The Independent Women’s Forum (IWF) sent letters to members of the National Panhellenic Conference’s (NPC) 26 sororities Wednesday urging them to tell NPC to keep sororities open only to women.

IWF’s “Tell National Panhellenic Conference And Sorority Leadership: Save Our Sisterhood” letter, first shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation, urges sorority members to sign on to the campaign to protect sororities from biological males amidst a push by the NPC to allow men to join historically women-only spaces. The campaign has already garnered 1,000 letters from sorority women across the country.

“Today’s sororities were founded in the late 1800s when women were not openly welcomed in college settings,” the letter reads. “Sadly, the very organization whose mission has been to support and empower women through single sex environments, has turned its back on women in the name of social convenience.”

Save Our Sisterhood Open Letter 0425 p7 by jesse

NPC in 2020 appointed several diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) consultants who pushed the sororities to begin allowing men who claim to be women into the organizations, IWF’s letter alleges. The DEI team intended to address “racism and racial injustice” and review policies that “significantly benefited white women and others with privilege,” according to their website.

A 2020 blog post by NPC titled “We Hear You And We Are Listening” also stated the organization intended to reconsider “norms and practices that create barriers facing potential members based on racial identity, ethnicity, LGBTQ identity, religious beliefs, ability and socioeconomic status, among others.”

Several chapters have since been forced to admit males.

“[W]hy are these leaders not standing up for women? Why are our organizations, whose mission is to support our young women, surrendering to efforts to erase the very concept of women as a distinct biological category?” the letter asks. “We call on NPC and all NPC sororities to return to their stated missions of advocating for women and vigorously defending their right to provide a single-sex environment.”

“Sororities were created to give women a place on college campuses,” Hannah Holtmeier, a senior at the University of Nebraska Lincoln and Independent Women ambassador, told the DCNF. “By allowing men to invade sororities we are taking a step backwards and robbing women of all the opportunities that come from being a member. I’ve grown and learned so much from being in Kappa and it’s sad to think about young girls not getting the chance to experience Greek Life like I have.”

Holtmeier is also a plaintiff in Westenbroek v. Kappa Kappa Gamma, a lawsuit challenging a University of Wyoming sorority chapter for initiating a man who allegedly “upended the privacy and intimacy of the sorority home including by watching the women change, taking unwanted photographs, and asking invasive sexual questions.”

NPC sororities represent over 5 million women.

“NPC promises within their mission statement to preserve a women’s only sorority experience,” Jaylyn Westenbroek, an Independent Women ambassador and another plaintiff in Westenbroek v. Kappa Kappa Gamma, told the DCNF. “It’s time to hold them to their own values of what has been promised to every member. These women’s only spaces can only be preserved if NPC steps up to recognize real women.”

“It is our duty to hold NPC accountable for their actions,” Independent Women ambassador and lawsuit plaintiff Allie Coghan told the DCNF. “They have robbed us of the sisterhood we were promised when we joined. This is supposed to be something that ‘never happens’ and if it can happen in Wyoming, then it can happen anywhere. All 26 NPC sororities need to recognize what is happening and stand up for women. NPC needs to return to its original mission and support women before there is no Greek life left. After all NPC is nothing with out its members.”

NPC did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to reflect that the letter is part of a national campaign and added data reflecting the amount of letters garnered since launch.

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Pope Francis, Bishop of Rome and Supreme Pontiff of the Catholic Church, who worked to instill progressive influences on the global church while maintaining unity with conservatives amid years of turmoil, died Monday morning, Vatican camerlengo Cardinal Kevin Farrell announced.

Pope Francis died on Easter Monday, April 21, 2025, at the age of 88 at his residence in the Vatican’s Casa Santa Marta. pic.twitter.com/jUIkbplVi2

— Vatican News (@VaticanNews) April 21, 2025

He was 88 years old.

I just learned of the passing of Pope Francis. My heart goes out to the millions of Christians all over the world who loved him.

I was happy to see him yesterday, though he was obviously very ill. But I’ll always remember him for the below homily he gave in the very early days…

— JD Vance (@JDVance) April 21, 2025

“Dearest brothers and sisters, with deep sorrow I must announce the death of our Holy Father Francis. At 7:35 this morning, the Bishop of Rome, Francis, returned to the house of the Father. His entire life was dedicated to the service of the Lord and His Church,” Farrell announced.

Today I met with the Holy Father Pope Francis. I am grateful for his invitation to meet, and I pray for his good health.

Happy Easter! pic.twitter.com/SIhU9gYQl2

— Vice President JD Vance (@VP) April 20, 2025

Pope Francis met briefly with U.S. Vice President @JDVance on Easter Sunday. The private audience lasted a few minutes. They exchanged Easter greetings, and the pope gave Vance a Vatican tie, rosaries and a set of three large chocolate Easter eggs for his kids. pic.twitter.com/v48BsukaDQ

— EWTN News (@EWTNews) April 20, 2025

Democrat Senator Chris Van Hollen confirmed on Sunday that hardworking American taxpayers funded his trip to El Salvador so he could meet with an alleged MS-13 gang member currently held at the CECOT prison.

