Fifteen police vehicles were torched at the Police training facility near the Portland Airport last week.
The case was being investigated as arson.
First on MRC Business: George Soros’ Open Society Foundations sunk massive amounts of cash into several universities—most of which have been a breeding ground for radical anti-Israel students and whose administrations responded poorly to protestors, agitators and rioters trespassing, breaking into and occupying buildings and harassing Jewish students.
Both the New York Post and Politico have reported on Soros’ connections to the groups leading the anti-Israel protests. And now, an MRC Business investigation exposed how Soros has also given at least $34,638,060 to the nine universities that have made headlines for their slow response to anti-Semitic protests and riots, as well as their ineffectual or possibly even sympathetic administrators.
Among the recipients of Soros funding connections were Columbia University, Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), University of North Carolina (UNC), University of Southern California (USC), City University of New York (CUNY), the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and, of course, the University of California Berkeley from 2016 to 2022.
Soros also poured money into media and journalism-related initiatives at several of these schools, including $2,399,360 to Harvard, $1,827,560 to Columbia, $366,369 to UNC and $125,000 to CUNY.
The accusations of anti-Semitic sentiments at Harvard, MIT, UPenn and Columbia were so severe that all four presidents of these universities have been called to testify before Congress. The presidents of UPenn and Harvard resigned in disgrace due to their failure to address campus anti-Semitism. Former Harvard President Claudine Gay also failed to clearly condemn the anti-Semitic phrase “From the River to the Sea,” which calls for the genocide of the Jewish people. The president of Columbia only allowed police to clear out trespassing anti-Israel agitators after they barricaded themselves inside a building, trashed it and prevented people from going in or out. At CUNY and UNC, anti-Israel hecklers tore down the American flag while raising the Palestinian flag above the campus. Students have occupied and attempted to occupy buildings, trashed their campuses with garbage and graffiti, and acted with basic impunity due to a lack of decisive actions from their university administrations.
Other universities have taken anti-Semitism more seriously. University of Florida president Ben Sasse famously stood his ground against violations of campus policy on campus and in the pages of The Wall Street Journal.
The New York prosecutor in the New York City hush money case against Donald Trump was previously hired for 'political consulting' by the Democratic National Committee.
The revelations regarding attorney Matthew Colangelo raises concerns over the perceived politicalization of the multiple cases against the former president – and specifically the first case brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office.
Colangelo, according to a Fox News Digital review of Federal Election Commission records, was paid $12,000 by the DNC on January 31, 2018. It was distributed by DNC Services Corp/Democratic National Committee in two separate payments of $6,000 on the same day.
Authored by James Breslo via The Epoch Times,
In 1996, Californians voted, 55 to 45 percent, to ban the use of affirmative action in admissions to state schools and in state employment. In 2020, Californians voted to maintain the ban by an even wider margin, 57 to 43 percent.
Last year, the United States Supreme Court struck down college affirmative action policies on the grounds they violate the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.
The clear message from the people and the Court is that admission should be based upon merit. But those running the University of California (UC) maintain their obsession with race and “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI). They are undeterred in their mission to enforce equity via affirmative action. Rather than complying with the law and the will of the people, they search for loopholes to achieve the racial balancing they deem ideal for the shaping of society.
The most recent example comes from its San Diego campus (UCSD) which implemented a rule that discriminates against students whose parents make more than a certain amount of money or who went to college. It just so happens that this rule greatly advantages black and Latino students. In a nice side benefit for the administrators, it hurts Asians, who are already overrepresented at the UCs (as well as most universities, as addressed in the Supreme Court case, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which specifically addressed discrimination against Asian students.)
Beginning next year, certain “selective” majors (such as biology and most engineering degrees, including computer science) will have a special selection criteria at UCSD. “The selection criteria for entry to the major will consider academic achievement in the specified screening courses and will also be aligned with UC San Diego’s priorities of serving California residents, first-generation college students, and students from low-income families.” Thus, UCSD, without any direction from its constituents, has decided that it should prioritize students based on the status of their parents.
Here is how it works. There is a new point system “that awards one point each for having a 3.0 GPA or higher in the major screening courses; California residency; Pell Grant eligibility [i.e. parental income]; and first-generation college status.” Thus, half of the criteria is based upon the student’s parents. And since the majority of UC students are from California, and a 3.0 GPA is pretty easy, it really means that the primary determiner will be the status of the children’s parents.
The reason for the new policy is pretty obvious: It will advantage black and Latino students, and disadvantage white and Asian. It is unique, however, in that it is using old-school class warfare to achieve it.
Many have noted that the left has typically substituted race for class as a means of implementing socialism in the United States. Due to the U.S.’s strong middle class and upward mobility, class warfare has not worked as a means of implementing socialism here. But with courts striking down admissions policies based upon race, the left is now going back to old-fashioned class conflict. Will it work, or is it also illegal to discriminate based upon parental income or education?
