Zerohedge

Authored by Gregory T. Kiley via RealClearDefense,

Interesting times.  Just one month into President Donald Trump’s second term in office and one would be forgiven for feeling a little whiplashed.  From invoking and revoking Federal Government-wide Office and Management and Budget policy memoranda to announcing wide-reaching tariffs and then staying implementation those same tariffs, Trump’s second tour White House has started eventfully.   

Hopefully, at least as far as Trade Policy is concerned, once personnel are in place, deliberate, rational, and thoughtful trade and trade negotiations will continue that seeks the long-term goals established by the president, while also helping American businesses in the short term to better fight back, level the playing field, and win here in the U.S. market with American consumers.   

On President Trump’s first working Monday in office his Office of Management and Budget released a memorandum freezing all federal financial assistance and grants.  This might have been a well-meaning attempt for the new Administration to review federal spending priorities, but such a blanket call to freeze funds was unprecedented and confusing to those not consulted – including the other branches of government. Within hours, OMB rescinded the far reaching, over broad memo, but will continue their review of funding – as they rightfully should.

On Tariffs, the Presidential-candidate Trump ran on his plan to utilize tariffs as a tool of foreign policy, economic policy, and to Make America Great Again.  It should have come to no surprise that one of the first acts now President Trump did was to threaten the country of Columbia with tariffs if they did not accept back illegal aliens that our government plans to return. Columbia caved on the threat and accepted the returnees.  

Next has come a broad 25 percent tariff on Canada and Mexico announced January 31st, 2025. Purportedly tied to the excessive funneling of illegal fentanyl drugs into the United States, within hours of implementation, Mexico has agreed to send troops to the border to stop illegal immigration, resulting in at least a month delay in imposing the 25 percent tariff on Mexico goods. Canada similarly agreed to work with the Trump Administration to stem the flow of illegal drugs in exchange for a halt to implementation of tariffs.

Bold actions, some positive results, however, a better model could be found in the careful, deliberate negotiated approach of 2017-2020 Trump White House and Team.  

Still, with the confirmation of Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick and nomination of Jamieson Greer to serve as the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), President Trump has an experienced team coming to hopefully make judicious use of Tariff policy. 

Another thing the first Trump Administration got right was a laser focus on China and its predatory practices.  Trump’s team needs to continue pushing the goals and intentions of China tariffs – to increase domestic production and jobs across America over Chinese government-assisted and enabled entities.  The tariffs are designed to encourage more domestic production, making it at least as expensive to import from abroad over manufacturing domestically.

The tariff regime is broken if it can advantage Chinese companies while disadvantaging American companies. This is an inequity about the current tariff system that President Trump can fix.  One example is Milwaukee Tool, which contrary to popular belief is actually a Chinese company.  The Trade Alliance to Promote Prosperity in 2024 alleged the Chinese firm (like others) may not be paying its fair tariff share, taking advantage of America and hurting American competitors in the process.

Moving forward, this second Trump Administration should ensure the system doesn’t disadvantage American companies over their Chinese competitors that benefit from government subsidies. Trump should use his tariff authority judiciously, including the use of exemptions to help American companies battle back and, ultimately, invest more in the U.S. and create new manufacturing career opportunities in the process.  The same way the threat of tariffs gives the president leverage with world leaders; the use of targeted tariff exemptions can do the same to help American businesses grow strong again. 

These are indeed interesting times, and as the old English Phrase connotated, may we live up to their challenges.  The second Trump Administration has started with a bang, now the hard work of detailed negotiation and focused policy needs to follow.

Gregory T. Kiley, former senior professional staff member, Senate Armed Services Committee; and U.S. Air Force Officer

Pope Francis has at this point spent over a week in the hospital in Rome, battling pneumonia in both lungs, and in the last 24-hours there have been reports that his condition is stable and has seen slight improvement.

The 88-year old Pontiff entered the hospital on Feb. 14 with worsening bronchitis, leading doctors to eventually diagnose pneumonia, and reports in the initial days were dire.

Archbishop Giuseppe Satriano of Bari gave an update on Francis’ condition Thursday, saying “He’s a fighter, and I believe he’ll win this battle.”

Satriano described that he is awake, eating, and doing some work from his hospital bed, and that blood tests show slight improvements in his inflammation levels. The official Vatican assessment as of Thursday night is that Francis’ condition is “slightly improving” that he’s free of fever.

Still, the severity of the episode has led to speculation over possible resignation:

In a memoir, Life: My Story Through History, published last year, Francis wrote, “I think that the Petrine ministry is ‘ad vitam’ [‘for life’] and therefore I see no conditions for a resignation”, only to add in the next sentence, “things would change if a serious physical impediment were to arise”.

As the pontiff enters his eighth day in hospital on Friday, suffering from pneumonia in both lungs, Vatican watchers are wondering just how serious Francis, 88, thinks that physical impediment has to be.

On Thursday evening, the Vatican said that Francis’s condition was “slightly improving”, adding that his heart and circulation were in good shape and that he was free of fever and able to work.

