Washington Free Beacon

A government watchdog group identified $776 billion in federal programs introduced or modified during the Biden administration to fight global warming and promote green energy. That group, the Functional Government Initiative, is now calling on the White House to use its findings as a framework for clawing back funds where possible.

The group’s director, Chris Stanley, shared the findings—compiled in a 51-page report first obtained by the Washington Free Beacon—with White House Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought on Tuesday. In a letter to Vought, Stanley said the report could be useful for Vought as he directs agencies to “uncover waste, fraud, and abusive federal spending in the name of climate change.”

The Functional Government Initiative’s report and letter to the White House come against the backdrop of a broader administration-wide effort to weed out what they consider to be wasteful government spending. On his first day in office, President Donald Trump established the Department of Government Efficiency, which has since identified millions of dollars in such spending at the United States Agency for International Development and plans to audit several other agencies.

The Biden administration’s climate programs figure to be ripe for audits, considering their size and the pace at which officials disbursed funds. The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, former president Joe Biden’s signature climate law, allocated $369 billion for new green programs, and the infrastructure law passed one year prior devoted billions of dollars more to climate initiatives.

The funding identified in the research encompasses a large number of green energy programs created by the Inflation Reduction Act and infrastructure law. The Trump White House can slow the implementation of the singled-out programs, according to a Brookings Institution report, but a wholesale cancellation of that spending would require an act of Congress.

Programs that existed prior to the Biden administration but which were modified with climate or environmental justice objectives can be changed to exclude such objectives. The Functional Government Initiative, for example, found numerous examples of longstanding programs into which the Biden administration infused its Justice40 Initiative, requiring at least 40 percent of all energy investments to “flow to disadvantaged communities.”

“As you work to implement President Trump’s budget priorities and promote his agenda, this report could be a helpful guide to target many areas where the previous administration allocated vast sums,” Stanley wrote to Vought on Tuesday. “Because these programs were given so much money so quickly, there are significant concerns over transparency, efficiency, and sustainability.”

“Many of these efforts redirected vast amounts of taxpayer resources to partisan special interests and distracted government agencies from best serving the American people with respect to their core statutory duties,” he added in his letter to Vought.

According to the Functional Government Initiative’s research shared with Vought, the $776 billion allocated for climate policies during the Biden administration stem from 730 programs implemented by 22 different agencies. The widespread nature of the spending is because of Biden’s “whole-of-government approach” to fighting global warming, which empowered every agency to take actions targeting carbon emissions and boosting green technologies.

The group noted that while some agencies are authorized by Congress to address pollution and issue environmental regulations, there has been a recent uptick in indicators of misuse, such as sending money to foreign entities, partnering with partisan organizations, and taking steps designed to evade oversight.

The Department of Energy, according to the research, oversees the largest amount of green spending—$418 billion across 160 programs. A large majority of that funding—which was earmarked by the Inflation Reduction Act—is for the agency’s loan programs, like the Energy Infrastructure Reinvestment, Innovative Energy, and Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing programs, which support a wide range of other green technologies like EV manufacturing and solar project development.

During the Biden administration, the Department of Energy closed on 24 loans worth $54 billion and offered conditional loans worth another $53 billion for 28 other projects. That leaves hundreds of billions of dollars in loan authority that remain unspent. The Free Beacon has reported on a number of potential conflict of interest violations committed by Biden administration officials charged with overseeing the Energy Department’s green loans.

The Department of Transportation, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Environmental Protection Agency, and Department of Agriculture collectively oversee another $317 billion worth of climate programs.

The Transportation Department oversees the $7.5 billion National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula Program, which has been panned for yielding just a handful of EV chargers years after it was created. The agency said last week that it had paused approvals under the program.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s programs include the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, emission reduction grants, the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, Clean School Bus Program, and environmental justice programs.

A Free Beacon review showed that the EPA awarded $160 million to the nearly bankrupt electric bus maker Lion Electric under the Clean School Bus Program. The Free Beacon separately reported that the EPA gave hundreds of millions of dollars in environmental justice grants to organizations run by members of its environmental justice advisory council.