Last week Van Hollen met with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a wife beater and alleged MS-13 gang banger who was deported for illegally residing in Maryland – and YOU paid for his political stunt.

Fox News anchor Shannon Bream asked Van Hollen, “Who did pay for this trip?”

“This was an officially cleared congressional trip – cleared on a bipartisan basis,” Van Hollen said.

“So taxpayer dollars?” Shannon Bream asked.

“Yes, like every other trip,” Van Hollen said.

WATCH:

@ChrisVanHollen confirms taxpayers paid for him to fly to El Salvador and sip margaritas with a deported illegal immigrant MS-13 gang member pic.twitter.com/xByXzeRoYi

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) April 20, 2025

On Wednesday, the corrupt Maryland Senator flew all the way to El Salvador for a photo op in his fight to smuggle deported MS-13 gang member Kilmar Abrego Garcia back to the US.

“I just landed in San Salvador a little while ago, and I look forward to meeting with the team at the U.S. embassy to discuss the release of Mr. Abrego Garcia,” Van Hollen said.

“I also hope to meet with Salvadoran officials and with Kilmar himself. He was illegally abducted and needs to come home,” he added.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia is now home in his native country of El Salvador and Van Hollen tried to actually take him out of his home country and smuggle him over the US border.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia is an El Salvadorian national who was illegally residing in Maryland. In 2019, an immigration judge ordered Abrego Garcia, an alleged member of the dangerous MS-13 gang, removed from the US. Additionally, an immigration appellate court also upheld the immigration judge’s decision. Abrego Garcia was given ‘due process.’

But this wasn’t good enough for Van Hollen.

On Thursday, after he was denied entry into the CECOT prison, Van Hollen met with Abrego Garcia.

“I said my main goal of this trip was to meet with Kilmar. Tonight I had that chance. I have called his wife, Jennifer, to pass along his message of love. I look forward to providing a full update upon my return,” Van Hollen said alongside a photo of the two sitting down for coffee.

I said my main goal of this trip was to meet with Kilmar. Tonight I had that chance. I have called his wife, Jennifer, to pass along his message of love. I look forward to providing a full update upon my return. pic.twitter.com/U9y2gZpxCb

— Senator Chris Van Hollen (@ChrisVanHollen) April 18, 2025

El Salvador’s Bukele mocked Van Hollen and posted of a photo of him enjoying margaritas with Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

“Kilmar Abrego Garcia, miraculously risen from the “death camps” & “torture”, now sipping margaritas with Sen. Van Hollen in the tropical paradise of El Salvador!” Bukele said on X.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, miraculously risen from the “death camps” & “torture”, now sipping margaritas with Sen. Van Hollen in the tropical paradise of El Salvador! pic.twitter.com/r6VWc6Fjtn

— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) April 18, 2025

On Friday, Van Hollen accused El Salvador’s government of planting the drinks.

“About Margaritagate, I don’t know if you guys are following this or not but President Bukele, after I met with Kilmar, did this tweet showing us at a table with these two glasses – so, here’s what happened…when I first sat down with Kilmar we had glasses of water on the table and as we were talking one of the government people came over and deposited two other glasses on the table with ice – and I don’t know if it’s salt or sugar around the top but they look like margaritas,” Van Hollen said accusing the El Salvadoran government of a conspiracy to frame him.

“Neither of us touched the drinks that were in front of us and if you want to play a little Sherlock Homes …nobody drank any margaritas or sugar water or what it is…this is the lesson in the lengths that President Bukele will do to deceive people about what’s going on,” Van Hollen said before he trashed Trump.

This article originally appeared on The Gateway Pundit.com.

PALM BEACH, Florida – Is the Democratic Party suffering from dementia, or was this intentional?

The party is celebrating Easter this year by honoring recent Democrat presidents, with a glaring exception: the most recent commander in chief in the person of Joe Biden.

The party’s official X account on Sunday posted a “Happy Easter!” message, featuring family-holiday photos of John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

Happy Easter! pic.twitter.com/C6lnY5jazq

— Democrats (@TheDemocrats) April 20, 2025

Reaction to the omission was curious.

“Why’d you leave out the most recent Democrat president?” asked one X user.

Why’d you leave out the most recent Democrat president pic.twitter.com/RPsK24e0QU

— Matt Whitlock (@mattdizwhitlock) April 20, 2025

You forgot to include last year when KJP had to dress as the Easter bunny so she could point Biden in which direction to walk in order to cover up his dementia. “Sharp as a tack” pic.twitter.com/TKSRejhumO

— Trump World (@Louaye1980) April 20, 2025

https://t.co/JomsWmWqsT

— Monika (@MonikaMusing) April 20, 2025

pic.twitter.com/by6kLgGzyi

— Bill Simmons (@billsimmonslive) April 20, 2025

Meanwhile, as WorldNetDaily reported, President Donald Trump shredded Biden in his own Easter greeting.