However, in an interview on Italian radio, the senior Vatican cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi broached the topic on everyone’s mind and claimed: “I think he could [resign] because he is a person who, from this point of view, is quite decisive in his choices.”

This is the first time in his pontificate that the issue of resignation has been raised by a senior Cardinal. However, if he exits the hospital soon this is unlikely, as Pope’s traditionally serve till death. It is extremely rare for a Pope to step down, with his predecessor Pope Benedict XVI having been one of the exceptions to the historic rule.

As talk of a potential conclave in the near future heats up I thought it would be helpful to make a diagram of the current ideological makeup of the College of Cardinals pic.twitter.com/FHXgoRyYR0

— Al Carbo (@carbo_al) February 18, 2025

Newsweek commented, “The possibility of resignation resurfaced when Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi noted that if Francis’ ability to engage directly with people was compromised, he might consider stepping down.”

Conservative and traditional Roman Catholics have been critics of Francis’ leadership, saying he represents a liberalizing trend in church life. Liberals have tended to hail him as being open to the world and a voice of ‘progress’.

Via American Greatness,

Vice President J.D. Vance drew criticism from European leaders and press following his speech last week at the Munich Security Conference in Germany where he openly chastised  European authorities over their suppression of free speech.

Now, just days after Vance’s warning to European official about censorship, a woman has been confronted by police and arrested for holding a sign that read “Coercion is a crime, here to talk, only if you want” outside of a Scottish abortion clinic.

Unbelievable – just days after Vance warns Europe about censorship

The Scottish police arrest a woman for offering a conversation near an abortion facilitypic.twitter.com/SKp5IWgZnm

— Lois McLatchie Miller (@LoisMcLatch) February 20, 2025

In his remarks in Munich, Vance gave examples of Germany arresting people criticizing feminism, Sweden arresting individuals for criticizing religion and Scottish police arresting a man for silently praying for his aborted son outside of an abortion clinic.

European leaders were called to task by Vance for abandoning what he called their “most fundamental values” while insisting that the U.S. should continue helping defend Europe.

Vance told the assembled leaders, “If you are afraid of the voices, the opinions and the conscience that guide your very own people … If you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you, nor for that matter is there anything you can do for the American people.”

JD Vance attended the Munich Security Conference where he criticized European leaders, accusing them of being petty tyrants for restricting freedom of speech. He specifically mentioned the case of a British man who was arrested for praying outside an abortion clinic. pic.twitter.com/GR35DVKK1O

— Catch Up (@CatchUpFeed) February 14, 2025

Vance’s remarks prompted shock and condemnation among many European politicians and various state media.

U.K. news outlets had some of the harshest criticism for the Vice President over his condemnation of so-called “buffer zones” around abortion clinics in Scotland where police arrested a man for silently standing outside a clinic, praying for his unborn son.

The BBC accused Vance of making “dangerous” claims about Scottish laws during his remarks when he spoke of people living within so-called safe access zones receiving a letter from the Scottish government, “warning them that even private prayer within their own homes may amount to breaking the law.”

According to the BBC, a Scottish government spokesperson said, “no letters had been sent out saying people couldn’t pray in their homes, and only “intentional or reckless behaviour” was covered by the act.”

However, a copy of the letter received by homeowners within the “safe access zones” reveals ambiguous language that appears to bear out Vance’s warning of the growing danger to peaceful free speech.

The misinformation is from Mackay, the liar.
Simply read the letter. Vance is correct. https://t.co/VgtPJ1dWl7 pic.twitter.com/ZlWzoY56RJ

— @Sea_and_Sand0 (@SeaandSand0) February 14, 2025

Should we believe what European politicians and state media are telling us or what can be clearly seen with our own eyes?

Days after Elon Musk and his xAI team unveiled Grok-3—touted as the “smartest AI on Earth“—the chatbot, which outperforms all commercially available models, has surged to the top of the Apple App Store list. 

Data from the App Store shows that xAI’s Grok app sits number one on the “Top Free App” page, beating OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Meta’s Threads, and TikTok.

This surge in demand for Grok likely began around the release of the new model on Monday night. 

Musk and xAI staff showed how the new model outperformed Alphabet’s Google Gemini, DeepSeek’s V3 model, Anthropic’s Claude, and OpenAI’s GPT-4o across math, science, and coding benchmarks.

Momentum was reignited on Wednesday night after Musk announced that Grok-3 would be “free to all” for a limited time.

For a short time, Grok 3 is available for free to all! https://t.co/r5iLXi2pBm

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 20, 2025

By Thursday morning, Musk and xAI had encountered a good problem: “We’re seeing some heavy traffic, so we’ve opted for an alternate model to get your answer to you faster.” 

This was the message generated while asking the model to produce an image. 

We asked Grok… It responded:

XAI noted overnight: “This is it: The world’s smartest AI, Grok 3, now available for free (until our servers melt).”

This is it: The world’s smartest AI, Grok 3, now available for free (until our servers melt).

