D.C. braces for “No Kings” protests as Democrats refuse to budge on the shutdown, two legacy media outlets face dramatic overhauls, and the largest media convention in the country uninvites two prominent conservative journalists — including one from The Daily Wire.
It’s Friday, October 17, 2025, and this is the news you need to know to start your day.
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<h2 style="text-align: center;">Democrat Shutdown Enters Day 17</h2>
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Topline: On Thursday, the 16th day of the current government shutdown drew comparisons to the 2013 Obamacare standoff and is fast approaching the record 35-day shutdown of 2018 over the southern border wall. With lawmakers flying home on Friday, the shutdown is guaranteed to last at least until next week. 
Both parties are standing firm. Democrats are doubling down, demanding negotiations with Republicans over healthcare, and Republicans say they want the government opened first before they’ll talk. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) wants to negotiate on healthcare, specifically focusing on extending the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) tax credits, which expire at the end of the year.
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The conventional wisdom in Washington is that the shutdown will drag on until President Donald Trump does something to stop it, or if rank-and-file Democrats revolt against their leadership.
Democrats in trouble: No one ever comes off good in a shutdown fight, but Republicans have managed to stay on top of this one. They’ve stuck to their messaging, and they’re making it clear that they’re going to find ways for soldiers and other essential workers to get paid even though funding has technically dried up.
Democrats seem excited about keeping things closed. Schumer caught backlash last week for saying the shutdown gets better every day.
People are starting to notice that Democrats are programming events in a way that seems to suggest they know the shutdown isn’t ending any time soon. Wednesday night’s town hall with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) was scheduled days in advance, and Democrats are using this weekend’s &#8220;No Kings&#8221; protests to push their shutdown messaging.
<h2 style="text-align: center;">DEI Targeted In NBC Layoffs</h2>
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Topline: Amid major shakeups across the broadcast media landscape, NBC announces it’s laying off 7% of its news staff. According to reports, diversity, equity, and inclusion roles are especially on the chopping block.
The layoffs are affecting about 150 journalists and producers out of a 2,000-person workforce. The main reason is that the company is spinning off its cable networks, such as MSNBC and CNBC, into a new entity called Versant.
NBC management says the cuts reflect redundancies tied to the reorganization. They say that many of the roles eliminated were simply shared support across NBC, MSNBC, and CNBC.
According to a report from The Wrap, DEI departments and positions are being especially targeted. The terminations are hitting the dedicated teams “covering issues affecting black, Asian American, Latino and LGBTQ+ groups” hardest.
DEI is DIEing: public opinion has shifted dramatically on DEI in the last few years.
Prior to the layoffs, NBC had teams specifically dedicated to those DEI categories, each with specialized websites called “verticals” devoted to covering topics and news relevant to them – NBC BLK for Black audiences, NBC Latino for Hispanic stories, NBC Asian America, and NBC OUT for LGBTQ+ coverage. The staff members for these verticals are almost all getting cut. Just two senior editors will remain to oversee content.
NBC says that doesn’t mean that coverage of those groups will disappear. They say the verticals, those specialized sites, will continue to publish content, but the content will be written by general reporters rather than those specialized teams.
On DEI specifically, it’s been a bloodbath throughout the news business.
During a major round of layoffs at the Los Angeles Times in January 2024, the newspaper cut the team for &#8220;De Los,&#8221; a vertical launched in 2023 to cover the Latino community, and a reporter hired specifically to cover Asian American communities.
In July 2024, CNN dismantled its “Race and Equality” team as part of a restructuring strategy. Just like with NBC, CNN said that the team would be integrated into the larger newsroom to “infuse” diversity coverage across all departments, but confirmed that the team as a distinct unit no longer existed.
DEI’s demise: The Trump administration set the tone. The president has signed multiple executive orders dismantling DEI programs throughout the federal government.
While NBC says this restructuring is to make a strategic shift to focus on streaming, it also provides the network with some distance from its cable channels, which have been roundly criticized for being overtly left-wing.
&nbsp;
<h2 style="text-align: center;">Conservative Journalists Uninvited From MediaFest</h2>
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Topline: The <a href="https://www.cjr.org/feature/student-journalism-mediafest-fraught-religion-faith-reporting.php">Columbia Journalism Review</a> published a report revealing that a supposedly non-partisan conference, MediaFest, that’s taking place this week, pulled both Daily Wire White House Correspondent Mary Margaret Olohan and The Daily Signal’s Virginia Allen from the event. The reason: a student media advisor said the two women espouse anti-LGBT views.
Morning Wire spoke with Olohan and Allen about their experience being blocked from MediaFest. (The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.)
Morning Wire: You were abruptly uninvited to this MediaFest event – and we’re just now learning the real reason why. First, what were you there to participate in? 
Olohan: I had been asked to be on a faith panel at this event. … As a Catholic, as a reporter, someone who has covered the culture issues, I would have been talking about these issues that I&#8217;ve covered so closely, abortion, marriage, gender, family, all these different life issues. … Let&#8217;s face it, a lot of the reporters who are giving us our news right now are not currently people of faith and they&#8217;re very religiously illiterate. We could have been offering a really interesting perspective here and unfortunately we won&#8217;t be.
Morning Wire: Instead you were disinvited. Did the organizers give you a journalistic rationale for pulling you out of the event? 
Olohan: At first, they said that they had objections to our reporting and they tried to say we had accuracy issues and the articles that they had particularly objected to. … The story that they were really upset about that I wrote was an exclusive from Congressman Brandon Gill, and we wrote about legislation that he was trying to pass that would say that you could not flush aborted baby body parts into our water systems. … But at the end of the day, what we now know is that they appear to have a problem with the fact that we&#8217;re conservative journalists. We would not be pushing the ideology that they would prefer we would be pushing. At the end of the day, that seems pretty biased to me to get rid of a different perspective.
Morning Wire: As The Daily Wire noted in an editorial, while you two were excluded, the organizers had no problem inviting Nikole Hannah Jones, the radical far-Left author of The 1619 Project. The double standard is impossible to miss. Thanks, Mary Margaret. Joining us now is Virginia Allen. Now, as I understand it, you were told that you were being removed due to a report you wrote on the 13,000 missing migrant children that the Trump administration had found. What exactly was the organizers’ complaint there?
Allen: I wish I knew exactly. … I think they took issue with the fact that I had cited individuals in the Trump administration who have been very critical of the Biden administration for literally losing thousands of kids. I assume that they wanted me to also include someone from the Biden administration claiming, no, we didn&#8217;t, in fact, lose thousands of children. But by their own admission, by their own documents that came out from the Biden administration, they did in fact lose the location of unaccompanied alien children. … I think at the end of the day, it comes down to the fact that they didn&#8217;t like individuals speaking at their conference who are openly pro-life, who openly believe that marriage is between a man and a woman, and who quite frankly are bold enough to sometimes report some of the good things that the Trump administration is doing for our country.
Morning Wire: The Trump administration is taking a very proactive, aggressive approach to shifting the landscape in terms of new media. Are you seeing in DC the effects of those shifts? Are there some positive signs for conservative journalists?
Allen: Oh, absolutely. … Under the Biden administration, we&#8217;re asking questions. We were sending those emails to the White House asking for comment and it was, you know, nine times out of 10 radio silence. Now, all of a sudden, we have an administration that’s willing to engage and speak to all media regardless of how big or small, leftist or conservative … and I think it&#8217;s a tone change that started in Washington, D.C., and now has rippled out across the rest of the country as more and more Americans are waking up to great news outlets like The Daily Wire, like The Daily Signal, who report fair and balanced, but are also very open about, hey, we are conservatives and we&#8217;re going to bring you the straight news and we&#8217;re not gonna put any leftist spin on it.