“Sleepy Joe Biden purposefully allowed Millions of CRIMINALS to enter our Country, totally unvetted and unchecked, through an Open Borders Policy that will go down in history as the single most calamitous act ever perpetrated upon America,” Trump posted on Truth Social.

“He was, by far, our WORST and most Incompetent President, a man who had absolutely no idea what he was doing — But to him, and to the person that ran and manipulated the Auto Pen (perhaps our REAL President!), and to all of the people who CHEATED in the 2020 Presidential Election in order to get this highly destructive Moron Elected, I wish you, with great love, sincerity, and affection, a very Happy Easter!!!”

Is the news we hear every day actually broadcasting messages from God? The answer is an absolute yes! Find out how!

Follow Joe on X @JoeKovacsNews

‘Sinister’: Trump uses Easter to torch ‘lunatics’ and ‘weak, ineffective’ judges allowing U.S. invasion to continue

Not everyone has the patience of a saint — but Antonia Salzano’s son, Carlo, did.

With Carlo Acutis’ canonization by Pope Francis just one week away, he’s already been globally heralded as the first-ever millennial saint.

“The more Eucharist we receive, the more we become like JESUS so that on this earth we will have the foretaste of Heaven.”

Blessed Carlo Acutis pic.twitter.com/xCyQXKdJN2

— Jan (@RosaryMum) April 17, 2025

But his mother, admittedly, never shared the same concern for her spiritual life.

The Trump administration intends to overhaul the Endangered Species Act by changing what it means to harm an endangered or threatened species as part of the larger White House campaign to spur economic growth through deregulation, RealClearPolitics is first to report.

The president has long loathed red tape of the green variety, and one White House official predicted that overhauling the act “will have a seismic, real-world effect on the ability to build.”

“Environmental is the biggest tool for stopping growth,” Trump said during an interview with Joe Rogan last October, harking back to his New York days as a real estate developer and complaining that rare flora and fauna on a job site could quickly grind even the biggest construction projects to a halt. The candidate called environmental regulations “a weapon,” and later as president-elect, he vowed to expedite the environmental permit and approval process for any company investing at least $1 billion in the United States. Wrote Trump on Truth Social last December, “GET READY TO ROCK!!!”

Trump has slashed and burned his way through much of the regulatory regime of his predecessor already, rescinding nearly 80 Biden-era climate-related orders during his first day in office alone. Overhauling the ESA would easily eclipse those efforts, changing the regulatory, and perhaps natural, landscape forever.

The proposed reform must still make its way through the federal rule-making process. Legal challenges are almost certain to follow, although a conservative Supreme Court may not be sympathetic.

Sweeping change would follow from redefining a single word: harm.

While the plain text of the Nixon-era law prohibits the harming of endangered species, regulatory agencies have taken an expansive view that also prohibits modifying or degrading habitats where wildlife resides. The subsequent regulation has bedeviled conservatives and industry alike for decades. But now the administration intends to define “harm” as an attempt to “take” an endangered species, that is, “to harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, or collect” the animal itself.

For instance, hunting the northern spotted owl would remain illegal under the new rule; building a home or logging timber in a habitat where that bird is known to roost likely would not.

The example isn’t incidental. The rule change runs to the heart of a longstanding debate over how the act ought to apply to private property. When the owl in question was listed as a threatened species in 1990, the federal government placed millions of acres in the Pacific Northwest off limits. Logging companies filed suit. The high court ruled against them.

And environmentalists rejoiced in the victory. They had likened the alternative – protecting wildlife without regulating private land – to playing the piano “with just the black keys.” But writing for the dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia warned that an expansive definition of harm expanded the regulation’s reach and “imposes unfairness to the point of financial ruin,” not just upon businesses “but upon the simplest farmer who finds his land conscripted to national zoological use.”

Conservatives insist that Scalia could see into the future. In the wake of that landmark case, Babbitt v. Sweet Home Chapter of Communities for a Great Oregon, the right argues that environmentalists and government agencies didn’t focus on bringing endangered species back from the brink so much as the left used the act to expand their power at the expense of industry. “Left-wing activists love the status quo,” complained one Trump official, “because it stops development, stops growth, and hurts the economy.”

“The groups use endangered species, sometimes ones that aren’t actually endangered at all, as a fig leaf to stop all growth,” the official added. “And they do the same with ludicrous arguments that habitat will be impacted, to halt development and kill the economy.”

The White House doesn’t have to look far for environmental activism allegedly dressed up as conservation. Consider the snail darter.

The little freshwater fish swims in Eastern Tennessee rivers and was listed as endangered in 1973, a designation that halted construction of the Tellico Dam. The only problem? Scientists now say it does not exist. “There is, technically, no snail darter,” Thomas Near, curator of ichthyology at the Yale Peabody Museum and a professor at that university’s fish biology lab, told The New York Times.