“One of the ways we ensure accountability deserving of the public’s trust is through review and oversight,” EPA administrator Lee Zeldin wrote in a memo to EPA staff last week. “This important work enables us all to be more effective in achieving the agency’s mission with the resources and authorities provided by Congress.”

“We have a responsibility not only to be good stewards of our earth, but of the taxpayer resources with which we are entrusted.”

Since the Senate confirmed him late last month, Zeldin has repeatedly vowed to vet the EPA’s spending programs and ensure transparency.

“The Biden Administration’s approach to climate change can be described in three simple words: ‘spend, baby, spend,’” Functional Government Initiative spokesman Roderick Law said. “We expect that, like the rest of the new administration, Director Vought and his staff will hit the ground running, and we hope this roadmap to President Biden’s reckless climate spree will help provide momentum.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

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House Democrats faced a series of awkward moments during a Tuesday rally against President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, with one saying “we have to fuck Trump.”

“I don’t swear in public very well,” Rep. Maxine Dexter (D., Ore.) said, “but we have to fuck Trump.”

“Please don’t tell my children that I just did that,” she added.

“We are going to beat—I was going to say ‘fuck,’ but no,” Rep. Janice Schakowsky (D., Ill.) said. “I’m not going to say that. We are going to beat and we’re going to pull him [Trump] down.”

Rep. Mark Pocan, however, (D., Wis.) joined in saying “fuck Donald Trump,” but added, “and [fuck] Elon Musk.”

Democrats have struggled to pin down a focused message to combat the Trump administration’s flurry of policy changes over the past several weeks, leading to bickering among members of Congress. Sen. Chris Murphy (D., Conn.), for example, said the party’s response has been too weak and inconsistent to combat Trump. He vowed not to vote for a single nominee “while this crisis over federal spending persists” and called for Democrats to follow his lead.

“I do not think that we will be able to convince people that this is a serious, grave moment if we are helping them populate a deeply corrupt government and helping them pass legislation here,” Murphy said.

Union leaders led the Tuesday crowd in a series of a cappella songs attacking Musk, accusing him and other billionaires of trying to “divide us by our color” and “divide us by our tongue.”

“We’ll fight against DOGE. We’ll fight Elon Musk,” union members sang to the melody of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

Last week, a CNN panel held back laughter after watching a montage of Democrats protesting against Trump and Musk. One clip showed Rep. Maxine Waters (Calif.) and Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) holding hands and chanting, “We will win! We won’t rest!” during a Feb. 5 rally in front of the Department of the Treasury building.

Liberal host Jimmy Kimmel also played the clip and said, “Oh, we are so f—ed.”

Democrats have been protesting Trump and Musk since the administration abruptly shuttered the U.S. Agency for International Development last week. On Friday, Waters and a gaggle of House Democrats harassed a federal security guard who blocked the entrance to the Department of Education, which the Trump administration aims to dismantle. Waters promised that similar demonstrations would follow.

The post WATCH: ‘We Have To F—k Trump,’ Congresswoman Says As Democrats Struggle To Form Focused Message appeared first on .

President Donald Trump welcomed Jordan’s King Abdullah II to the White House on Tuesday for a bilateral meeting, during which Trump touted his plan to “take,” “hold,” and “cherish” the war-torn Gaza Strip.

As he appeared alongside Trump, Abdullah did not reject the plan and pledged to accept some 2,000 Gazan refugees. Later, though, Abdullah said he “reiterated Jordan’s steadfast position against the displacement of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.”

Before the meeting, Abdullah and other Arab leaders had condemned Trump’s ambitious plan to resettle Gaza’s entire population in neighboring countries and turn the strip into the “Riviera of the Middle East.” But Abdullah appeared more open as he sat in the White House. He promised to accept an initial tranche of around 2,000 ill Gazan children and said he would “look at the best interests of the United States, of the people in the region,” when determining a plan for Gaza. He also praised Trump.

“I truly believe that with all the challenges that we have in the Middle East, I finally see somebody that can take us across the finish line to bring stability, peace, and prosperity to all of us in the region,” the Jordanian monarch said. “And it is, I think, our collective responsibility in the Middle East to continue to work with you, to support you, to achieve those wealthy goals.”