MRN_251017_V2

Morning Brief: Dem Shutdown Drags On, Legacy Media Targets DEI, & Conservative Journos Snubbed

Government Shutdown

Media

Morning Wire

Politics

A college president and former chair of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities plagiarized extensively in her doctoral dissertation, a Daily Wire review found.
Heidi M. Anderson is president of the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. For nearly four decades, she has climbed the academic ladder while producing an unremarkable amount of low-quality research.
Now, a lawsuit from a former Eastern Shore professor threatens to cast Anderson&#8217;s career in a startling new light. Donna Satterlee alleges that, under Anderson, low-skilled black faculty were hired based on their race and paid more than white faculty. The suit said whites were forced to do the work that black officials took credit for.
A Daily Wire review suggested that it could be a pattern that began with her 1986 doctoral dissertation for Purdue University, which kicked off her academic career.
Portions of the dissertation, which deal with the use of computers in pharmaceutical education, appear to be a repurposed and uncredited copy of a 1984 paper by Donna E. Larson, a professor of nursing, about the use of computers in nursing education, with simply the name of the field changed. The photos below show just the beginning of a lengthy section where Anderson appears to crib Larson&#8217;s eight points.
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Note at the bottom that Larson cited a number of papers, including her own prior work. Anderson appeared to lift those citations, in order, but remove Larson&#8217;s citation to herself–perhaps to avoid leaving a clue that could unravel an academic crime. Larson&#8217;s name is not mentioned anywhere in Anderson&#8217;s dissertation.
Larson&#8217;s list had eight items on it, but Anderson had 12. The 10th item on the list also copied someone else&#8217;s words verbatim and without quotation marks to make a simple point.
When Anderson summarizes a book by Christopher Evans, she is actually copying someone else&#8217;s summary of Evans&#8217;s work, even though there is no parenthetical attribution in that section of the text indicating it. The summary on the right, by Richard E. Pogue, was from the introduction to the same journal issue where Larson&#8217;s paper appeared.
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Likewise, Anderson appears to have simply taken the language of University of Texas medical professor Robert M. Caldwell, writing about computers in medical schools, and changed the name of the field. Caldwell does not appear in the references section of that chapter.
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A significant stretch of Anderson&#8217;s paper is identical to<a href="https://ia601401.us.archive.org/18/items/lb-1043-j-6601978/LB1043J6601978.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> &#8220;Introduction to Instructional Media&#8221;</a> (1978) by David H. Jonassen, even though Jonassen&#8217;s name never appears in her paper. That includes mirroring Jonassen&#8217;s language that something was &#8220;recent&#8221; in the world of computers, without the reader knowing that it was actually new almost a decade prior.
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-980109" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/jonassen-scaled.jpg" alt="" width="1130" height="2560" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/jonassen-scaled.jpg 1130w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/jonassen-132x300.jpg 132w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/jonassen-254x576.jpg 254w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/jonassen-768x1740.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/jonassen-678x1536.jpg 678w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/jonassen-904x2048.jpg 904w" sizes=" (max-width: 1130px) 100vw, 1130px" /></div>
Anderson&#8217;s personal touches consisted of adding woke language and grammatical errors. For example, a 1,000-word stretch appears copied directly from a paper by Robert M. Caldwell (1984) and an introduction to another paper by Christopher R. Brigham and Martin Kamp in 1973. The primary difference is that Anderson changed &#8220;his&#8221; to &#8220;his/her,&#8221; and the correctly-spelled &#8220;judgment&#8221; to the incorrect &#8220;judgement.&#8221;
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-980111" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/caldwell-kamp-scaled.jpg" alt="" width="638" height="2560" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/caldwell-kamp-scaled.jpg 638w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/caldwell-kamp-75x300.jpg 75w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/caldwell-kamp-768x3083.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/caldwell-kamp-383x1536.jpg 383w" sizes=" (max-width: 638px) 100vw, 638px" /></div>
Anderson&#8217;s paper proposed using computers to administer quizzes to pharmacy students, but she cribbed information about computers from papers that were woefully out of date even in 1986. One sentence said &#8220;Review of the literature demonstrates that there are relatively few methodologically sound evaluations of the effectiveness of computer assisted instruction (Atkinson, 1968).&#8221;
By the time of her writing, Apple II computers were widely available, and the sort of interactive tests her paper focused on were technically trivial. Yet with her experience with computers seemingly consisting only of reading old papers about them, her paper went on at length about topics like the comparative advantages of mainframes versus terminals. She copied older scholars&#8217; exact language even when explaining such obvious concepts as why it&#8217;s better for a computer to be small than big (&#8220;microcomputer units may be transported into the environment of the subject&#8221;).
The portion of Anderson&#8217;s dissertation designed to drive the field forward consisted of showing a computer program to students and then asking them questions about their opinions about computers. But the interactive activity was programmed by someone else, and the questions were also written by another researcher.
Startlingly, the conclusion of her original research also appeared to be copied from someone else. &#8220;These findings suggest that CAI can be as effective and efficient as a more traditional instructional modality in teaching both factual content and application of learned material when both methods use the same instructional content,&#8221; she wrote. That was virtually identical to a sentence that Elaine G. Boettcher wrote five years prior.
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Anderson&#8217;s dissertation says that &#8220;financial assistance was provided to the author by the Purdue University Black Doctoral Fellowship.&#8221;
<h4>&#8216;Posture towards non-Black faculty and staff was barely concealed hostility.&#8217;</h4>
In July, Satterlee sued the University of Maryland Eastern Shore and Anderson, saying, &#8220;Black faculty and administrators are paid vastly higher than others of similar or better qualifications. Heidi Anderson has instituted a two-tier system of racial preferences discriminating against White and Asian faculty who are given more and less-desirable work but significantly lower pay.&#8221;
&#8220;The Heidi Anderson Administration’s posture towards non-Black faculty and staff was barely concealed hostility. It was an established practice to pay non-Blacks less than Blacks, not include them in valuable opportunities, and only exploit their work for personal gain of the select few who were close to the university administration,&#8221;<a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.586969/gov.uscourts.mdd.586969.1.0.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> the federal lawsuit said</a>.
&#8220;Moses Kairo, a former Kenyan national, became the dean of the School of Agricultural and Natural Sciences at UMES in 2012. He exhibited a distinct preference for African nationals in hiring for positions within the school,&#8221; the lawsuit said. Another Kenyan and apparent former schoolmate of Kairo&#8217;s, Grace Namwamba, was hired as department chair and Satterlee&#8217;s boss, even though &#8220;Namwamba had extremely poor work competencies and skills and appeared incapable of writing in English at the level required of a university professor,&#8221; it said.
Satterlee, the lowest-paid faculty member in her department, &#8220;was assigned double the work of African or African-American faculty. In one instance, Dr. Satterlee was instructed by Dr. Namwamba to create a master’s degree program in two days&#8230; after Dr. Satterlee worked without rest to complete the assignment, Dr. Namwamba took her work product and stole the credit,&#8221; the suit said.
Satterlee said she earned the ire of Anderson and Namwamba after she called for a salary study that would publish faculty pay broken down by race, and by correcting sloppy work by Namwamba in an attempt to save the department from embarrassment. She was the only faculty member to be denied a request for a promotion that year, she said — with the denial letter misspelling her name as &#8220;Dr. Scatterlee.&#8221;
She said she was disciplined by the school&#8217;s DEI office, called the Office of Institutional Equity. The office is led by Jason Casares, who was hired after resigning from his job at a different university amid allegations that he <a href="https://www.wthr.com/article/news/local/update-iu-administrator-casares-resigns-amid-sexual-assault-claim/531-610f5e2c-e658-4b3b-a008-e7d1df4b7e4c" target="_blank" rel="noopener">sexually assaulted a college administrator</a>. Casares&#8217; claim was that Satterlee had &#8220;bullied&#8221; her boss.
He also accused her of insubordination, to which Satterlee replied: “If a written communication from a department chair is &#8216;riddled with grammatical errors and misspellings&#8217;, I have an obligation to call that to her attention and may do so without fear of reprisal, because, ultimately, we seek to teach students how to communicate.&#8221;
She was placed on &#8220;Transitional Terminal Leave.&#8221; The lawsuit said the Office of Institutional Equity has no authority to terminate the employment of a tenured professor, and that &#8220;insubordination&#8221; is not grounds for any university office to terminate a tenured professor.
The lawsuit also said that the University of Maryland Eastern Shore has declined sharply under Anderson&#8217;s leadership,<a href="https://carnegieclassifications.acenet.edu/institution/university-of-maryland-eastern-shore/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> losing the prized R2 research designation</a>.
The university is required to submit a response to the lawsuit by October 10.
Anderson declined to comment for this story. After publication, she put out a public statement saying “Recent allegations of plagiarism have been raised regarding my 1986 doctoral dissertation. Integrity, accountability, and trust are the foundations of my leadership and I take these concerns with the utmost seriousness. Consistent with University System of Maryland policy, there will be an assessment of these allegations… I am deeply grateful for the support of the UMES family during this period.”
Anderson&#8217;s published research in the decades since defending her dissertation has been short and of low quality, often published in obscure journals. For one paper, she had students ask 89 people who was their &#8220;primary source of prescription medicine information.&#8221; Most said their doctors, so she concluded that &#8220;pharmacists should consider providing more information.&#8221;
In another, she claimed that an unnamed minority faculty member had students repeatedly subject her to racial slurs in class and over the phone, and that this research discovered that colleges should create a &#8220;grievance process&#8221; for &#8220;student-faculty conflicts.&#8221;
Anderson repeatedly attained high academic positions. &#8220;I was the first African American to serve as President  [of] the Accreditation Council on Pharmaceutical Education, the national accrediting body,&#8221; she<a href="https://agriculture.house.gov/uploadedfiles/anderson_testimony_package.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> testified to Congress</a> in 2021, and &#8220;The Chronicle of Higher Education also recognized UMES as having the second most diverse faculty.&#8221;
&#8220;Allow me to say, that because we launched this program during the COVID pandemic, our efforts were not as robust or as smooth as it [sic] otherwise might have been,&#8221; she acknowledged to lawmakers in written remarks about her school&#8217;s use of federal funds. &#8220;One of the important issues we face as a nation and world are [sic] the challenges brought about by climate change.&#8221;
She told Congress that the university, which is both a historically black college and an agricultural college, would focus on &#8220;creating safe spaces where farmers can meet monthly.&#8221;
In 2023, Anderson served as president of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, making her the face of public universities.
Satterlee, the professor who was forced out, said that Anderson&#8217;s alleged pattern of forcing white professors to do the work, while black faculty take credit, mirrors the apparent deception that began her academic career.
&#8220;Heidi&#8217;s PhD has been obtained by fraud and by her passing off the work of other scholars as her own work. How can a university tell its students to be honest if its president is herself dishonest?&#8221; she told The Daily Wire. She called on Jay Perman, chancellor of the University System of Maryland, to fire Anderson.
Michael Sandler, a spokesman for the University System of Maryland, told The Daily Wire: &#8220;We are aware of the allegations raised against President Anderson and are reviewing them with our policies. We will determine the next steps once that process is complete.&#8221;
In September 2024, The Daily Wire revealed that a 5,000-word paper on rocket science by Darryll Pines, the president of the Maryland&#8217;s flagship campus at College Park,<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/university-of-maryland-president-copied-rocket-science-paper-from-aussie-student" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> copied a 1,500 word stretch from a tutorial website</a> by an Australian student. The paper, by Pines and a co-author, did not mention or cite the student anywhere, and attempted to change his British spellings to American ones–potentially a telltale sign that Pines knew he had not written the material, and was attempting to deceive readers.
In response, Pines wrote that &#8220;I<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/university-of-maryland-president-acknowledges-recurrent-language-submits-to-plagiarism-review" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> acknowledge recurrent language</a>,&#8221; and said an investigation would begin. Perman&#8217;s office said the review would be conducted jointly by the College Park campus and the statewide system, and &#8220;the two parties will use an expert consultant at an external law firm to lead the review&#8230; the consultant will determine who will serve on the review panel.&#8221;
A month later, the Australian student, who said it was &#8220;clearly plagiarism&#8230;not worthy of an academic,&#8221; said the panel<a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/governance/executive-leadership/2024/10/24/author-argues-maryland-president-clearly" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> hadn&#8217;t contacted him</a>. More than a year later, that panel has said nothing publicly, and Perman&#8217;s office has declined to share updates.
&#8220;It just feels like something weird is going on,&#8221; Professor Nick Seybert told the<a href="https://www.thebanner.com/education/higher-education/university-of-maryland-darryll-pines-plagiarism-AHZESFHKN5HA5DLTEF32CER46E/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> Baltimore Banner</a> in July. &#8220;It doesn&#8217;t feel like they&#8217;re taking it very seriously.&#8221;
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This story has been updated with a statement from Anderson.