Try Grok 3 now: https://t.co/Tj0afLoxEz

X Premium+ and SuperGrok users will have increased access to Grok 3, in addition to early access to advanced features like Voice Mode pic.twitter.com/YgKavSCiWr

— xAI (@xai) February 20, 2025

That time may have arrived. 

Authored by John Murawski via RealClearInvestigations,

In the plummy world of alumni relations, where distinguished graduates are awarded honorary degrees and major donors are fêted at the president’s mansion, it is virtually unheard of for former students to set up shop as a political counterweight to the university, challenging its modes of governance and day-to-day operations

Alarmed by academia’s dominant ideological ethos of social justice activism – particularly the holy trinity of race, sex, and gender – more than two dozen dissident groups have emerged seeking to rebalance the culture at leading public and private universities across the country, including Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, MIT, Stanford, UCLA, Williams, the University of North Carolina and the University of Virginia. 

They are expected to gain traction with Donald Trump back in the White House.

The dissident alumni organizations are not shoestring operations, but well-honed machines, some raising several hundred thousand dollars a year; a number of them have hired executive directors, professional staff, or consultants. This loose coalition of local chapters has also developed into a national movement with its own umbrella group, the Alumni Free Speech Alliance. 

Drawing on alumni resources and connections, the dissidents have curated email lists totaling thousands of recipients, diverted financial contributions from longtime university donors, attracted financial support from foundations, organized speaker series and public events, and generated critical reports and investigative articles, especially regarding policies advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI. They have invited prominent conservative and contrarian thinkers such as George Will, Nadine Strossen, Jonathan Haidt, Douglas Murray, and Heather Mac Donald to deliver on-campus talks.

The Virginia Military Institute alumni group, The Cadet Foundation, is the publisher of the independent student newspaper, The Cadet, and other chapters function as aggregators, muckrakers, and news services. The Jefferson Council,the University of Virginia alumni chapter, produces original articles almost daily of consistently high informational and entertainment value, and mostly written by a retired news editor and author. 

“When you get down to it, these groups are news organizations, in a sense,” said Tom Rideout, a 1963 graduate of Washington & Lee University and a former American Banking Association president who co-founded one of the first alumni free speech associations, The Generals Redoubt, in response to the university’s move in 2018 to distance itself from its namesakes and their ties to slavery. “Essentially we’re in the communications business. Our job is to gather intelligence and distribute intelligence to supporters.”

It’s not possible to isolate the precise influence of these alumni from parallel pressure applied by Republican lawmakers, conservative trustees, and heterodox faculty, but college donations dipped nationwide last year in the wake of the Hamas attack on Israel and subsequent campus protests; donations at Harvard, Columbia, and Penn fell dramatically during this time amid rising alumni alarm. 

For their part, the dissident alumni say they have helped bring about significant political gains, including: 

• The resignation of Cornell president Martha Pollack, who was accused of prioritizing “DEI groupthink” that resulted in unruly campus protests and student harassment, prompting an investigation by the U.S. Education Department; 
• Princeton’s president admonishing first-year students at freshman orientation last fall that it’s not the university’s job to “validate your opinions”;
• The University of Virginia suspending student-led campus tours that angry alumni said caricatured the legacy of Thomas Jefferson as nothing but slavery, rape, and theft of Indigenous land; 
• The Virginia Press Association awarding its “top honor” to the Virginia Military Institute student newspaper, which is published by dissident alumni, for the student-journalists’ coverage of DEI controversies on campus. 

Their operating expenses go to staff salaries, marketing expenses, speaker fees, and events, which can get disruptive. In some cases, the alumni chapters pay for their speakers’ private security or reimburse the university for campus security. UVA billed The Jefferson Council $7,847 for Abigail Shrier’s appearance in 2023 to discuss her book, “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters.” Over two years, The Jefferson Council was billed about $47,000 for security expenses in connection with controversial speakers. 

The newly arisen alumni free speech associations are just one facet of a major realignment in academia that signals that a half-century era of unchallenged progressive intellectual dominance may be coming to an end. Major university systems in red states have already ended DEI policies in hiring and scholarship, and more than 120 universities have adopted policies of institutional neutrality – the idea that the university exists to foster debate and criticism, not to take sides on public controversies.

Other organizations devoted to protecting academic freedom and viewpoint diversity – such as the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, the Heterodox Academy, and the Academic Freedom Alliance – have arisen to challenge the narrow academic consensus on social and political questions. 

In parallel, heterodox faculty at leading universities have formed campus chapters, such as the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard, the Princeton Council on Academic Freedom, and kindred faculty groups at Yale, MIT, Columbia, and Duke. Last year, the University of Chicago announced an anonymous grant of $100 million to promote free speech values at the Chicago Forum for Free Speech and Expression. The Chicago Forum develops student orientation programming, supports research in academic freedom, and establishes fellowship programs for visiting scholars. 

Over the same period, conservative donors, legislators, and trustees have launched more than a dozen academic civics centers that are reviving classical liberal education, rediscovering the Great Books, and rejecting what they perceive as the vilification of Western Civilization. These well-funded programs operate autonomously like law schools or engineering schools, with their own deans, Ph.D. programs, and sometimes dedicated buildings. 