Abdullah’s response during the meeting suggested Trump could make at least some headway on the issue. But Abdullah spoke more harshly after the meeting, writing in a statement posted to social media that he “reiterated Jordan’s steadfast position against the displacement of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank,” calling it the “unified Arab position.”

Trump, for his part, openly touted his call to take control of Gaza.

“We’re going to run it very properly,” Trump said before suggesting that hotels and other luxury buildings could be constructed. “You’re going to eventually have peace in the Middle East.” Trump called Gaza a “death trap” but said that, with the right development, “it could be a diamond.”

Trump, who was flanked by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, also expressed optimism about pushing Egypt into accepting fleeing Gazans. Though Egyptian president Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi has labeled the plan an “act of injustice,” Trump said he is “99 percent” certain he could reach a deal in the coming weeks.

Some Gazans have expressed an interest in fleeing the strip and living in nearby Arab nations such as Jordan, Egypt, or Saudi Arabia, according to a video produced by the Center for Peace Communications and first reported by the Washington Free Beacon.

“I’m asking Trump himself to relocate us as he suggested, and I’ll be the first one to go,” one interviewee said. “I mean, just look around you—we simply can’t live here.”

After the meeting, Abdullah praised Trump as a “man of peace” who was “instrumental in securing the Gaza ceasefire.” He called on the United States and “all stakeholders” to ensure the ceasefire holds.

That outcome appears unlikely. After Hamas suspended the release of Israeli hostages under the ceasefire deal on Monday, Trump said “all hell is going to break out” if the terror group did not release hostages this week, seemingly giving Israel the green light to cancel the deal. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu later convened an emergency meeting with his security cabinet and warned Hamas that it would face “intense combat” if it did not release hostages by Saturday.

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Joe Biden, sometimes referred to as “Sleepy Joe,” appears destined to live out his final days as one of the most widely reviled figures in American politics. According to a recent Gallup survey, just 39 percent of Americans said they had a favorable opinion of Biden, compared with 57 percent who said they had an unfavorable opinion. He is the least popular living former president by a considerable margin.

Donald Trump is held in far higher esteem, according to the survey, with 48 percent viewing him positively and 50 percent negatively. Bill Clinton, the disgraced philanderer with ties to notorious sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, also registered a favorability rating of 48 percent, with 41 percent of respondents expressing an unfavorable opinion. George W. Bush was rated significantly higher than Biden at 52 percent favorable and 34 percent unfavorable. Barack H. Obama received the highest rating at 59 percent favorable and 36 percent unfavorable. This is likely due to the fact that Obama’s ham-fisted attempts to intervene in the 2024 election, which included scolding black men for hating women, almost certainly played a role in Trump’s victory.

As was often the case throughout his decades-long career in politics, the American public’s perception of Biden is dramatically at odds with his opinion of himself. In the early stages of his term, Biden surrounded himself with elite historians who insisted he would be remembered as a transformative figure in the mold of Abraham Lincoln or Franklin Roosevelt. He ended his term by pardoning his crackhead son and other members of his family, having successfully united his fellow Democrats around the idea that his decision to seek a second term was a shameful act of deranged narcissism.

In his farewell address to the nation, Biden seemed confident that Americans would thank him later for all of his remarkable accomplishments. “You know, it will take time to feel the full impact of all we’ve done together, but the seeds are planted, and they’ll grow and they’ll bloom for decades to come,” he read from the teleprompter.

It’s true that Biden might not be regarded as the worst living former president for very long. Not because public opinion is likely to change, but because despite having just left office, Biden is also the oldest living former president. His brain and body will continue to deteriorate, which means Michelle Obama may soon need a different excuse for skipping another presidential funeral.

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American universities raked in nearly a billion dollars in the past four years from mystery donors in offshore tax havens, according to records reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon. While the universities listed the unnamed donations as coming from places like Bermuda and the Cayman Islands, the Free Beacon traced millions of dollars back to donors linked to China.

The news comes as the Trump administration prepares to crack down on foreign influence on college campuses, following years of Biden administration policies that have shielded the names of foreign university donors from the public.