Heidi Anderson / University of Maryland Eastern Shore

Another College President Plagiarized Her Dissertation. That’s Just The Tip Of The Iceberg.

Civil Rights

College

Education

Maryland

Plagiarism

University of Maryland

WASHINGTON—In the parking lot of the Smithsonian&#8217;s smallest museum, 18 of 29 spots were full. But inside, there were no couples on first dates or hordes of tourists milling about the exhibits.
In fact, there were no visitors there at all. Just 18 employees waiting for something to do.
On a sunny, late-summer day, this reporter stood outside the museum — located in a Washington, D.C., slum, far from any tourists — from noon to 3:00 p.m., ready to count visitors. But there was no one to count. At 12:28 p.m., one woman entered while screaming into her cell phone, &#8220;You ain&#8217;t sh*t.&#8221; She stayed for just long enough to use the bathroom, and left lecturing whoever was on the other end of her call about his or her &#8220;motherf***ing ghetto ass.&#8221;
Welcome to the Anacostia Community Museum, a six-room exhibit hall that receives $3 million each year in federal funding. The museum opened in 1967 to focus on &#8220;African American history, community issues, local history, and the arts.&#8221; Since then, the Smithsonian has added two separate, much larger museums focused on African art and African American history, making it largely redundant. Yet it remains, as if someone simply forgot to close it down.
Now, the government is finally weighing whether to do just that. Ten years after the massive African American History and Culture Museum supplanted it, there&#8217;s little reason for the Anacostia Community Museum to spend millions to welcome a handful of visitors a day.  The Trump administration&#8217;s 2026 budget proposes zeroing out funding for the Anacostia Museum, saying its exhibits should be moved to the larger one. Congress is yet to act on that proposal.
But it may soon. Smithsonian museums have <a href="https://x.com/smithsonian/status/1973136401920065572">enough funding</a> to remain open through October 6. But as the government shutdown continues — and the Trump administration leverages the funding freeze to slash nonessential programs and personnel — this little museum could soon find its taxpayer-funded endowment on the chopping block.
<h3>A Day At The Museum</h3>
At 1:39 p.m., a van pulled up with the only other attendees that showed up during this reporter&#8217;s three-hour stakeout. The visitors were there only partly of their own volition: four elderly residents from a nursing home in the wealthy section of D.C. were carted in by three nursing home staff. They ended their field trip at 2:30 p.m.
When this reporter finally entered, 10 employees were standing in the lobby, staring at the front door. They greeted me enthusiastically and offered me a Starbucks coffee from a fancy kiosk — an amenity that primarily serves employees, since coffee isn&#8217;t allowed in the main section. In a break room adorned with a big-screen TV and mahogany furniture, four black female employees and one white, green-haired employee of uncertain gender relaxed.
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Even with the paltry amount of space to fill, the slogan out front, &#8220;Powered by the People,&#8221; isn&#8217;t just a nod to communism; it&#8217;s an acknowledgment that a large portion of the content is simply coloring book pages scribbled on by visitors that have been affixed to the walls. It&#8217;s as much of a museum gallery as the grocery store community bulletin board.
In one of these &#8220;Visitor Galleries,&#8221; guests take a printed-out piece of paper containing the silhouette of a head with an Afro, color in the hair using provided crayons, and pin it to a large bulletin board. Some added messages on them, such as &#8220;Gay Rights Matter.&#8221; Another wall is dedicated to pages that visitors colored in using stencils of musical instruments.
<div id="attachment_977089" style="width: 442px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-977089" class="size-large wp-image-977089" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/IMG_3022-432x576.jpeg" alt="" width="432" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/IMG_3022-432x576.jpeg 432w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/IMG_3022-225x300.jpeg 225w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/IMG_3022-768x1024.jpeg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/IMG_3022-1152x1536.jpeg 1152w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/IMG_3022-1536x2048.jpeg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/IMG_3022-scaled.jpeg 1920w" sizes=" (max-width: 432px) 100vw, 432px" />With no visitors to attend to, a Smithsonian employee peruses the art.</div>
Nearly half of the museum, including a section named &#8220;A Century of Black Arts Education in Washington, DC,&#8221; is dedicated to knick-knacks pertaining to local high schools, memorabilia that might be better suited in the schools themselves rather than a national museum. According to a plaque: &#8220;It would be difficult to name a high school, the graduates or former pupils of which have achieved success in such numbers and of such brilliancy as have those trained in [Dunbar] High School.&#8221;
(According to D.C.&#8217;s most recent <a href="https://app.box.com/s/sqqkkz8jrwrqqqxxsij3p65t3xco47u2" target="_blank" rel="noopener">standardized test scores</a>, only 1% of Dunbar students are proficient in math.)
One section is dedicated to children&#8217;s posters promoting government spending and political activism. There are posters celebrating teachers&#8217; unions, demanding increased pay for teachers that state, &#8220;No funds, no arts, no future.&#8221; One poster implores D.C.&#8217;s high school students to skip school — something Dunbar&#8217;s students might not need much persuading to do — for a &#8220;walkout&#8221; to &#8220;show the D.C. city council&#8221; that &#8220;funding matters!!!&#8221;
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-977091" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/IMG_2997-432x576.jpeg" alt="" width="432" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/IMG_2997-432x576.jpeg 432w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/IMG_2997-225x300.jpeg 225w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/IMG_2997-768x1024.jpeg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/IMG_2997-1152x1536.jpeg 1152w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/IMG_2997-1536x2048.jpeg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/IMG_2997-scaled.jpeg 1920w" sizes=" (max-width: 432px) 100vw, 432px" /></div>
A section dedicated to jazz consists of TVs playing videos, one of which <a href="https://drumcenternh.com/blogs/news/history-of-drums-a-brief-history-lesson-for-drummers">inaccurately claims</a> that the drum was invented in Africa. An exhibit invites visitors to &#8220;Give Music a Try&#8221; using a DJ machine that allows them to make wicka-wicka record-scratch noises. It wasn&#8217;t plugged in.
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-977093" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/IMG_3038-768x576.jpeg" alt="" width="768" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/IMG_3038-768x576.jpeg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/IMG_3038-300x225.jpeg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/IMG_3038-1536x1152.jpeg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/IMG_3038-2048x1536.jpeg 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px" /></div>
The museum contains only a few pieces of artwork, all of which look like they were made by small children, or were an accident involving spilled paint that the 18 staffers had not gotten around to cleaning up.
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-977095" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/IMG_3036-369x576.jpeg" alt="" width="369" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/IMG_3036-369x576.jpeg 369w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/IMG_3036-192x300.jpeg 192w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/IMG_3036-768x1198.jpeg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/IMG_3036-985x1536.jpeg 985w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/IMG_3036-1313x2048.jpeg 1313w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/IMG_3036-scaled.jpeg 1641w" sizes=" (max-width: 369px) 100vw, 369px" /></div>
