022, and displayed a “gay as fuck” flag in his Sacramento office in July 2022, the Free Beacon reported.

Beevers is now under fire for dismantling a highly trained volunteer firefighting force known as Team Blaze about a year before the Los Angeles fires. That move rendered the California National Guard incapable of sending a complete firefighting force to the city until 10 days after the fires broke out, the Free Beacon reported. While Newsom’s press office on January 24 disparaged Team Blaze firefighters as “inadequately trained,” military records obtained by the Free Beacon show that the Newsom administration rewarded the team in 2021 for its “outstanding performance” and exemplary “wildland firefighting training.”

Though Beevers is a Newsom political appointee, he also reports to the National Guard Bureau in Arlington, Va., which now falls under the command of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

President Donald Trump in January signed an executive order abolishing diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in the military, and Hegseth pledged to remove any “woke” service members.

The California National Guard did not return a request for comment.

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