Since 2021, U.S. universities reported receiving over $600 million from donors in Bermuda, $280 million from Guernsey, $25 million from the British Virgin Islands, $25 million from the Bahamas, $17.5 million from Cayman Islands, and $11 million from the island of Jersey, Department of Education records show. While universities are required to disclose those foreign donors to the federal government under Section 117, the Biden administration broke precedent with prior administrations by withholding the names of foreign donors to the public.

As a result, for the past four years, the Department of Education only released the names of the countries where each donation came from. Tax haven countries represented some of the largest sources of funding during that time, raising questions about transparency and where the actual money is coming from.

In some cases, records reviewed by the Free Beacon show, it’s coming from China.

The University of Pennsylvania, for example, reported in June 2022 that it received $3 million from a donor in the Cayman Islands to support the “Penn Wharton China center including research articles and case studies,” according to federal records. But state records from Pennsylvania—where schools are required to report the names of foreign donors—list the donor as E-House Enterprise Holdings, a Chinese real estate company with a listed address in Hong Kong. The company is led by Xin Zhou, a Chinese national who serves on UPenn’s Wharton Board of Advisors.

State records also show that UPenn received $1 million in 2023 from Qihui Holdings, a shareholder of Chinese shopping platform Meituan Dianping. UPenn’s federal disclosure lists the money as coming from a donor in the British Virgin Islands to support the “Artificial Intelligence Program at the Wharton School.” Meituan Dianping’s cofounder and former CEO, Tao Zhang, is a Chinese national who attended the Wharton School.

Both Zhou and Zhang’s past contributions to UPenn have come under scrutiny. In 2020, the Free Beacon reported that a $3 million donation the school claimed was from Zhou actually came from a Hong Kong company owned by a Shanghai businessman with deep ties to Chinese government officials. UPenn also sparked controversy for taking money from Zhang in 2022 after Fox News reported on his company’s involvement in party-building activities for the Chinese Communist Party and CCP-connected shareholders, including Tencent and Alibaba.

The Pennsylvania records were obtained by watchdog group Americans for Public Trust and shared with the Free Beacon. The group’s director, Caitlin Sutherland, called for a federal foreign funding reporting system that includes donors’ names.

“The current system allows the individual sources of the foreign money to remain obscured from the public, which raises serious concerns when the donors hail from adversarial countries like China and Qatar,” said Sutherland. “The American public deserves to know exactly who is buying influence in our higher education system.”

In addition to UPenn, state records show that Carnegie Mellon University received $100,000 through the Cayman Islands from the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute in August 2022. The donation does not appear to be listed in federal foreign donor records.

Tianqiao Chen, a billionaire and reported member of the Chinese Communist Party, sparked outcry from Republican lawmakers last year after reporting revealed him to be the second-largest foreign farmland owner in the United States.

Other university disclosures also raise questions about the true sources of donations from known tax havens.

In 2023, Yale reported receiving a $79 million donation from the island of Guernsey to fund an “institute to enhance the understanding of human cognition.” Yale’s Wu Tsai Institute, which focuses on the study of human cognition, is bankrolled by Joseph Tsai, the chairman of China’s Alibaba Group. Alibaba has extensive ties to the Chinese government, which owns stakes in a number of its business units.

Although state records aren’t available to confirm that Tsai is the donor—Connecticut does not publish such records—the Joe and Clara Tsai Foundation is based in the island of Guernsey, according to corporate disclosures. Yale has reported receiving over $400 million from Guernsey since 2020.

Yale faced an investigation under the first Trump administration in connection with donations from Tsai. The Department of Education accused the school of failing to disclose hundreds of millions in foreign grants, including $30 million from Tsai.

Tsai is also a major donor to the China Center at the University of San Diego, a school that reported receiving $14 million from the island of Guernsey in 2022 and 2023.

UPenn, Carnegie Mellon, and Yale did not respond to requests for comment.

Earlier this month, the American Enterprise Institute published a report noting that American universities have “failed to report billions in foreign funding, which drove the first Trump administration to launch several investigations into Section 117 noncompliance.” The report noted that schools under investigation reported receiving nearly $900 million in funding from China.

Mark Schneider, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told the Free Beacon that the Biden administration “did almost nothing” to investigate whether schools were complying with the disclosure requirements. He expects this to change quickly under the Trump administration.