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-977101" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/IMG_3011-781x576.jpeg" alt="" width="781" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/IMG_3011-781x576.jpeg 781w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/IMG_3011-300x221.jpeg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/IMG_3011-768x566.jpeg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/IMG_3011-1536x1133.jpeg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/IMG_3011-2048x1510.jpeg 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 781px) 100vw, 781px" /></div>
One room is dedicated to photography, which seems like a dump of someone&#8217;s iPhone gallery. A photo features a D.C. high school marching band from 2018, while another simply depicts people in the museum itself, looking at one of its exhibits. It&#8217;s as if someone wanted to create content for the museum without having to leave it, or wanted proof that, at one time, someone actually visited.
Information board exhibits outside continue the struggle to fill space, like a student padding out an essay to meet the teacher&#8217;s three-page requirement. One explains how the purpose of the museum is to &#8220;answer critical questions, such as: Where do we come from? Who are we as a people?&#8221; It seems to run out of ideas before answering, shifting to a picture of an oak leaf and noting that more than 500 species of caterpillars live in oak trees.
Another sign tells residents that there is a river nearby, and says the museum highlights the Anacostia watershed &#8220;through the lenses of faith [and] race.&#8221;
<h3>&#8216;Collective work to build a more equitable future&#8217;</h3>
Most facilities whose budget is difficult to justify based on purely practical considerations might avoid personally antagonizing their funders. But the Anacostia Community Museum is nakedly partisan, thumbing its nose at the administration that will determine whether it has a future.
The museum&#8217;s <a href="https://anacostia.si.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">website</a>, for example, invites visitors &#8220;to join us in our collective work to build a more equitable future for all.&#8221; It calls for &#8220;reckoning with our racial past,&#8221; and &#8220;environmental justice.&#8221; An exhibit touts &#8220;the rise of Black Power.&#8221;
That&#8217;s despite the fact that in March, President Donald Trump signed an <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/restoring-truth-and-sanity-to-american-history/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">executive order</a> calling to remove &#8220;improper ideology&#8221; from the Smithsonian. Vice President JD Vance is on the Smithsonian&#8217;s Board of Regents, which is helmed by Chief Justice John Roberts. The order barred exhibits that &#8220;divide Americans based on race&#8221; or that cast the United States as &#8220;inherently racist, sexist, oppressive.&#8221;
Some Smithsonian officials have resisted, saying it is an independent institution, even though 70% of its funding comes from the federal government. This month, the institution was <a href="https://www.cnn.com/politics/smithsonian-white-house-independence-race" target="_blank" rel="noopener">required</a> to turn over information about its content to the White House.
One of the Anacostia museum&#8217;s exhibits, called &#8220;We Shall Not Be Moved,&#8221; illustrates the fatalism that the Trump executive order seeks to remove from the museums, which serve as the front door of America for visitors, foreign and domestic.
The exhibit is about a crime-ridden subsidized housing complex in Southeast D.C. that was torn down in 2019. The government replaced the rundown housing projects with a development that is home to people of all incomes and races, yet the museum says this is &#8220;just one example of a historical African American community&#8221; engaging in &#8220;struggle across the U.S.&#8221; It shows visitors a map of majority-black areas across the country and asks a leading question to which only one answer is acceptable: &#8220;Why do you think they were targeted?&#8221;
The museum complains that the housing project was a place of &#8220;oppression and depression,&#8221; yet somehow simultaneously laments that it was later &#8220;destroyed.&#8221; That sort of clinically depressed, all-roads-lead-to-racism cynicism and shortsightedness mirrors how the museum may finally meet its own end.
<h3>&#8216;A ghetto operation as it were.&#8217;</h3>
The Smithsonian exists to run museums of national importance, not neighborhood bulletin boards. The Anacostia outpost was justified as a marker of black culture, a half-measure towards advocates&#8217; ultimate goal of a larger African American museum on the National Mall. In 1989, the Anacostia museum&#8217;s then-director, John Kinard, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1989/07/19/lion-of-the-anacostia-museum/09f0e494-e925-46b2-8b51-dcf8f175741d/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> just that, casting doubt that we&#8217;d ever see the larger museum.
&#8220;It was convenient to start something off in a ghetto,&#8221; Kinard said. &#8220;A ghetto operation, as it were. But a ghetto operation for 20 long years?&#8221; He called then-Smithsonian Secretary Robert Adams a &#8220;closet racist&#8221; who &#8220;would never agree to an African American museum on the Mall.&#8221;
But in 2016, Kinard got his way. The massive African American History and Culture Museum opened on the National Mall. Now, the people who complained about the lack of that museum also complain about the predictable result of its opening: the smaller museum&#8217;s likely shuttering.
<div id="attachment_979297" style="width: 810px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-979297" class="size-full wp-image-979297" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/https___www.si_.edu_sites_default_files_images_nmaahc-1000x675.jpg.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="540" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/https___www.si_.edu_sites_default_files_images_nmaahc-1000x675.jpg.jpg 800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/https___www.si_.edu_sites_default_files_images_nmaahc-1000x675.jpg-300x203.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/https___www.si_.edu_sites_default_files_images_nmaahc-1000x675.jpg-768x518.jpg 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" />African American History and Culture Museum / Smithsonian</div>
Congress&#8217;s Committee on House Administration, which oversees the Smithsonian, didn&#8217;t return a request for comment.
According to the Smithsonian&#8217;s <a href="https://www.si.edu/newsdesk/about/stats" target="_blank" rel="noopener">official statistics</a>, in 2019, after the larger museum was in full swing, the Anacostia museum saw only 8,034 visitors, or five per day. In 2021, the figure was still five per day (COVID affected the attendance of all museums that year, but the Smithsonian&#8217;s American Art Museum nonetheless saw 420,000 visitors).
For 2024, the official statistics claimed 14,076, or about 38 a day. But, its website includes the caveat, &#8220;the counts sometimes include staff.&#8221; Its federal <a href="https://www.si.edu/sites/default/files/about/fy2025-budgetrequestcongress.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">budget provides</a> 17 full-time employees (the 18th employee we identified was a Metropolitan Police officer). The Daily Wire&#8217;s experience suggests that the official numbers are either inflated or count all employees. Even counting the bathroom user and the nursing home aides, the number I saw over three hours would work out to 18 over the seven hours the museum is open.
In the end, the museum seems to exist as a multi-million dollar jobs program and not much else — and its oversized staff may have actually obscured the fact that there is little demand for its offerings. But visitors may learn at least one thing, thanks to the fact that it has persisted for nearly a decade even after it was replaced by a larger museum: There is no such thing as a temporary government program.

Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum

A Day At The Multi-Million Dollar Government Museum With No Visitors

DOGE

Donald Trump

Smithsonian Museum

Washington D.C.

The Trump administration froze around $18 billion in infrastructure projects for New York City on Wednesday, citing &#8220;unconstitutional&#8221; diversity, equity, and inclusion &#8220;principles.&#8221;
Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought <a href="https://x.com/russvought/status/1973386129320665329">announced</a> the move on Wednesday, <a href="https://x.com/russvought/status/1973388530215735570">adding</a> that the billions of dollars in now-frozen funding were earmarked for the Hudson Tunnel and the Second Avenue Subway.
&#8220;Roughly $18 billion in New York City infrastructure projects have been put on hold to ensure funding is not flowing based on unconstitutional DEI principles,&#8221; Vought wrote on X. &#8220;More info to come soon from [the U.S. Department of Transportation].&#8221;
The Hudson Tunnel project seeks to build a new passenger rail tunnel under the Hudson River and fix the existing North River Tunnels for Amtrak and NJ Transit traffic, CBS News <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/government-shutdown-new-york-infrastructure-funding-trump-schumer-jeffries/">reported</a>. The project focusing on the Second Avenue Subway aims to extend the Q line into Harlem and add new stations.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has <a href="https://www.schumer.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/schumer-announces-gateway-tunnel_nations-largest-infrastructure-project--will-receive-massive-688-billion-in-fed-funds-largest-federal-transportation-grant-in-history-the-money-for-gateway-is-now-allocated-and-all-systems-go-marks-long-effort-by-senator">made</a> the Hudson Tunnel project a top priority in recent years, securing billions of dollars in federal funding for what he called &#8220;the nation’s largest public works project.&#8221; Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), who represents parts of Brooklyn, have spearheaded Democratic resistance to Trump’s government funding proposal.
Jeffries told Vought to &#8220;get lost.&#8221;
&#8220;Again with this guy (and his baseless threats),&#8221; Jeffries <a href="https://x.com/RepJeffries/status/1973413881549631872">said</a>. &#8220;Russ, you are the poster child for privilege and mediocrity. Get lost.&#8221;
Schumer and Jeffries are getting ripped by the Trump administration after their party refused to agree to a deal with Republicans to keep the government funded.
The Trump administration&#8217;s decision to hold funding also comes shortly after the president threatened to withhold federal funding from New York City if socialist candidate Zohran Mamdani wins the mayoral election in November. Mamdani is currently leading by a significant margin in the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/polls/nyc-mayoral-election-polls-2025.html">polls</a>.
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&#8220;He is going to have problems with Washington like no Mayor in the history of our once great City. Remember, he needs the money from me, as President, in order to fulfill all of his FAKE Communist promises,&#8221; Trump <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115287641147640374">wrote</a> on Truth Social on Monday. &#8220;He won’t be getting any of it, so what’s the point of voting for him? This ideology has failed, always, for thousands of years. It will fail again, and that’s guaranteed!&#8221;
The administration&#8217;s freeze, however, does not appear to be tied to the mayor&#8217;s race, and it remains unclear which &#8220;DEI principles&#8221; the White House is concerned about.
New York Democratic leaders have been in the crosshairs of the Trump administration this week. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy blasted New York Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul on Tuesday over allegations that the state is handing out commercial driver licenses (CDLs) to illegal immigrants with no name given on the CDL.
&#8220;Kathy Hochul continues her campaign to make New York one of the most lawless states in the country. &#8230; ALL illegally issued CDLs endanger American families on the road. My recent emergency action to restrict CDLs will work to counteract these disastrous, America-Last policies,&#8221; Duffy <a href="https://x.com/SecDuffy/status/1973190834926584160">wrote</a> on X.