If a court determines that the intent of the policy is to discriminate based upon race, then it will apply a “strict scrutiny” test to the policy. This is the standard the Supreme Court used in striking down affirmative action in the Harvard case. The UCSD policy, in fact, appears to be thinly disguised discrimination.
It is well-known that the average income of black and Hispanic people is below that of white and Asian, as is the percentage with a college degree. Thus, a court should hold the policy to the same standard as the ones struck down in the Harvard case. Justice John Roberts wrote that the Equal Protection Clause applies “without regard to any difference of race, of color, or of nationality” and thus must apply to every person. As such, “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it,” adding that “For ‘[t]he guarantee of equal protection cannot mean one thing when applied to one individual and something else when applied to a person of another color.’”
It is interesting that the policy, for now, appears to only apply to currently enrolled students attempting to transfer into these majors, not upon admission. Perhaps recognizing that the policy will have a discriminatory effect and thus subject to challenge, UCSD limited it to leave open the argument that it is not denying anyone an education, simply the major of their choice. But this is unlikely to fly, considering that the two most important elements of a quality education is the school and the major. If you cannot get a degree in engineering, you cannot become an engineer, while a biology degree is the natural feeder to medical school.
The UCSD policy is not the first time the UC has attacked students based upon their parent’s income. It used the same rationale to dump the SAT test. It argued that the test benefits children from wealthier families who can afford SAT prep courses. They now rely exclusively on high school grade point averages to determine scholarly merit. This allows them to easily create the racial balance they desire. They treat all high schools the same, whether it be the best private high school or the worst public school. We know that finishing in the top ten percent of your school is much easier to do at a public school than a private one, but that does not matter to UC. Achieving the desired racial makeup is more important to them than the merit of the individual.
The UC faculty, through the “Academic Senate,” oversees the admissions process. It explained getting rid of the SAT test: “This decision, which is part of the ongoing effort by the university to advance educational opportunity and equity, was based on the view that these tests are biased because they systematically and unfairly reduce the likelihood that underrepresented and low-income high school students will be accepted to the university.”
I have lots of stories from friends whose children could not get into a single one of the nine UC campuses across the state, but were accepted by the University of Michigan and University of Wisconsin, two of the best public universities in the country. That’s a nice consolation prize, except for the price, which is about five times more due to out-of-state tuition.
It is really incredible and the height of arrogance that California’s preeminent public university continues to fight against the will of its people. The Academic Senate asserts that “as a state public institution, the UC is obliged to create a student body that is representative of the demographic profile of California.” UC has even placed a Vice Chancellor of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, overseeing an entire department, at each campus to ensure this.
That sounds nice, the only problem is Californians have twice voted against it, and the discrimination required to achieve it is unconstitutional. But when you are on a cultish mission to create your utopian vision, those are minor inconveniences.
California is taking of heat for celebrating the completion of an high-speed rail bridge that has cost taxpayers $11 billion and took nine years to build — and clearly goes nowhere.
Critics — including Tesla founder Elon Musk and Dogecoin creator Billy Markus — are ripping the California High Speed Rail Authority after it boasted about last year’s completion of a “Fresno River Viaduct,” a mere sliver of the state’s long-delayed, bullet-train project attempting to link San Francisco to Los Angeles
“This is the most remarkable human achievement ever,” joked Markus, the creator of the jokey cryptocurrency, on X Friday.
“1600 feet of high speed rail after 9 years and 11 billion dollars it takes about 5 minutes to walk 1600 feet so a high speed rail for that is a really big deal,” added Markus, who also goes by “Shibetoshi Nakamoto.” Musk also chimed in, posting a sad, crying emoji to express his sentiments about the boondoggle of a project that is reportedly in danger of being scrapped.
That’s despite $11 billion in taxpayer dollars that have already being sunk into the Los Angeles-to-San Francisco high speed rail project.
That figure includes both the bridge and other work on the first phase of the high-speed route — which runs from Bakersfield north of Los Angeles to Merced, which is about 80 miles from the Bay Area.
Critics were responding to an earlier post by the rail authority, touting that the Fresno River Viaduct in Madera County is one of the “first completed high-speed rail structures.”
“At nearly 1,600 feet long, high-speed trains will travel over the riverbed and will run parallel with the BNSF Railroad,” the authority said on X.
Although reported estimates to complete the rail line will cost taxpayers about $100 billion, Markus fired back, quipping: “wow so impressive, can’t wait until year 2400 for this to finish for 700 quadrillion dollars.”Venture Capitalist Patrick Blumenthal insinuated the authority should pump the brakes on praising itself, posting a breakdown of the lack of progress the rail-line project has made.
“0.3 miles completed. After 15 years. After $11.2 BILLION. $36.96 billion per mile,” he wrote on X.
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