Schneider said donors could use tax haven countries as a way of “hiding the ultimate source of the money.”

“There’s a lot of suspicion of elite institutions,” said Schneider. “They’re going to be under a lot of pressure and [face] a lot of investigations into their practices.”

The post Under Biden, American Universities Raked In Nearly $1 Billion From Mystery Offshore Donors, Including Some Linked to China appeared first on .

Journalists, Deep State lackeys, and other Democrats are aghast at the thought of Elon Musk and his team at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) rooting out waste in the federal bureaucracy. For people who love bureaucrats, some of the proposed cuts are hard to swallow. The libs have become particularly obsessed with the nom de guerre of a 19-year-old savant—”Big Balls”—who is reportedly helping DOGE fulfill its mission. They’ve been saying it a lot on television, anyway, which may or may not bolster their argument that federal agencies are noble stewards of our taxpayer dollars and beyond reproach. 

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Hours after Hamas announced it would not move forward with the next scheduled release of Israeli hostages, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the terror group to release nine of the remaining hostages by Saturday afternoon or face “intense combat” in the Gaza Strip that will continue until the terror group is “decisively defeated.”

“If Hamas does not return our hostages by Saturday noon, the ceasefire will end, and the IDF will resume intense combat until Hamas is decisively defeated,” the Israeli leader said Tuesday as a tenuous ceasefire between the sides begins to fully unravel.

Netanyahu’s remarks came shortly after Hamas shuttered the next round of hostage releases, scheduled for Saturday, over purported Israeli “violations” of the ceasefire deal. In turn, President Donald Trump said “all hell is going to break out” if Hamas did not release “all” remaining hostages by Saturday, comments that emphasized his support for Israel ditching the ceasefire and resuming full-scale military operations.

Netanyahu isn’t doing that yet, but he could soon restart the war if Hamas fails to heed his demands. Late Monday, Netanyahu’s administration ordered Israeli forces to surround the Gaza Strip in preparation for war.

“In light of Hamas’ announcement of its decision to violate the agreement and not release our hostages, last night I ordered the IDF to gather forces inside and around the Gaza Strip,” Netanyahu said following an emergency meeting with his security cabinet. “This operation is being carried out at this time. It will be completed in the very near future.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu:

“I have just concluded an in-depth four-hour discussion in the political-security cabinet. We all expressed our outrage at the shocking situation of our three hostages who were released last Saturday.

We all also welcomed President Trump’s… pic.twitter.com/E9nYM13PwH

— Iris (@streetwize) February 11, 2025

The ongoing developments highlight the ceasefire’s fragility and reflect mounting frustration in Israel over Hamas’s treatment of the captives, including those who have already been released. Seventeen Israeli hostages are still scheduled to be freed during the first phase of a three-tiered agreement, though the prospects of this occurring are dim. Israel said it will not move forward with negotiations over the deal’s second phase until all of its hostages come home.

In several stage-managed ceremonies held in recent weeks, Hamas has paraded malnourished Israeli hostages through the Gaza Strip, threatening their safety. The scenes have roiled the Israeli public and drawn outrage from Trump, who likened the captives to “Holocaust survivors.”

“Who could take that?” Trump said on Monday. “At some point, we are going to lose our patience. They look like they haven’t eaten for months. There is no reason for this.”

The post Israel Fires Warning Shot at Hamas: Release Our Hostages By Saturday or Face ‘Intense Combat’ appeared first on .

An Israeli man long believed to be in Hamas captivity was in fact murdered during the terrorist group’s October 7 attack, Israeli officials confirmed Tuesday.

Hamas terrorists killed 86-year-old Shlomo Mansour at his home in Kibbutz Kissufim and took his body to Gaza. Mansour’s death was determined by “a panel of health experts and members of the rabbinate” based on intelligence gathered in recent months by the Israel Defense Forces, the Times of Israel reported. His wife, Mazal, managed to escape.

Mansour was among 33 Israeli hostages slated for release under the first phase of a recent ceasefire deal. As of Tuesday morning, Hamas has freed only 16 Israeli and 5 Thai hostages in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails. Seventeen Israelis remain in captivity, with both sides acknowledging that eight hostages are dead. The names of the deceased have not been disclosed.