Opponents of the dam insisted that the two-inch nonedible fish was a distinct species and successfully used its protected status to stop construction. Decades later, Near and other scientists concluded that the snail darter is no different than another unremarkable and very much not endangered fish, the stargazing darter. It is Exhibit A, the professor told the Times, of “the ‘conservation species concept,’ where people are going to decide a species should be distinct because it will have a downstream conservation implication.”

The Tellico Dam began operating in 1979, but not until after a protracted legal fight and a special exemption signed into law that same year by President Jimmy Carter. The fish population, meanwhile, thrives. Other examples abound for the right.

There is the endangered dusky gopher frog. The Obama administration designated 1,500 acres of private land in Louisiana as a “critical habitat” for the shy frog even though the reptile was only known to inhabit wetlands in southern Mississippi.

Then there was the Johnston’s frankenia, a blueish-gray shrub that enjoyed protected status for decades until 2003 when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service deemed its population had recovered. Conservatives complain that the government didn’t remove the designation until 2016.

More recently, a rare buckwheat gave the Biden administration fits. Though one of over 300 varieties, Tiehm’s buckwheat grows only near lithium and boron deposits, an inconvenient horticultural headache for industries eager to mine those minerals critical for electric vehicle batteries. The flowering plant earned endangered status in 2022.

Nothing quite draws the ire of Trump like the Delta smelt. He has been at war with little fish for as long as he has been in politics. Though functionally extinct, the president blames the four-inch fish, once common in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, for allowing an environmentalism run wild. He has blamed the water woes of California on misguided efforts to “protect an essentially worthless fish.”

The administration will likely have a free hand as they seek to overhaul the Endangered Species Act. In the 1995 Babbitt decision, the Supreme Court relied on the so-called Chevron deference. When Congress has not addressed a question directly, the high court, per that doctrine, was expected to follow a federal agency’s interpretation of a given statute. In Babbitt, the Supreme Court adopted the expansive regulatory definition of harm set forth by the Fish and Wildlife Service.

Fast forward 30 years, and Chevron is no more. The Supreme Court overruled it last summer when Chief Justice John Roberts ruled the doctrine “fundamentally misguided.”

Environmental advocates have been bracing for a deregulatory onslaught since the moment Trump won reelection. According to Noah Greenwald, director of the Center for Biological Diversity, redefining what amounts to a “harm” is the “first step toward stripping habitat protections from rare plants and animals headed toward extinction.” He called it nothing less than “a death sentence.”

“The Trump administration has been systematically killing protections for our air, water, wildlife and climate like a vicious cancer,” Greenwald said last week. “The malignant greed driving these policies threatens to greatly increase destruction of the natural world and turbocharge the extinction crisis.”

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said during his Senate confirmation hearing earlier this year that he believes “we have a moral responsibility to be good stewards of our environment for generations to come.” Speaking for the administration, he added, however, that “common-sense” environmental regulations were possible “without suffocating the economy.”

As the Trump administration angles for peace between Ukraine and Russia, the real driving force that will bring calm to the region — while benefiting the United States — is a critical mineral deal with America.

To understand why, we must first recognize why critical minerals are so essential.

Ukraine contains only 0.4% of the world’s land mass but has an estimated 5% of the world’s critical mineral reserves, including uranium, aluminum, copper, nickel, lithium, rare earth metals, graphite, and more. These minerals are vital for advanced industry and technology, including metallurgy, batteries, fuel cells, lubricants, computer chips, nuclear energy … the list is nearly endless. Even though these minerals are linchpins of the modern economy, out of the 50 minerals deemed “critical,” the U.S. fully relies on imports for 12 of them. We have to import over 50% of another 28 of these building blocks.

Whether it’s Canada, Greenland, or Ukraine, President Trump wants to import critical minerals wherever possible to sustain and strengthen our economic and technological dominance.

What’s less clear is why the proposed U.S.-Ukraine mineral deal is the cornerstone of Trump’s peace plan.

Critics have mislabeled President Trump’s bid for critical minerals as an attempt to steal one of Ukraine’s best assets while the nation is desperate — without providing any security or military guarantees. But the opposite is the case. President Trump is offering Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a lifeline. If America has an agreement to access Ukraine’s critical minerals, Zelenskyy will have with it all the security guarantees his nation needs.

Here’s how: The deal gives the U.S. rights to develop Ukrainian minerals. That development can only take place with a sizeable U.S. investment. And America will only benefit from this investment if Ukraine is at peace, stable, and reasonably independent of an assertive Russia.

To use a financial metaphor, it’s as if the U.S. is taking an equity stake in Ukraine’s future. Our investment will only rise if Ukraine also rises, meaning we are directly interested in Ukraine’s success.

Even more consequentially, America can’t afford to let this investment fail because our biggest adversary — the Chinese Communist Party, not Russia — dominates the global critical mineral market.

China has a greater monopoly over critical minerals than the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) has over oil. Where OPEC produces around 40% of the world’s crude oil, China produces 60% of rare earth elements, refines 90% of rare earth elements, and refines 60% to 70% of particularly vital minerals like lithium and cobalt.