Donald Trump/Chuck Schumer

Trump Freezes $18 Billion For NYC Infrastructure Over ‘Unconstitutional DEI Principles’

Executive

New York

New York City

Russ Vought

Trump Administration

A coronavirus-era housing bailout program spent $10 billion paying Americans&#8217; mortgages and homeowner association dues. But explicit racial preferences steered nearly half of the funds to black Americans, who make up just 12% of the population, a Daily Wire analysis found.
The <a href="https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/coronavirus/assistance-for-state-local-and-tribal-governments/homeowner-assistance-fund" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Homeowner Assistance Fund</a> is one of the largest race-based government wealth transfers in history. It has largely escaped scrutiny since it launched amid a global pandemic and a stream of other federal bailouts. But now, white residents in several states have filed lawsuits alleging that they were illegally discriminated against.
The lawsuits target Republican-led states that the plaintiffs say went along with the program in Joe Biden&#8217;s American Rescue Plan, even though it was up to each state to implement its own rules, and the Biden administration offered racial criteria only as non-binding suggestions.
In Georgia, for example, 82% of the funds — made up of payments for up to $50,000 — went to blacks. Only 13% went to whites, and 4% went to Hispanics. The lawsuit argues that this can&#8217;t be due to income disparities alone, given the high rate of poverty among white people in the state.
&#8220;This dramatic difference cannot be explained by income disparities or other race-independent reasons,&#8221; a <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.gasd.107818/gov.uscourts.gasd.107818.1.0.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lawsuit</a> filed in January says. &#8220;For example, comparing census and poverty rate data, about 50.5% of Georgia citizens below the poverty line are black and 45.6% are white.&#8221;
The lawsuit is against the state&#8217;s Department of Community Affairs, whose leaders are appointed by Governor Brian Kemp, a Republican who has led the state since 2019. It alleges that the $354 million plan submitted by Georgia, and approved in January 2022, to use the funds included plans for a public awareness campaign that would send text messages to residents in &#8220;30 out of Georgia’s 152 counties&#8221; that were selected based on, among other things, “minority population.”
The state also &#8220;approved applications from applicants of its preferred racial and ethnic groups at a higher rate than those from white applicants. Out of all non-white applicants, about 20.04% of applicants were approved while out of all white applicants, about 12.74% of applicants were approved,&#8221; the suit says.
The federal program <a href="https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/136/HAF-Guidance.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">required</a> that each state allocate at least 60% of the funds to homeowners with incomes below the median. People with higher-than-average incomes could get the remaining money, but that portion &#8220;must be prioritized for assistance to socially disadvantaged individuals, with funds remaining after such prioritization being made available for other eligible homeowners.&#8221;
In other words, poor people of all races could always qualify for the grant, but certain other groups could also get it because they&#8217;re &#8220;disadvantaged,&#8221; even though they actually had more money than most.
The lawsuit stated that Congress had not defined &#8220;socially disadvantaged individuals.&#8221; But in April 2021, the Biden administration &#8220;provided a recommended definition&#8221; that said &#8220;Socially disadvantaged individuals are those who have been subjected to racial or ethnic prejudice or cultural bias &#8230; There is a rebuttable presumption that the following individuals are socially disadvantaged: Black Americans, Hispanic Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.&#8221;
Georgia, Missouri, and Oklahoma are being sued after the deep-red states chose to adopt that definition, even though it was optional, unlike other states. Deep-blue California, for example, administered the housing-cost bailout by <a href="https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/136/HAFP-0108-California-Salesforce-Submission.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">defining</a> socially disadvantaged as residents who live in Census tracts where the <a href="https://knowledge.luskin.ucla.edu/ca-covid-19-owner-vulnerability/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ratio</a> of housing costs to available income has historically made residents most vulnerable to foreclosure. <a href="https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/136/HAFP-0096-Texas-SalesforceSubmission.pdf">Texas</a> defined it as people who &#8220;reside in a Persistent Poverty County.&#8221;
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-968057 size-full" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/haf-race.png" alt="" width="1113" height="1636" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/haf-race.png 1113w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/haf-race-204x300.png 204w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/haf-race-392x576.png 392w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/haf-race-768x1129.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/haf-race-1045x1536.png 1045w" sizes=" (max-width: 1113px) 100vw, 1113px" /></div>
Kemp spokesman Carter Chapman declined to discuss why Georgia adopted the race-based definition, instead saying he has a record of &#8220;fighting DEI in our state,&#8221; including signing bills restricting childhood gender transitions. The state&#8217;s Department of Community Affairs did not return a request for comment.
Georgia Attorney General Christopher M. Carr is seeking to have the lawsuit dismissed, filing a motion in June that stated the state&#8217;s use of race was &#8220;entirely consistent with the Treasury’s definitions.&#8221;
&#8220;The Treasury’s and DCA’s definition of socially disadvantaged individuals included, but was not limited to, people who had been subject to racial prejudice, and it also included those who have been subject to cultural bias, which is not a racial classification,&#8221; Carr says.
&#8220;The program allowed white applicants to be considered socially disadvantaged merely by submitting an affidavit stating that they &#8216;identify as a Socially Disadvantaged Individual,'&#8221; he wrote.
Carr is a Republican who has held his position since 2016 and has criticized DEI policies elsewhere, including at Costco and the American Bar Association. Carr spokeswoman Kara Murray told The Daily Wire that &#8220;Attorney General Carr had no involvement in the implementation of this program in Georgia. Once the lawsuit was filed, our office’s role was to defend the State in court, and that’s what we have done.&#8221;
In Missouri, the program was implemented by the Missouri Housing Development Commission, a <a href="https://mhdc.com/about-us/commissioners/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">10-person board</a> that includes the state&#8217;s governor, lieutenant governor, treasurer, and attorney general — all of whom are Republicans.
Yet when the federal government asked Missouri how it would define &#8220;socially disadvantaged individual,&#8221; it <a href="https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/136/HAFP-0080-Missouri-SalesforceSubmission.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> it would adopt &#8220;Treasury’s definition of socially disadvantaged individuals,&#8221; and use software that would flag people as disadvantaged in part based on which box they checked when asked about race and ethnicity.
A lawsuit said that &#8220;In marketing and advertising its program to inform Missouri citizens about the availability of funds and how to apply, MHDC targeted outreach to racial minorities,&#8221; including partnering with the Black Chamber of Commerce and the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. Forty-four percent of the loan money went to black residents, who make up less than 12% of the population.
Missouri Governor Mike Kehoe was a member of the housing commission during the program&#8217;s inception, serving in his then-role as lieutenant governor. Kehoe spokeswoman Gabby Picard said &#8220;As this is pending litigation, we are not able to comment on the specifics of this case,&#8221; but that &#8220;Kehoe has been a strong advocate for removing DEI within state government,&#8221; signing an executive order &#8220;directing all Missouri state agencies to eliminate Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives and ensure compliance with the constitutional principle of equal protection under the law.&#8221;
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, a Republican, was not a member of the housing commission when the state decided how to implement the federal program because he took office in 2023. But Bailey responded to the lawsuit in court papers in May, <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.moed.213696/gov.uscourts.moed.213696.64.0.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">writing</a> that &#8220;Defendants were merely administering a federal program in accordance with federal mandates, rules, guidelines, regulations, and/or applicable laws &#8230; The Defendants applied neutral criteria when administering the program. Defendants acted in good faith reliance on Treasury and federal guidance, and had no reason to believe the program would have a discriminatory impact.&#8221;
Bailey joined the Trump administration last month as co-deputy director of the FBI. A spokeswoman for his old office, Abigail Bergmann, told The Daily Wire that &#8220;the Biden Administration applied pressure to states to adopt these policies, and Missouri’s program was established before Attorney General Bailey was elected to office. As Attorney General, it is his statutory duty to represent MHDC in court. But thanks to his leadership, MHDC today has been stripped of the Biden-era racist policies that Missourians should never have been subjected to in the first place.”
In Oklahoma, five white residents who did not receive housing assistance, including a massage therapist who lost her job due to the pandemic and her disabled-veteran husband, <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.okwd.129299/gov.uscourts.okwd.129299.1.0.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">sued</a> the Oklahoma Housing Finance Agency. &#8220;On the front page of its Oklahoma Homeowner Assistance Fund program website, OHFA stated that a homeowner is a socially disadvantaged individual if the homeowner is a “[m]ember of a group that has been subjected to racial or ethnic prejudice or cultural bias within American Society: African American, Hispanic/Latino, Native American, LGBTQ+,” the suit said.
That <a href="https://perma.cc/Y6VR-EQ4C" target="_blank" rel="noopener">website</a> says residents of &#8220;minority-majority census tracts&#8221; are also among the &#8220;socially disadvantaged&#8221; who &#8220;are eligible to receive a one-time grant award up to a maximum of $35,000.&#8221; It states that applications were accepted until March 2024. The state allocated $87 million, and 26% of it went to black residents, despite their making up only 7% of the state&#8217;s population.
The lawsuit said &#8220;Because of this race-based classification, a white or Asian homeowner with household size of 3 in Oklahoma County, Oklahoma, could not apply for relief in 2023 if the homeowner’s income was greater than $96,200 (100% AMI) unless he or she could otherwise qualify as socially disadvantaged, but a black or Latino homeowner with the same household size could apply with an income of up to $116,110 (150% AMI). This is just one of many ways in which OHFA’s race-based program discriminated against white and Asian homeowners.&#8221;
<div id="attachment_542577" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-542577" class="size-large wp-image-542577" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/05/GettyImages-1242358048-864x576.jpg" alt="DALLAS, TEXAS, UNITED STATES - 2022/08/05: Governor of Oklahoma Kevin Stitt speaks during CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) Texas 2022 conference at Hilton Anatole in Dallas." width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/05/GettyImages-1242358048-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/05/GettyImages-1242358048-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/05/GettyImages-1242358048-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/05/GettyImages-1242358048.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt speaks during CPAC (Photo by Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)</div>
It said OHFA worked with the African Methodist Episcopal Church to market the program.
&#8220;OHFA specifically informed socially disadvantaged individuals about the program and assisted those individuals through the application process but did not do the same for white or Asian homeowners. This made it more likely that individuals deemed socially disadvantaged based on race would receive funding at the expense of white and Asian homeowners who were eligible to receive funding but to whom OHFA did not provide the same information or assistance,&#8221; the suit said.
&#8220;OHFA could have administered its program in a race-neutral way. Instead, it discriminated against white and Asian homeowners in favor of homeowners from preferred racial groups. But COVID-19 did not discriminate. Oklahoma homeowners of all races needed assistance. OHFA’s racial discrimination is plainly unlawful,&#8221; it said.
All of Oklahoma&#8217;s top officials are Republican, and a board appointed by the governor runs the Oklahoma Housing Finance Agency. The housing board&#8217;s chair, Michael Buehl, was appointed in 2019 to a five-year term by Governor Kevin Stitt. Stitt then re-appointed him in 2024, after Buehl oversaw the race-based program. Stitt did not return a request for comment.
The housing agency is currently vigorously defending the program, hiring private lawyers who <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.okwd.129299/gov.uscourts.okwd.129299.41.0.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">filed</a> a motion to dismiss the lawsuit in March. The motion said that according to the Attorney General, OHFA is classified as a &#8220;state beneficiary public trust&#8221; that is &#8220;separate and distinct from&#8221; the state.
A spokesman for Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, who has publicly opposed DEI and stated in 2023 that one of his priorities was investigating the misuse of COVID funds, did not respond to questions.