Mansour’s family described him as “the pillar of strength for our entire family” and “a man of high morals and values, a lover of humanity, who always helped others wholeheartedly,” the Times reported.

Born in Iraq, Mansour survived the 1941 Farhud pogrom against Baghdad’s Jewish community. He emigrated to Israel with his family at age 13 and later helped found Kibbutz Kissufim, the BBC reported.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Mansour “one of the builders of the country,” vowing to bring his body back to Israel. “We will continue to take determined and relentless action until we return all of our hostages—the living and the deceased,” Netanyahu said.

Hamas on Monday threatened to delay its hostage release scheduled for this weekend, accusing Israel of stalling humanitarian aid deliveries. In response, President Donald Trump urged Israel to cancel the deal and “let hell break out” if Hamas fails to release all hostages by Saturday.

The post Israeli Man, Thought To Be Hostage in Gaza, Was Killed on Oct. 7, Israel Says appeared first on .

Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, is eyeing a 2026 Michigan Senate run. (He coincidently moved his family to Traverse City in 2022.) So far, critics from both parties have focused on his status as a carpetbagger. But Buttigieg now has larger issues to contend with, starting with his avowed support for taxpayer-funded sex change surgeries for federal inmates and illegal immigrants.

Like Harris, Buttigieg filled out the 2019 American Civil Liberties Union candidate survey. And like Harris, Buttigieg told the organization that, if elected, “he would use executive authority to ensure that federal inmates and illegal immigrants have access to ‘comprehensive treatment associated with gender transition, including all necessary surgical care,'” Free Beacon editor in chief Eliana Johnson reports.

“I would direct my HHS Office of Civil Rights and Department of Justice to vigorously enforce all federal laws against discrimination based on gender identity, including ensuring the provision of all medically necessary care for transgender Americans,” Buttigieg wrote in his survey response. “This includes medical care for transgender individuals incarcerated in federal prisons and under immigration detention.”

“Buttigieg’s responses are newly relevant given his interest in jumping into the Michigan Senate race, certain to be one of the most hotly contested races of the midterm election cycle in the wake of Democratic incumbent Gary Peters’s announcement that he will not run for reelection,” writes Johnson.

“But Buttigieg’s left-wing social views may prove problematic in the swing state, which President Donald Trump—as well as the state’s Democratic Senate candidate, Elissa Slotkin—carried in November.”

When Donald Trump laid out his plan to “own” Gaza and relocate its inhabitants, mainstream media outlets like ABC News rushed to the war-torn strip to interview elderly residents of so-called refugee camps, all of whom said they would never leave. But others are offering a different view. Believe it or not, they’re eager to get out of the territory Hamas has turned into a living hell.

That’s according to a new video from the Center for Peace Communications, a New York nonprofit that produces on-the-ground videos throughout the Middle East. The group interviewed Gazans in the 36 hours that followed Trump’s Feb. 4 speech outlining plans to make the strip the “Riviera of the Middle East.”

One young man, sporting a backward cap, made a direct plea to the Don: “I’m asking Trump himself to relocate us as he suggested, and I’ll be the first one to go,” he said. Others called on Arab nations like Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia to take in fleeing Gazans. Another predicted that his neighbors would ultimately “accept reality” and leave the strip if given the opportunity because “they want to live.”

The interviews align with a Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research poll taken just before Hamas’s terror attack, which found that 44 percent of Gazans between the ages of 18 and 29 were considering emigrating. Joseph Braude, president of the Center for Peace Communications, told us that number has “undoubtedly” risen to a majority “over the course of the war and … over the weeks of this recent ceasefire when Gazans had a chance to tour the north and see what happened to their homes.”

Read more and watch the full video here.

On Friday, the Trump administration made a first move in its efforts to defund DEI, canceling $15 million in federal grants used to underwrite diversity programs at three universities. On Monday, a fresh lawsuit provided the administration with a blueprint on how to charge forward.

The suit, first reported by our Aaron Sibarium, accuses the University of Illinois Chicago of engaging in illegal race discrimination through a slew of race-based hiring programs that called on departments to hire people of color. The plaintiff, former professor of public administration and data science Stephen Kleinschmit, says he was fired for raising concerns about those programs.