Trump’s Election a Boost

Trump’s election is expected to accelerate the reforms, particularly with his threat to cut federal funding to institutions that give weight to the racial identity and gender identity of students and faculty in admissions, hiring, teaching, and research. 

In a January essay on the Princetonians for Free Speech site, group co-founder and current secretary and general counsel Edward Yingling, a former American Banking Association president, predicted that 2025 will be a breakthrough year for free speech on campus. The major precipitating event of this predicted turnaround, Yingling wrote, was the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023 that led to unruly campus protests and encampments and the resignations of Ivy League presidents at Harvard, Cornell, Columbia, and the University of Pennsylvania, all of which now have alumni free speech association chapters. 

Some observers warn the anti-woke pushback will lead to an overcorrection. The legal director of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a free speech advocacy group, predicted, according to the New York Times, the likelihood of increased attacks on the free speech rights of progressive students and professors, including investigations, punishment, and terminations. A recent weekend essay in the Wall Street Journal issued a similar warning, saying that the ravages of wokeness and cancel culture will come in the form of political payback: “They/them who sow the censorious winds should be prepared to one day reap the whirlwind.”

These transformations point to a looming question about the future prospects for the alumni free speech alliance chapters: Will these dissident alumni organizations be able to sustain momentum and continue attracting donations when it starts looking like wokeness is moribund and DEI is DOA? 

When asked this question, not a single chapter representative hesitated to say that the fight will continue for years, possibly until the current generation of faculty and DEI hires reaches retirement age and can be replaced with a more balanced professoriate.

Carl Neuss, a California real-estate developer who co-founded the Cornell Free Speech Alliance, likened academia to a beautiful sailing ship infested with rats who are about to face an exterminator. 

“It’ll be a battle royale,” Neuss said. “It’ll be a generation-long effort to get some balance back in the universities. They’re never going to reform themselves – the only way for it to occur is from outside pressure.”

James Bacon, a co-founder of The Jefferson Council and the chapter’s former executive director, expressed similar sentiments, characterizing the prevailing DEI value system among students, faculty, and administrators as “an entrenched orthodoxy.” 

“It’s going to be a battle of a generation before we bring about substantial change,” Bacon said. “It’s going to be trench warfare, like the Battle of Verdun, fighting over inches.”

Retired federal prosecutor John Bruce, a board member of the University of Carolina at Chapel Hill’s alumni free speech association, concurs. “We see ourselves as permanent,” Bruce said. “There is a danger that people will think that the battle has been won. But the Left is relentless.”

Although the formal missions of these alumni chapters include specific proposals to promote free speech and viewpoint diversity, their ambitions are much broader: to change the intellectual climate of academia, revive classical liberal education, and curb the social justice activism that has pervaded academia for years. 

Some of the dissident groups – including chapters at UVA, Washington & Lee, Cornell, and Princeton – have been active in opposing campus efforts to  rename buildings and remove statues, plaques, and commemorations that are said to glamorize white supremacy or make African American students feel excluded. 

The Washington & Lee University alumni who formed The Generals Redoubt include among their stated goals the re-establishment of public prayer. The group defends the character of Confederate General Robert E. Lee and promotes a book, “Un-Cancel Robert E. Lee: An Open Letter to The Trustees of Washington and Lee University,” written by member Gib Kerr and published by the conservative imprint, Bombardier Books.

These alumni were furious that W&L removed Lee’s name from the campus chapel, sealed off Lee’s recumbent statue from public view, and removed the likenesses of George Washington and Robert E. Lee from diplomas awarded to graduating students. 

The Generals Redoubt is one of the most successful alumni chapters, raising $2 million in each of the past two years, according to the ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer database, and spending $1 million to purchase a historic property to serve as the organization’s headquarters and venue site. 

Among those that have taken on the cause of historic preservation, The Jefferson Council’s formal mission involves preserving “the beauty of The Lawn” – the terraced greensward and courtyard at the heart of Thomas Jefferson’s academic village that is listed on the Virginia Historic Register, the National Historic Register and among the UNESCO World Heritage Sites – from political signs that the chapter deems vulgar and offensive. 

The Jefferson Council was provoked in 2020 by a student occupant of one of the storied 19th-century rooms on The Lawn who posted on the door: “Fuck UVA,” followed by a string of accusations: “UVA operating cost, KKKops, genocide, slavery, disability, Black+Brown life.” 

Noting that the profanity was “disheartening,” the university nevertheless supported the student’s free speech rights in this instance. UVA’s decision was publicly praised by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, “illustrating why UVA is one of the relatively few institutions in the country to earn FIRE’s highest, ‘green light’ rating.”

The Jefferson Council was galvanized by UVA’s “Racial Equity Task Force” report in 2020 that recommended $950 million in DEI-related and antiracist-oriented investments, leading to the removal of a statue of George Rogers Clark (a subjugator of indigenous tribes), the renaming of the main campus library, and the promised – but as-of-yet not realized – “contextualization” of the Thomas Jefferson statue in front of the iconic Rotunda, designed by Jefferson himself and modeled on the Roman Pantheon. 