Minerals like lithium and cobalt are crucial to making clean energy technologies like electric vehicles and wind turbines. It’s no wonder that China has cornered the growing clean energy technology market. In 2023, China manufactured more solar panels than the rest of the world combined and also leads in electric vehicle and wind turbine production. This massive lead is no small matter, especially as the renewable energy market was an estimated $1.21 trillion in 2023, with an expected annual growth rate of over 17%.

We must have access to critical minerals to retain America’s economic edge, overtake China in the vastly profitable renewable technology market, and secure dominance in every other technology of the future.

And that brings us back to the war in Eastern Europe. Russian President Vladimir Putin knows that, until this point, America has backed Ukraine both because our leaders believed it was a moral duty and because of the fear that Russia would continue its march through Ukraine and threaten our NATO allies in Europe. The United States has not yet had an immediate financial and technological interest in Ukraine directly impacting our geostrategic competition with China.

That would all change with a critical mineral deal. At a minimum, a U.S.-Ukraine pact would cause Putin to think twice about advancing any further, convincing him it’s not worth provoking America when we have a vital national interest at stake. In the best-case scenario, America’s long-term investment in the region will lead Putin to accept President Trump’s offer of partnership over choosing conflict. After all, with the United States eager to secure critical minerals in our competition with China, the cheapest and least bloody way Putin can keep his influence in Eastern Europe would be to work with us, not against us.

Either way, the results of a U.S. and Ukraine deal would be peace for Eastern Europe and access to the critical minerals we need. That sounds like a good partnership to me.

Drew Bond is the Co-Founder, President & CEO of C3 Solutions. 

In the early hours of April 11, lawmakers in the Texas House approved SB 1388, a budget amendment that allocates $210 million for the Thriving Texas Families (TTF) program.

TTF was started in 2005 under its former name, Alternatives to Abortion. According to Texas Health and Human Services, the program:

Promotes healthy pregnancy and childbirth, promotes childbirth as an alternative to abortion, increases access to resources that promote family and child development, encourages family formation, helps parents establish and implement successful parenting techniques, increases the number of families who achieve economic self-sufficiency, and provides a local approach and personalized support to pregnant women to promote childbirth in all instances of pregnancy.

The program provides support to nonprofits, like pregnancy resource centers (PRCs), which offer life-affirming services that may include the following:

• Pregnancy counseling, parenting skills, adoption services
• Educational materials about parenting, pregnancy, and adoption
• Coordination of prenatal, perinatal, and postnatal care
• Life skills classes
• Referrals for government and social services programs
• Infant and pregnancy-related items, including maternity clothes, formula, diapers, car seats, cribs, and baby clothes
• Housing services

According to Texas Right to Life, the TTF program provided support to 190 brick-and-mortar locations last year, as well as a dozen other mobile and virtual locations, serving over 150,000 clients.

 

The $210 million earmarked for the fund is a $70 million increase over last year, as leaders said the additional funding was necessary to provide for all pregnant women and young families in need of support. That $70 million was a reallocation of Medicaid funds.

The amendment was introduced by Rep. Tom Oliverson, R-Cypress, who spoke in support of the program.

“This program promotes healthy pregnancy and childbirth. It supports moms who choose to have their baby,” he said, adding:

It increases access to resources that promote family and child development. It encourages families to stay together and support each other. It teaches parents to implement successful parenting techniques. It teaches families to take care of themselves financially. And it provides personalized support to pregnant women so that mom feels ready to have her baby.

The additional dollars that we are appropriating today will help further the mission of this very successful program, providing women with the support they need to have a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby.

The amendment passed in the House along party lines, but must still be approved by the Senate.

[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by Live Action News.]

While limiting strings-attached grants and curbing federal regulation, President Trump’s efforts to dismantle the Department of Education also take aim at a key tool bureaucrats use to oversee schools in all 50 states: civil rights investigations.

Probes handled by the department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) against public schools, colleges and universities roughly doubled during the Biden administration, topping 20,000 last year. Investigations by hundreds of OCR lawyers and staff members – and responses to them by untold numbers of school officials and administrators – touched on everything from allegations of sexual violence and disability accommodations to website compatibility.

Defenders of the office say it has been an invaluable protector of civil rights for America’s nearly 70 million students. They say eliminating or even downsizing the office, which has already begun, would kneecap thousands of ongoing investigations while abolishing a prime instrument of justice.

“This reckless action strips students of vital resources and tears down statutorily mandated functions that are essential to addressing racial and economic inequality in education,” the ACLU declared last month. Trump, it said, has put “millions of students’ education and civil rights at risk.”

Advocates for handicapped students, who until recent years accounted for half of all complaints, are concerned they might get short shrift in the Trump administration and have gone to court to block cuts. “We have many members who file complaints, and it has left many of them in limbo, or distraught, thinking there will be no accountability,” said Selene A. Almazan, legal director of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, plaintiffs in a suit filed March 14.

But backers of Trump’s effort to eliminate the Department of Education counter that the Office for Civil Rights is a symbol of how the federal government has expanded its reach into what they describe as chiefly local matters. They say its investigative arm has been designed to make it as easy as possible for the department to maximize its influence and oversight through investigations.