Republican Candidate For Governor Brian Kemp Attends Election Night Event In Athens, Georgia

How A Biden Housing Bailout Steered Billions Based On Race — With Red State Help

Coronavirus

Georgia

Missouri

Oklahoma

Red States

Texas A&amp;M President Mark Welsh is set to step down on Friday after a wave of criticism over his handling of a controversy that erupted after an English professor was filmed <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-texas-am-student-booted-from-lecture-after-objecting-to-professor-pushing-radical-gender-theory?author=Zach+Jewell&amp;category=undefined&amp;elementPosition=6&amp;row=3&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+News&amp;rowType=Vertical+Carousel&amp;title=WATCH%3A+Texas+A%26M+Student+Booted+From+Lecture+After+Objecting+To+Professor+Pushing+Radical+Gender+Theory">pushing</a> pro-LGBT talking points during a children&#8217;s literature course and telling a student who opposed her to leave a lecture.
Welsh, a retired four-star U.S. Air Force General who was appointed by former President Barack Obama to be Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force from 2012 to 2016, fired Dr. Melissa McCoul last week, but his actions were not enough to quell some of the outrage over Texas A&amp;M&#8217;s handling of the situation. The university&#8217;s Board of Regents announced on Thursday that Welsh would resign, The New York Times reported.
“President Welsh is a man of honor who has led Texas A&amp;M with selfless dedication,” the university system’s chancellor, Glenn Hegar, said in a statement, adding, “At the same time, we agree that now is the right moment to make a change and to position Texas A&amp;M for continued excellence in the years ahead.”
Videos obtained and shared by Republican Texas State Rep. Brian Harrison and first <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-texas-am-student-booted-from-lecture-after-objecting-to-professor-pushing-radical-gender-theory?author=Zach+Jewell&amp;category=undefined&amp;elementPosition=6&amp;row=3&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+News&amp;rowType=Vertical+Carousel&amp;title=WATCH%3A+Texas+A%26M+Student+Booted+From+Lecture+After+Objecting+To+Professor+Pushing+Radical+Gender+Theory">reported</a> by The Daily Wire on September 8 showed McCoul advocating for leftist views on sex and gender during a lecture over the summer. Slides from the course reviewed by The Daily Wire also showed that the class devoted considerable attention to sex, gender, and “queerness.”
One student confronted the professor over the leftist ideology, pointing to the Trump administration&#8217;s recent actions to crack down on diversity, equity, and inclusion in the government and public universities. McCoul argued that her teachings on gender identity and gender expression were “biologically true,” adding that she did not believe that the student would be able to stop her from teaching those ideas.
“Because I do have the legal and ethical authority [and] professional expertise in this classroom. It’s time for you to leave,” McCoul told the student in a video that Harrison posted on X.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
🚨CAUGHT ON TAPE: TEXAS A&amp;M STUDENT KICKED OUT OF CLASS AFTER OBJECTING TO TRANSGENDER INDOCTRINATION&#8230; and A&amp;M President defends &#8220;LGBTQ Studies.&#8221;
I&#8217;m referring <a href="https://twitter.com/TAMU?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@TAMU</a> to the Trump Administration for investigation&#8230; and asking Gov <a href="https://twitter.com/GregAbbott_TX?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@GregAbbott_TX</a> to fire the A&amp;M officials… <a href="https://t.co/J6IWsfw62I">pic.twitter.com/J6IWsfw62I</a>
— Brian Harrison (@brianeharrison) <a href="https://twitter.com/brianeharrison/status/1965093848520294565?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 8, 2025</a></blockquote>
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After the student complained about the LGBT themes in the children’s literature course, Welsh acknowledged that the class content &#8220;did not align with any reasonable expectation of standard curriculum for the course.&#8221; Welsh&#8217;s action to change the course content and fire McCoul, however, only came after an intense public pressure campaign, which was led by Harrison. In a phone call with the student after the complaint had been raised, the Texas A&amp;M president said that the student was trying to &#8220;pick a fight&#8221; and defended teaching LGBT content in other courses as long as it was properly shown on course syllabi.
Welsh&#8217;s move to fire McCoul wasn&#8217;t enough for some people, while the decision enraged others.
“This is about trying to tell faculty members not to teach certain topics,” said Leonard Bright, a professor of public service and administration at Texas A&amp;M, according to the Times. “The rules are clear — we are the experts in our classes, and we get to design our courses.”
After McCoul was fired, Harrison told The Daily Wire, “President Welsh is engaged in a cover up and deserves no credit.”
“He spent the past month protecting this professor, berating the student, dismissing concerns that her constitutional rights were violated when she was kicked out of class, attempting to gaslight the student into believing she was the problem, advocating for even more DEI and LGBTQ courses at A&amp;M, and has been engaged in behavior since his actions were exposed,&#8221; Harrison added. &#8220;He should be fired.”
The Republican state lawmaker celebrated in a post on Thursday after it was reported that Welsh was stepping down.
&#8220;WE DID IT! TEXAS A&amp;M PRESIDENT IS OUT!!&#8221; Harrison <a href="https://x.com/brianeharrison/status/1968815550936543599">posted</a> on X. &#8220;Another MASSIVE victory for the LIBERTY BOTS against the Austin Swamp Rats! As the first elected official to call for him to be fired, this news is welcome, although overdue. Now&#8230; END ALL DEI AND LGBTQ INDOCTRINATION IN TEXAS!!&#8221;
Texas A&amp;M will appoint an interim president as it conducts a national search for a new leader, according to the Board of Regents.