The Jefferson Council has filed more than 200 Freedom of Information Act requests to pry loose details on a range of issues, including details about UVA’s decision-making on recent name changes of campus buildings and past and potential yet-unannounced future statue removals. A faculty petition has declared The Jefferson Council to pose a threat to academic freedom. 

“We are widely detested,” said Bacon, one of the co-founders and principal writers for The Jefferson Council.

In a 2023 New York Times article about the alumni group, UVA President James Ryan expressed his doubts about The Jefferson Council’s real motives: “Whether this is an effort to focus on the aspects of D.E.I. that seem to threaten academic freedom and push toward ideological conformity, or whether it’s an effort to turn back the clock to 1965 – it’s hard to know.” 

Despite the official snub – or perhaps because of it – The Jefferson Council raised a healthy $260,000 in 2023, down from $557,044 the previous year. The group communicates with 3,200 members and has about 850 active donors, said co-founder Thomas Neale, a corporate finance professional who is also chairman of the national Alumni Free Speech Alliance. 

What rankles Neale and other alumni is what they see as a blatant double standard that trumpets free speech rights for woke obscenities on a UNESCO World Heritage site but cites the harms of misgendering and microaggressions when the insult goes the other way.

The dissident alumni have established a base of support among like-minded students and faculty on their respective campuses, but they have also made enemies along the way. 

Robert Morris Jr., the founder and president of VMI’s dissident alumni group, The Cadet Foundation, has been banned for life from the university’s official alumni association in connection with its disputed accessing of the alumni email database to recruit alumni to the dissident group, and a number of other alumni were handed 10-year suspensions for their involvement. 

Bert Ellis, a University of Virginia trustee and co-founder of The Jefferson Council, was censured by UVA’s Faculty Senate for allegedly planning to vandalize the student’s “Fuck UVA” sign; Ellis was also the target of an unsuccessful effort by Democrats in the Virginia statehouse to block his appointment to UVA’s board of visitors. 

A ‘Monster List’ of Supporters

According to The Cornell Daily Sun, then-President Martha Pollack said in 2023 – a year before she was forced to resign – that it was “incredibly frustrating” that groups like the Cornell Free Speech Alliance denounce DEI “in the guise” of defending free speech. 

The Cornell group has proven to be one of the most active and effective chapters, one born out of a university fundraising appeal gone bad. 

In 2019, Cornell officials courted Neuss, a 1976 engineering grad and successful real-estate tycoon, with an invitation to make a substantial gift – “north of $1 million,” in Neuss’s words – in exchange for a naming opportunity involving a university building, possibly a library or a laboratory. Neuss had heard rumors about intolerance and censorship on campus and delayed cutting the check as he mulled his options. In a bid to appease his concerns, university officials introduced him to political moderates on the faculty. After hearing their testimonies, Neuss resolved to use his donations to create the Cornell Free Speech Alliance in 2021.

“What he learned from these faculty members was astonishing,” the Cornell Alliance memorialized in one of its numerous reports. “They told him that they felt sidelined and humiliated by the diversity training they were required to attend and were perpetually afraid they would say something factual but impolitic that could negatively impact their job.”

The alumni organization began compiling an email distribution from various sources – web searches, references, word of mouth, unsolicited inquiries – and now communicates regularly with 23,000 regular readers and subscribers. Like other alumni groups, Cornell tapped into the university’s official alumni association contacts list – extracting thousands of emails – before Cornell shut down unlimited access. The Cornell Free Speech Alliance now disseminates news updates and other information reporting on the Cornell administration and exposing practices the group considers abusive or even illegal.

“This is one thing that absolutely freaks them out,” Neuss said. “We have compiled this monster email list of Cornell alumni, donors, trustees, former trustees, et cetera.”

A report issued in December 2023 lists a number of early achievements: creating a free speech “action plan” for Cornell leadership; media exposure in The Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, Fox News, New York Post, Inside Higher Ed, National Review and RealClearPolitics; and filing an amicus brief with other alumni free speech alliance chapters in a Supreme Court case involving alleged free speech abridgments at Virginia Tech University. 

Neuss said the organization has close to 1,000 donors. As of 2023, the group reported $221,000 in revenue and total assets of $186,000, according to the ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer database. It is run by an executive committee of eight Cornell alums and two dozen other volunteers, and paid professionals include an email blast specialist and a PR/communications point person.

One of the culture war controversies that drew the group’s ire was the mysterious disappearance of a bust of Abraham Lincoln that had been displayed at the Rare and Manuscript Collections section of Kroch Library, which houses the university’s Asia Collections and rare books,  manuscripts and other artifacts. A professor learned from a librarian that the bust had been removed because of a “complaint.” The bust was eventually restored after the Cornell Free Speech Alliance, The College Fix, and others drew attention to its disappearance, and concerned alumni flooded the administration with angry letters. 