A complainant does not need a personal connection to a school. Indeed, petitioners don’t even have to live in the same state, and legal standing is not a factor. They do not even need to identify themselves. They are not required to try to resolve their problems at the local level before notifying the feds – though many do. Consequently, the office’s operations sometimes function as a nationwide anonymous sounding board rather than a source of last resort, a place where anyone can make a federal case out of any slight, real or perceived.

Although OCR probes include many serious allegations, the system’s structure means the number of cases can be inflated through duplication, serial filers and ambitious bureaucrats.

“The numbers aren’t really what they first appear,” said Teresa R. Manning, policy director at the National Association of Scholars, a conservative counterweight in higher education to the liberal American Association of University Professors. “A lot of this was by design. If they didn’t have complaints, they wouldn’t have jobs, so a lot of federal bureaucrats and campus officers want any grievance to become a federal case.”

The numbers themselves are unclear. Neither the Department of Education nor its Office for Civil Rights responded to multiple requests for comment, and a listed phone number is no longer manned daily; voice messages left there were not returned. But it appears the administration has laid off some 240 people in the OCR, shuttering at least six of its 12 regional offices. Currently, eight of 22 “key staff” positions there are vacant, according to its website.

When Trump and Secretary of Education Linda McMahon first announced layoffs in February, reports mentioned 12,000 active investigations listed on the OCR database, which was last updated on Jan. 14. Last month, Sen. Bernie Sanders announced his own report on the office, claiming 6,800 cases would be shortchanged by the layoffs.

But no matter which total is used, the claim that U.S. schools are teeming with incidents of overt racism or sexism, or bias against handicapped students, is misleading, according to experts familiar with the OCR and its work.

In theory, every complaint is reviewed to determine if it constitutes discrimination on the basis of race (“Title VI”), sex (“Title IX”), or disability. If so, the Office for Civil Rights can open an investigation, or its attorneys can allege that there are “systemic” violations and trigger much broader investigations.

Such initiatives were highlighted in a glossy report the office released on Jan. 16, four days before Trump’s inauguration. The office appears to have published six such “special reports” since 2016, with half of those during Biden’s term. Two of them – the first and another in 2021 – dealt with alleged “racial disparities” or “equity” in school discipline.

This looks like a more proactive OCR following the age-old practice of boosting the cases on its books and then insisting it needs more funding, said Jim Blew, a co-founder of the Defense of Freedom Institute and a former assistant secretary of education in Trump’s first term.

“Skepticism is legitimate, because by declaring something is ‘systemic,’ then rather than resolve that one issue they can turn it into a federal case,” Blew said. “And if you’re going to interpret the discrimination on much different and broader levels than ever before, that’s going to increase the number of complaints, too.”

RealClearInvestigations found that, despite claims that cuts to OCR will impede “prompt” action or justice for filers, the office did not always handle complaints promptly. Among the 12,000 ongoing investigations listed in the OCR database – half of which involved disability complaints – RCI found active investigations into alleged incidents that occurred in 2016 or 2017, long after any students at the schools in question would have departed. Many alleged incidents also triggered more than one investigation, meaning the “thousands” are fewer than they first appear.

The investigations can take years. Alabama A&M University, for example, is under investigation for “sexual violence” that allegedly occurred on Aug. 24, 2016. The university did not respond to requests for comments on this alleged incident or general compliance with OCR.

Similarly, on Aug. 2, 2017, an alleged incident in Mississippi’s Greene County School District sparked two investigations, one for racial harassment and another for “retaliation” that remain active, according to OCR’s website.

Also, totals were swollen by one unnamed individual. For example, in 2022 when OCR received 9,948 complaints of Title IX violations, nearly three out of four – 7,339 – came from this person. That same individual slipped a bit the following year, accounting for only 69% of the 5,590 complaints. RCI asked several people familiar with Office of Civil Rights work who this person might be, but none said they knew.

The number of complaints skyrocketed during the Biden administration, doubling the average that had held for more than a decade, records show. Last April, Biden regulators sought a radical expansion of Title IX sex discrimination protection to cover things like “gender identity.” That attempt was later blocked by the courts.

Through President Obama’s two terms and Trump’s first term, the office received just under 10,000 complaints annually. In 2022, however, that figure shot up to a record 18,804 and did not stop climbing. It jumped 18% in 2023 before topping 20,000 complaints for the first time in 2024, according to OCR.

It’s not exactly clear what accounted for the big increases, according to experts. But the usual breakdown of classification of complaints changed. Instead of disability complaints comprising more than half of the total OCR received, 42% of those filed in 2023 concerned sexual discrimination, while disability complaints fell to a bit more than a third, according to the office’s figures.

Office for Civil Rights attorneys can launch investigations, or encourage schools to do so, via the well-known “Dear Colleague” letter that alerts administrators to how regulators plan to interpret federal laws. It was just such a “Dear Colleague” letter in 2011 from Catherine Lhamon, who headed the Office for Civil Rights under Obama and Biden, that urged schools to use the lowest possible level of evidence in sexual harassment or assault cases, to make it easier for people to request a remedy to perceived injustice.