Kleinschmit’s complaint “argues his firing was both a form of retaliation and race discrimination,” writes Sibarium. “Though UIC claimed he was being fired due to budget cuts—which did not result in any other layoffs—those cuts came as his department was seeking to hire a scholar ‘from a community of color.'”

While discrimination complaints have focused in large part on admissions processes, student privacy laws shield admissions files from public view, making such cases difficult to win.

“The faculty hiring process, on the other hand, tends to produce a paper trail that is accessible through litigation and, at public universities, subject to public records requests. That could make programs like UIC’s easy pickings for private litigants and federal agencies amid the legal siege promised by the Trump administration, which has issued a series of executive orders targeting universities and DEI.”

Away from the Beacon:

• A former IDF soldier says that, on a patrol of an undisclosed village, he found sniper rifles, anti-tank missiles, explosives—and care packages marked “USAID.” Is that what Democrats call lifesaving aid?
• Congrats, Washingtonians: Donald Trump is set to issue an executive order that would increase criminal penalties and clear homeless camps in D.C.
• Days into the Trump administration’s second “Maximum Pressure” campaign, Iran’s currency plunged to an all-time low, falling 75 percent from the same period in 2024, according to the Foundations for Defense of Democracy.

The post Not Just Kamala: Buttigieg Backed Taxpayer-Funded Transgender Surgeries for Criminals. Plus, Gazans Say They Want Out. appeared first on .

Foreign students and professors have played a leading role in fomenting pro-terror and anti-Semitic demonstrations on U.S. college campuses. Now, many of them could face federal investigation or deportation following an executive order from President Donald Trump that calls on federal agencies to identify foreign “Hamas sympathizers on college campuses.”

“To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you,” a fact sheet accompanying the order states.

Legal experts say foreign students and professors could now see their visas revoked for expressing support for terrorist groups or committing illegal activities as part of anti-Israel campus demonstrations. Betar USA, an anti-Semitism watchdog group, said it has identified a list of pro-Hamas student visa holders who could be subject to deportation and is assisting the Trump administration with its efforts.

“We’re having people throughout the country, North America, reaching out to us, professors, administrators, and sharing with us some of their concerns with certain individuals,” a representative for Betar USA told the Washington Free Beacon. “Our specific focus in this conversation is the students, and the takeover of universities throughout this country [that are] fomenting this very dangerous narrative.” Here are some of the names Betar submitted to the Trump administration:

Momodou Taal

Affiliation: Cornell University

Role: Graduate student

Countries of Origin: Gambia and the United Kingdom

Taal, who disclosed his F-1 visa status in an October interview with Inside Higher Ed, has repeatedly advocated for “armed resistance” and praised the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7. While leading an anti-Israel campus demonstration last year, Taal announced that he took his “cue from the armed resistance in Palestine.”

“We are in solidarity with the armed resistance in Palestine from the river to the sea,” he said.

Just hours after the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre, Taal praised the Hamas attacks on social media.

“The dialect demands: That wherever you have oppression, you will find those who are fighting against it. Glory to the resistance!” he wrote on X.

Taal drew national media attention in October when he was suspended for “escalating, egregious behavior and a disregard for the university policies,” including an anti-Israel demonstration that shut down a school career fair. Cornell planned to disenroll him, a move that would have brought about his deportation, but the school reversed course after pressure from anti-Israel groups.

“I don’t think they anticipated the level of backlash,” Taal said of Cornell. Prior to his suspension, he taught a course titled, “What Is Blackness? Race and Processes of Racialization.” After Cornell ruled in his favor, allowing him to retain his F-1 visa, Taal said in a statement, “There will never come a time where I say to myself that I went too hard for Gaza.”

Mohsen Mahdawi

Affiliation: Columbia University

Territory of Origin: West Bank

Role: Graduate student

Mahdawi, who has disclosed in media interviews that he “grew up in a Palestinian refugee camp,” has served as a leader in anti-Israel campus groups since first moving to the United States more than a decade ago. He is now in his mid-30s.