This was at the height of the so-called racial reckoning in the wake of George Floyd’s 2020 murder, prompting Cornell President Pollack to announce what was cast as a series of antiracist actions: a mandatory unit on racism, bias, and equity for all Cornell students; the creation of an Anti-Racism Center to generate antiracism scholarship; and a campus-wide, racism-focused semester, during which “our campus community will focus on issues of racism in the U.S. through relevant readings and discussions.” 

In January 2024, Cornell trustee and donor Jon Lindseth wrote an open letter to Cornell trustees calling for President Pollack’s resignation, enumerating a litany of complaints, starting with Pollack’s “shameful,” milquetoast response to “terrorism and antisemitism,” compared to her swift, decisive action in response to the George Floyd tragedy. 

“A new campus ‘bias reporting system’ fosters a hostile Orwellian environment among neighbors, classmates, and colleagues reporting on one another,” Lindseth wrote. “The elimination of grades and SATs has created a system in which equal outcomes rather than proven merit has become the objective.”

Many of the examples in Lindseth’s letter, such as “whistleblower accounts” from faculty, are attributed to the muckraking work of the Cornell Free Speech Alliance. “Instances are reported of qualified candidates for faculty positions being rejected for their DEI statements alone,” Lindseth wrote. 

“Even Lincoln could be canceled under the present administration,” Lindseth lamented. “This is an absolute disgrace.” 

Less than four months later, Pollack was out. 

Two weeks later, the alumni alliance released a whistleblower report headlined: “Internal Cornell Records Provided To CFSA Show How The University Discriminates Based On Personal Beliefs & Identity Profiles Rather Than Merit.” The report warned that Cornell was illegally disqualifying job candidates based on DEI statements and based on their identity characteristics. 

In August, the group submitted an incriminating 101-page report to Cornell leaders and trustees, noting that Cornell ranks 188th out of 203 American universities in free expression, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, whose surveys indicate that 88% of Cornell’s students self-censor their speech on campus. 

The report urged Cornell leaders to get out of the business of social justice activism: “Concerns of ‘community,’ ‘belonging,’ ‘microaggressions,’ and related efforts to ‘protect students from harmful ideas’ must be clearly and emphatically subordinated to the essential principles of open inquiry, academic freedom, free expression, and viewpoint diversity.”

“We’re dealing with institutions that are steeped in the oppressor-oppressed ideology,” said Michael Poliakoff, president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a national advocacy group that helped spin off the Alumni Free Speech Alliance. “Alumni and donors are now fed up with the idea of being tapped smoothly for money but essentially being pushed aside when they want to talk about the values of the campus.”

This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.

John Murawski reports on the intersection of culture and ideas for RealClearInvestigations. He previously covered artificial intelligence for the Wall Street Journal and spent 15 years as a reporter for the News & Observer (Raleigh, NC) writing about health care, energy and business. At RealClear, Murawski reports on how esoteric academic theories on race and gender have been shaping many areas of public life, from K-12 school curricula to workplace policies to the practice of medicine.

President Trump’s Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) and Rumble have teamed up to sue the pants off Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, accusing him of violating the free speech rights of an unnamed Brazilian influencer living in the United States.

The 39-page lawsuit, filed in the US District Court in Tampa, Florida, alleges that de Moraes exceeded his authority and violated international law by trying to ban the Brazilian blogger. TMTG operates Trump’s social media platform Truth Social, while Rumble is a popular video sharing platform. According to the complaint, the blogger is identified as “Political Dissident A,” and claims he has “sought political asylum in the United States, where he remains.”

“Political Dissident A” has founded several media outlets critical of Brazil’s supreme court, and has built a “sizable online following,” including a YouTube channel which boasts over 1.3 million followers.

The blogger was a vocal proponent of Brazil’s previous administration under former President Jair Bolsonaro.

“Acting under the guise of the Supreme Federal Tribunal of the Federative Republic of Brazil (‘STF’), Justice Moraes has issued sweeping orders to suspend multiple U.S.-based accounts (‘Banned Accounts’) of a well-known politically outspoken user (’Political Dissident A‘), ensuring no person in the United States can see his content (’Gag Orders’),” reads the lawsuit, which adds that the gag orders issued by Moraes “censor legitimate political discourse” in the United States and undermine protections enshrined in the First Amendment.

As the Epoch Times notes further, the lawsuit further alleges that the gag orders conflict with the Communications Decency Act, which grants legal immunity to providers of interactive computer services for content created by others on their platforms.

According to the lawsuit, Florida-based Rumble faces a fine of $9,000 a day and a shutdown of its service in Brazil if it doesn’t abide by Moraes’s orders.

The judge’s orders require Rumble to designate a legal representative in Brazil “solely for the purpose of accepting service of the Gag Orders and submitting to Justice Moraes’s authority,” the lawsuit states.

A ban on Rumble would interfere with Trump Media’s operations because the company relies, in part, on Rumble’s cloud-based hosting and video streaming infrastructure to deliver multimedia content to Truth Social users, the companies claim in the legal filing.

Rumble and TMTG are asking the court to declare Moraes’s gag orders unenforceable in the United States.