“If you’re going to interpret the discrimination in much different and broader terms than ever before then you’re going to increase complaints,” Blew said. “It should be obvious there are certain interests that care about padding their Office of Civil Rights numbers.”

‘Administrative Bloat’

In the face of rising Office for Civil Rights investigations, letters and complaints, schools have been forced to add more layers of administrators and attorneys. Those offices also grew during Biden’s term, when an emphasis on “diversity, equity and inclusion” departments and offices swelled higher education payrolls.

“It has led to administrative bloat, too, as tuition goes to deanlets and bureaucrats,” Manning said. “They often partner together with other entities on campus, and you have many bureaucrats who feed complaints.”

In its January report, OCR reported that it had received 71,385 complaints during Biden’s term and had resolved 56,383 of them. But the backlog of complaints has grown, and in the 13 years covered by the report it was only during Trump’s first term that the office reported resolving more complaints than it received. At least one person who has filed numerous complaints with the OCR suspects that some of the backlog results from an unwillingness to tackle cases that do not fit progressive orthodoxy.

Mark Perry, a professor emeritus at the University of Michigan, who specializes in complaints challenging race- and gender-based scholarships, fellowships and other programs, said OCR has opened 423 investigations into his complaints since he started filing them in 2019.

“I currently have nearly 300 complaints backlogged at OCR, some going back to 2019 and 2020 that have either never made it through the evaluation stage to being opened for investigation and others opened for investigation back in 2019, 2020, and 2021, etc. that have never been resolved,” he said. “Now it’s possible I’m being targeted and slow-walked for being a repeat filer for complaints alleging discrimination against men and whites.”

Perry based that belief, in part, on a handwritten letter he received from an OCR employee in its Chicago branch in September 2023 in response to a Chronicle of Higher Education article about Perry’s filings. “OCR has no impetus, sadly, to advance your cases, total failure in HQ,” the letter said. “Your cases just sit with no activity.”

The delays are especially odd, in Perry’s opinion, given that he is a professional who accompanies his complaints with printed evidence of the specific grant or program he thinks should be curtailed or made available to all students. “My complaints are simple; they should only take a couple of months,” he told RCI.

Another more recent, consistent filer is the Equal Protection Project, launched by conservative Cornell Law School Professor William Jacobson, who runs the Legal Insurrection website. In 2025, the project has averaged an OCR complaint a week, and has filed 70 complaints since it began in February 2023.

Like Perry’s, the project’s focus is on clear violations of the plain language of statues, Jacobson said. On April 1, the project filed a complaint against the Pennsylvania College of Technology, an affiliate of Pennsylvania State University, for 12 scholarships that allegedly “discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, and/or sex in violation of Title VI and Title IX, respectively.”

For now, it’s unclear what will happen to the thousands of investigations on the office’s books, or to future complaints like disability grievances filed by Almazan’s group. The laws require a direct interference with a student’s education to validate a complaint, a distinction drawn more by the courts than administrators and bureaucrats who give themselves wide latitude to pursue their own enforcement goals, experts said.

“Biden and the Democrats tend to tinker with the language, creating ‘subjective’ offenses that are a moving target and raise due-process concerns,” Manning said. “The courts have tried to rein it in.”

Even as it appears intent on limiting the Education Department’s reach, the Trump administration has also signaled that it will not completely surrender the use of federal power to influence local schools. It has vowed  to root out antisemitism on college campuses, biological men competing against women in sports, and diversity, equity and inclusion programs the administration says violate the clear letter of discrimination laws.

On April 7, McMahon announced a special investigative office, staffed by the Education and Justice departments, to enforce “Title IX to protect female students and athletes.”

The disarmament community in their pursuit of global zero makes a number of faulty assumptions. For example, they assume all retaliatory uses of nuclear weapons will quickly lead to the massive exchange of nuclear weapons and trigger a civilization ending nuclear winter. They assume even the use of a single nuclear weapon could devastate a large area from EMP damage and cause widespread panic and mass migration and would escalate to an all-out nuclear exchange as well. In short, no nuclear use, however limited, can be managed or controlled.

Thus, even the current U.S. deterrence strategy of nuclear retaliation, often referenced as a secure, second-strike capability, is dismissed as unworkable.” Consequently, we are told the U.S. can no longer rely upon such a deterrent strategy, as it is dangerous, immoral and a highly unreliable “war fighting” strategy that will not keep nuclear weapons from being used.

The only alternative? Ban all nuclear weapons, as called for by the United Nations treaty outlawing nuclear weapons as agreed to by the UN General Assembly.

In short what the disarmament community has concluded is that nuclear deterrence as now practiced is really a bluff. No rational (“sane”?) American President would order any nuclear retaliatory strike. Since any retaliatory use of nuclear weapons would trigger wholesale nuclear war, such a response has to be discarded. This means that a nuclear armed adversary of the United States could first use nuclear weapons against the United States without fear of a proportionate United States military response. And for all intents and purposes this would leave the enemy’s nuclear forces in a sanctuary free from American retaliatory nuclear strikes.