Most recently, Mahdawi served as co-president of Columbia’s Palestinian Students Union, a coalition of anti-Israel student groups, including Columbia’s suspended Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace chapters. The union has organized protests calling for Columbia’s divestment from Israel alongside Columbia University Apartheid Divest, the student organization behind the illegal encampments that plagued the school in the spring and led to the violent storming of a campus building, Hamilton Hall.

In public statements, Mahdawi has called for the destruction of Israel and blamed the Oct. 7 slaughter on the Jewish state.

“Hamas is a product of the Israeli occupation,” he told a New England newspaper two weeks after the terror attack. Mahdawi, according to the newspaper, also helped pen an Oct. 14 statement issued by anti-Israel groups at Columbia that said the “Palestinian struggle for freedom is rooted in international law, under which occupied peoples have the right to resist the occupation of their land.”

“If every political avenue available to Palestinians is blocked, we should not be surprised when resistance and violence breaks out.”

Mahmoud Khalil

Affiliation: Columbia University

Country of Origin: Canada

Role: Graduate student

Khalil, an activist with Columbia University Apartheid Divest, served as a lead negotiator for the group during Columbia’s illegal anti-Israel encampment last spring. At the time, he vowed that the group would “remain in this encampment until we achieve all of our demands,” which included a boycott of Israel.

“We have been negotiating since last night for more than 11 hours with the university to meet our demands regarding the cutting of economic and academic ties with Israeli universities and the universities involved in slaughtering our Palestinian people,” Khalil said in an interview.

Around that time, in April 2024, Khalil confirmed to Al Jazeera that he is “in the United States on an F-1 student visa.” He was suspended from Columbia for his role in the encampment, though the school quickly dropped the disciplinary measure, allowing Khalil to stay in the United States.

From there, Khalil plotted with fellow Columbia University Apartheid Divest members to carry out anti-Israel protests when they came back to campus in the fall. On the first day of classes, in September, student radicals blocked the entrance to the school, praised Hamas, vandalized a campus statue, and clashed with police.

“What we will see [is] the students will continue their activism, will continue doing what they’ve done in conventional and unconventional ways,” Khalil told the Hill one month prior in August. “So not only protests, not only encampments, kind of any—any available means necessary to push Columbia to divest from Israel.”

“And we’ve been working all this summer on our plans, on what’s next to pressure Columbia to listen to the students and to decide to be on the right side of history.”

Last year, Khalil reportedly served as an intern at UNRWA, a United Nations program tied to Palestinian terrorism, which the Trump administration recently stopped funding.

Mosab Abu Toha

Affiliation: Syracuse University

Role: Professor

Territory of Origin: Gaza

A month after the Oct. 7 attacks, Israeli officials detained and questioned Toha, a poet in Gaza, over ties to Hamas. Although he was released after a day, he claimed he was beaten and tortured.

In response to his unsubstantiated allegations, in November 2023, Syracuse bestowed Toha with a visiting faculty appointment through its “Scholars at Risk” program.

Since then, Toha has called for “boycotting Israeli cultural institutions and anyone coming from that part,” suggested the Oct. 7 attacks were Palestinians “retaliating” for Israel’s establishment in 1948, and denounced anyone who mentions Hamas’s mass slaughter of Israelis on Oct. 7.

“If one wants to talk about retaliating what happened on October 7, can we at the same time talk about retaliating [for] the massacres of 1948 [and] the ensuing mass exodus of 800,000 people?” he wrote in one X post.

In another post, he wrote: “If anyone mentions to you the words ‘October 7’ or ‘Hostages,’ spit the blood of Gaza kids in their faces.”

Toha confirmed his visa status in an August 2024 Instagram post, which included a poem he said he wrote “right after my visa interview at the American embassy in Jordan.”

 

The Betar spokesman homed in on Toha, calling him “the poster child of exactly who the Trump administration must immediately deport from America.”

“The Israeli military detained him for activities connected to terrorism shortly after the October 7th massacres, and a few weeks later an American university hired him and brought him to America,” he told the Free Beacon. “Since then, he incites against Jews and America calling for revolutions and regular anti-American and Anti-Israel activities.”

The schools mentioned above did not respond to requests for comment.

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