“Allowing Justice Moraes to muzzle a vocal user on an American digital outlet would jeopardize our country’s bedrock commitment to open and robust debate,” the lawsuit states. “Neither extraterritorial dictates nor judicial overreach from abroad can override the freedoms protected by the U.S. Constitution and law.”

Moraes is currently weighing charges filed on Tuesday alleging that Bolsonaro led a plot to overthrow the Brazilian government and undermine democracy after his 2022 election loss to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

A total of 33 people were charged this week alongside Bolsonaro, including several high-ranking officials from his former administration, such as his former national security adviser, retired Gen. Augusto Heleno, and former Navy Commander Almir Garnier Santos.

Bolsonaro’s lawyer, Paulo Cunha Bueno, has denied any wrongdoing by the former president and said the charges lacked facts.

“The President has never supported any movement aimed at dismantling the democratic rule of law or the institutions that uphold it,” Cunha Bueno wrote in a statement on social media platform X. “President Jair Bolsonaro trusts in the justice system and therefore believes that this indictment will not prevail due to its fragility, inconsistency, and lack of factual basis to support it in court.”

*  *  *

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Authored by Sarah Anderson via PJMedia.com,

Not too long ago, I decided to try a bold experiment. I returned to the University of Georgia to take some agriculture classes. The reason I considered it bold is that I was old enough to be many of the students’ mothers (had I been an extremely young teen mom, of course). I learned a lot of lessons about this current generation of teens and twenty-somethings and how college has changed since my first go-round two decades prior, but what really threw me was when a professor asked for my pronouns. 

My class was given a virtual assignment to upload a video introduction of ourselves to a school website. “Tell us your name, your major, your hobbies and interests, and your pronouns so your classmates can gain a better understanding of who you are.” I’d never been asked to provide my pronouns in my life and had no interest in starting now. Before I uploaded my video, I watched through some of the others, shocked as these young men and women offered up their “hes” and “shes” and “theys” as if this was all perfectly normal. 

But there was one guy, let’s call him Tyler, who gave us his name, his major, and his hobbies and interests, but instead of pronouns, he ended the video with “I’m a dude” and a slight eye roll, obviously mocking the pronoun situation. 

Let me tell you, he’s the only person from that class I even remember, much less ever gained any sort of understanding of who he was.  

Well, JD Vance just gave all the other Tylers of the world permission to crawl out from under their rocks of submission and embrace their God-given masculinity. 

On behalf of women — well, the ones who enjoy being women — I would like to say thank you to our vice president. 

Vance spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Monday and said a lot of great things, some of which even earned him a standing ovation. But it was his message to young people, especially young men, that really stood out.

My message to young men is don’t allow this broken culture to send you a message that you’re a bad person because you’re a man, because you like to tell a joke, because you like to have a beer with your friends, or because you’re competitive. 

The cultural message…wants to turn everybody, whether male or female, into androgynous idiots who think the same, talk the same, and act the same. 

We actually think God made male and female for a purpose, and we want you guys to thrive as young men, and as young women. And we’re going to help with our public policy to make it possible to do that

The crowd erupted into cheers: 

Vice President JD Vance has a powerful message for young men 🔥🔥

“My message to young men is don’t allow this broken culture to send you a message that you’re a bad person because you’re a man, because you like to tell a joke, because you like to have a beer with your friends,… pic.twitter.com/JKWuX9cQhn

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) February 20, 2025

I don’t know about you, but I could listen to that over and over again. 

There’s a reason why Donald Trump won 49% of the vote from young men (ages 18 to 29) in November and 54% from men overall. 

Vance touched on that too.  

I think this is why young men in particular are so, you know, they’re so inspired by President Trump is because he doesn’t allow the media to tell him he can’t make a joke or he can’t have an original thought.

President Trump just says what’s on his mind; that’s a damn good thing. 

Amen to that. 

“We’re fighting for you,” was Vance’s overall message to young people, and it was refreshing to hear. Our country doesn’t just face international enemies — we’re under attack from enemies within who want to debase and degrade our culture. 

They’re the ones who want to tell young men that they can’t be masculine and tell women they can’t be feminine. They’re the ones who demand that boys play girls’ sports, who insist that teachers force gender ideology on elementary school students, and who truly believe there are 72 genders. 

*  *  *

You can support PJMedia by signing up for a VIP membership and gaining access to exclusive content, as well as the opportunity to comment on articles and interact with their contributors. It’s already a great deal, but right now, they’re having a big sale to celebrate the new Trump administration. Use the code FIGHT to get 60% off, and use this link to sign up.

NASA awarded SpaceX a billion-dollar contract last year to deorbit the International Space Station and guide its controlled descent into the Pacific Ocean by the end of the decade. Now, Elon Musk is pushing for an accelerated timeline.

“It is time to begin preparations for deorbiting the @Space_Station . It has served its purpose. There is very little incremental utility. Let’s go to Mars,” Musk wrote on X around lunchtime. 

Eric Berger, a senior space editor at Ars Technica, commented on Musk’s post: “Are you suggesting that the ISS be deorbited prior to 2030? As you know, SpaceX currently as a contract to build the US Deorbit Vehicle to safely bring the station down in 2030.”