Absent the current deterrent strategy, what then should the United States do in the face of China and Russia adopting a strategy of escalation to win, or using limited numbers of nuclear weapons to either forestall conventional defeat or secure conventional victory? [Let alone the threat of a massive, pe-emptive strike that worried the United States through much of the Cold War.] As many U.S. military officers have explained, this is serious business, as once nuclear weapons are introduced into a conventional conflict, all the United States assumptions about prevailing in a conventional conflict “don’t hold” or go out the window.

Now both Russia and China have often claimed to have a minimal deterrent strategy, and assert they would not use nuclear weapons first, and threaten only a massive retaliatory strike if hit with nuclear weapons. But then how to explain the decree issued by President Yeltsin in April 1999 declaring for Russia to build highly accurate low yield small battlefield nuclear weapons, plans which the current President (Mr. Putin) has implemented over the past 25 years? Or China’s threat to Japan to repeat the World War II atomic strikes should Japan come to the defense of Taiwan?

Similarly, the disarmament community has ignored the very large current Chinese buildup of nuclear weapons, even claiming hundreds of newly discovered silos were nothing more than prospective energy producing windmills. When subsequently American high ranking military officials confirmed the very real “breathtaking” Chinese build in Congressional testimony, the military brass were falsely accused of warmongering.

What is most dangerous is that advocates of zero nuclear weapons don’t tell us what is to replace current deterrent policy while nations figure out how to get to zero—even though that goal has not been formally adopted by any power possessing nuclear weapons. Without deterrence of any kind, the likelihood of nuclear weapons use will actually increase as the current deterrent strategy would be revealed as just bluff. Especially at a time when America’s enemies are markedly building up their nuclear forces and increasing the salience of nuclear weapons in their national security strategies.

Worse however is the juvenile idea that diplomacy can substitute for current deterrent strategy. But diplomacy leading to what? If China and Russia threaten to use limited nuclear strikes for coercive purposes, what “diplomacy” changes that? As Dr. Kissinger once explained, “A free standing diplomacy is an ancient American illusion. History offers few examples of it. The attempt to separate diplomacy and power results in power lacking direction and diplomacy being deprived of incentives.” Or in a pithier manner, as Senator Malcolm Wallop put it, “Diplomacy without the threat of force is but prayer.” If the United States takes its nuclear forces off the deterrent table, whatever diplomacy we might exercise is going to ring hollow.

Advocates of better diplomacy argue that diplomacy is meant to help us discover the “underlying causes” of why nations have nuclear weapons. It is assumed the U.S. can root out the reason China and Russia are building larger nuclear arsenals just by talking to them.

Well, the United States would first have to figure out the origins of the CCP’s hegemonic ambitions. And its declaration that the moon and Mars to say nothing of Taiwan and the South China Sea, are Chinese territory! Or Russian centuries old paranoia that believes the only secure Russian borders are those that perpetually expand. Or why the end of the USSR was a great tragedy.

If one explores the disarmament literature, the most common explanation for Russia and China’s aggressive stance in world affairs is that “America made them do it” an interesting version of Ambassador Kirkpatrick’s 1984 refrain “They always blame America first.””

There are six common complaints by the global zero advocates.

First the United States started an arms race, although we simply replaced legacy nuclear forces allowed by the 2010 New Start agreement.

Second, the United States built or will build 44-66 missile defense interceptors in Alaska and California, although it is perplexing how dozens of interceptor missiles somehow threaten multiple hundreds and even thousands of enemy warheads.

Third, the U.S. was mean to North Korea, although all the U.S. did was call them out for cheating on the Agreed Framework.

Fourth, the U.S. withdrew from the INF treaty, although Russia was serially violating the treaty terms.

Fifth, the United States withdrew from the JCPOA, but that was because Iran never came clean, as required, on its nuclear military activities.

Sixth, Washington too energetically supports the Republic of Korea, Taiwan, and Israel, but since when was helping your democratic allies a sin.

Given this mindset, it is not a wonder that the “solutions” pushed by the disarmament community to jumpstart a movement towards global zero start with unilateral USA concessions which, just coincidentally, involve taking down USA nuclear capability whether cancelling the LRSO, the Sentinel or Minuteman III, the JSF or F-35, the SLCM-N, or the B-61 warhead. And not proceeding with any missile defense, dropping our hostile policy toward Iran and North Korea, and restore the INF and the JCPOA.

In short diminishing USA nuclear capability just as China and Russia are markedly expanding their nuclear capability is somehow going to turn out as a successful strategy that reduces strategic instability and magically restores deterrence. Although such unilateral restraint has never previously worked. And weakness is provocative and can lead to war. And a United States shed of a deterrent strategy will indeed be perceived as weak.

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Peter R. Huessy is President of Geo-Strategic Analysis and Senior Fellow, National Institute for Deterrent Studies.