Musk responded to Berger: “The decision is up to the President, but my recommendation is as soon as possible. I recommend 2 years from now.”

The ISS, launched in 1998, recently extended its operational life from 2024 to 2030. Russia has indicated plans to withdraw from the ISS after 2024, while China is building its own space station called Tiangong.

The total cost of the ISS since 1998 is estimated to be around $150 billion to $160 billion, including $3-4 billion per year in costs. 

Democrats have already become angered over Musk’s proposed accelerated timeline for deorbiting the ISS on X. We’re sure they’re completely melting down on BlueSky. However, the ISS was originally set to retire in 2015, only to have its operational lifespan repeatedly extended by Congress. Over the years, numerous reports surfaced on leaks and structural concerns. It’s time to move on and save taxpayers billions of dollars per year. 

Authored by Stacy Robinson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A federal judge on Feb. 20 declined to block for now downsizing efforts by the Trump administration, including mass firings and buyout programs.

“Federal district judges are duty-bound to decide legal issues based on even-handed application of law and precedent—no matter the identity of the litigants or, regrettably at times, the consequences of their rulings for average people,” U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper wrote in his ruling.

Unions representing hundreds of thousands of federal workers had filed a lawsuit against President Donald Trump and the heads of several government agencies, saying they were overstepping the executive branch’s authority.

BREAKING: Trump’s firing spree can continue, for now.

A federal judge has denied a federal employee union’s attempt to stop Trump’s mass federal employee firings. The union likely must take its case to the FLRA, which handles federal workforce labor disputes.

Details soon pic.twitter.com/tYlELDhUHB

— Eric Katz (@EricM_Katz) February 20, 2025

The unions also said slashing the size of federal agencies would result in “irreparable harm” because of lower union dues revenue and a loss in bargaining power.

They asked the court to declare the federal program unlawful and to halt the administration from implementing another similar program.

The buyout, or deferred resignation, offer, which ended on Feb. 12, was offered to more than 2 million government employees by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to hasten Trump’s plan to shrink the federal workforce.

OPM offered workers full pay and benefits until Sept. 30 in exchange for voluntary resignation and warned that “the majority of federal agencies are likely to be downsized through restructurings, realignments, and reductions in force.”

Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times,

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on Feb. 19 issued new guidance updating its official definitions of terms such as sex, female, and male as part of President Donald Trump’s efforts to restore “the concept of biological truth” in the federal government.

It marks one of the first actions taken by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. following his confirmation last week.

The guidance was released to the U.S. government, external partners, and the public to “expand on the clear sex-based definitions” outlined in a January executive order signed by Trump, called “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.”

That order stated, in part, that the Trump administration “will defend women’s rights and protect freedom of conscience by using clear and accurate language and policies that recognize women are biologically female, and men are biologically male.”

The new HHS guidance reiterates the Trump administration’s stance that male and female are the only two sexes and that they cannot be changed.

Specifically, it defines the term “sex” as “a person’s immutable biological classification as either male or female.”

Female is defined as “a person of the sex characterized by a reproductive system with the biological function of producing eggs,” while male is defined as “a person of the sex characterized by a reproductive system with the biological function of producing sperm.”

A woman is “an adult human female.” 

A man is “an adult human male,” the guidance states.

A mother is described as a female parent and a father is described as a male parent.

The HHS will use these definitions and promote policies acknowledging that “women are biologically female and men are biologically male,” according to the guidance.

“This administration is bringing back common sense and restoring biological truth to the federal government,” Kennedy said in a statement. 

“The prior administration’s policy of trying to engineer gender ideology into every aspect of public life is over.”

Athlete Riley Gaines Praises Trump’s ‘Clarity, Decisiveness’

In conjunction with the new guidance on sex-based definitions, HHS also launched a new website that includes information and resources for “protecting women and children.”

The website features a video from former National Collegiate Athletic Association swimmer, Riley Gaines, defending a recent ban on men participating in women’s sports.

Gaines, who has regularly advocated for such a ban, can be seen in the video thanking Trump for taking swift action to protect female athletes.

“The clarity and decisiveness of this administration sends a strong, clear message to women and girls across the country that we matter,” Gaines said.

The website also features a blog post by Dr. Dorothy Fink, an endocrinologist who served as acting HHS secretary before Kennedy assumed his new role, on the various sports-related conditions faced by women and girls competing in athletics.

“In health care, sex distinctions can influence disease presentation, diagnosis, and treatment differently in females and males,” Fink said in a statement. 

“HHS recognizes that biological differences between females and males require sex-specific practices in medicine and research to ensure optimal health outcomes.”

The latest guidance represents a shift from the previous administration’s stance on gender identity.

Under Biden, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), one of HHS’s agencies, defined sex as “an individual’s biological status as male, female, or something else,” while gender was defined as “the cultural roles, behaviors, activities, and attributes expected of people based on their sex.”

In the United States, 1.6 million people over the age of 13 identify as transgender individuals, according to the Williams Institute.