Texas A&M President Mark Welsh

Texas A&M President To Resign After Leftist Politics Infiltrated University Children’s Lit Course

LGBT

Texas

Texas A&amp;M

DEI has taken root in the world of video games for years, but it may soon be game over for that hopelessly woke initiative.
The fight against woke culture spans every industry, and often makes headlines in relation to schools, libraries, retailers, and restaurants. But there’s another space infected by the relentless scourge of wokeness that has likely affected the teenage boys in your life.  
It turns out the gaming industry has more pressing issues than just screen time limits. The industry has become a battleground for the culture wars, especially for younger Americans. Now, after one of the most expensive failures in Sony’s history, fans are wondering if the obsession with DEI quotas and virtue signaling in the video game industry has finally reached its breaking point.
Less than a year ago, Sony pulled the plug on Concord, a highly anticipated first-person shooter that was billed as the next Overwatch. The game reportedly had a development budget of up to $400 million, though this figure is <a href="https://www.gamesradar.com/games/fps/claims-that-concord-cost-dollar400-million-are-inaccurate-according-to-fan-analysis-that-claims-sonys-ill-fated-hero-shooter-was-a-dollar150-million-game-failure/">disputed</a>.
Overwatch, the wildly successful shooter that Concord aimed to rival, boasts an <a href="https://icon-era.com/blog/overwatch-2-live-player-count-and-statistics.77/">estimated</a> 30 million active monthly users.
Instead, the title was pulled from online servers just weeks after launch, with full refunds offered to players. Fans had warned early on that the game looked like yet another case of developers prioritizing politics over fun. Still, the absolute magnitude of the disaster was shocking even for the most dialed-in gamer.
When it premiered last August, Concord only <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2024/08/24/playstations-concord-did-not-break-700-players-on-steam-on-launch-day/">peaked</a> at 697 concurrent players on its release day on PC, which is a terribly low number for a major release from a company like Sony. By comparison, competing hero shooter Marvel Rivals reached a <a href="https://steamcharts.com/app/2767030#All">peak</a> of approximately 600,000 concurrent players shortly after its December 2024 release.
Analysts also estimate that only 25,000 copies of Concord were sold, <a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/concord-is-estimated-to-have-sold-only-25000-units-heres-why-analysts-think-its-failing">according</a> to IGN.
Amid such dismal sales and widespread ridicule, Sony was forced to shut the whole thing down and issue refunds within two weeks of the game&#8217;s release date.
In a <a href="https://blog.playstation.com/2024/09/03/an-important-update-on-concord/">statement</a> from Sony in September 2024 that seemed to echo those sentiments, the company said that &#8220;aspects of the game and our initial launch didn’t land the way we’d intended.&#8221;
The studio attempted to blame the flop on other factors, but users and industry insiders pointed out a major issue with the game that likely contributed to its lack of resonance with players.
A former World of Warcraft developer wrote that Concord was “so focused on ‘inclusive’ teams that they forgot the white guys in their game. Inclusive should not mean racist against white people, but it too often does.”
Another person on X agreed, <a href="https://x.com/Mangalawyer/status/1796362084499833224">saying</a> the game “features five black women, four aliens, three robots, and one white man. It’s incredibly diverse and non-heteronormative. Plus, it has pronouns. Are you excited?”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Concord is a new progressive and modern shooter for Pc &amp; Playstation. It features five black women, four aliens, three robots, and one white man. It&#8217;s incredibly diverse and non-heteronormative. Plus, it has pronouns. Are you excited? 😆 <a href="https://t.co/DpLfjIvpp1">pic.twitter.com/DpLfjIvpp1</a>
— LearningTheLaw ✝️ (@Mangalawyer) <a href="https://twitter.com/Mangalawyer/status/1796362084499833224?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 31, 2024</a></blockquote>
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Even Elon Musk chimed in <a href="https://x.com/ElonClipsX/status/1860528576958783915">to say</a> that he was frustrated with “DEI woke bullsh*t” that’s ruining video games.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
Elon Musk: Can you just leave the video games alone?
“It&#8217;s really annoying when a video game gets interrupted by some DEI woke bullshit.
And I&#8217;m like, Jesus, I was playing a video game here. Can you just leave the video games alone?
You don&#8217;t want to do things that damage art.… <a href="https://t.co/cMrMZZBctN">pic.twitter.com/cMrMZZBctN</a>
— ELON CLIPS (@ElonClipsX) <a href="https://twitter.com/ElonClipsX/status/1860528576958783915?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 24, 2024</a></blockquote>
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And it’s not just this one game. Last fall, Call of Duty <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2025/01/21/call-of-duty-6-nonbinary-actor-kimber-london-lgbtq2ia/77734948007/">caught heat</a> for introducing Volta Rossi, a “nonbinary” character who uses they/them pronouns. 
One person who understands why gamers are so fed up is Jason Ruchelski, better known online as <a href="https://x.com/jasonruchelski?lang=en">jasonR</a>. He’s a former professional Counter-Strike player who now streams to thousands of fans on Twitch. He’s lived through the rise of DEI and cancel culture in gaming firsthand.
“As far as I’m concerned, there has been a massive shift in how people and how the demographic of this industry kind of looks at this cancel culture, woke type stuff,” Jason said. “If you would have asked two or three years ago, everyone was terrified. Every developer, every gamer, every streamer was scared to say anything wrong because of cancel culture.”
That fear was not unfounded. Jason himself went viral in 2019 when he revealed that, as a married man, he refused to play online with women to avoid drama and protect his relationship. The backlash, he explained, was extreme.
“I was trending on Twitter for two weeks straight,” he recalled. “I was called a sexist, a misogynist. They even went after my wife. All because I set boundaries.”
Jason’s story highlights a broader trend where traditional boundaries are punished in the name of “progress.” But he says, fortunately, the tide is starting to turn in the gaming industry.
“In the last year, maybe two years, there has been a dramatic shift,” he said. “Games are flopping because they’re adding in woke or DEI stuff. Movies are flopping. The industry is so dry because people are turning so heavily against it. There’s just nothing these games can hold on to, so they’re dying.”
Concord is the most recent example of a massive flop. Players mocked the game’s roster of “ugly,” DEI-inspired characters and complained about being forced to use preferred pronouns. On Reddit, fans pointed out that developers seemed more focused on “representation checklists” than on actual gameplay. 
As one commenter said, “They keep insisting we asked for this stuff. We didn’t. No one did.”
Jason said he believes there may have been some activists asking for leftist elements in games, but that group was far outnumbered by normal players who either didn’t care or were annoyed by it.
“The people these [developers] are listening to are just the loudest. They’re not the ones actually playing your game,” he said. “They’re the ones offended on Twitter. But they’re not buying your product. And finally, people are starting to realize that.”
That “vocal minority” effect has been seen across industries, from <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/cracker-barrel-didnt-go-woke-with-its-rebrand-they-were-conned-by-experts">Cracker Barrel</a> to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-worlds-most-dangerous-blonde-sydney-sweeney-and-the-threat-of-normalcy">Hollywood</a>. In gaming, it’s played out in absurd ways. Jason recalled one instance from Valorant, another massively popular first-person shooter game, where developers introduced a “they/them” character.
“The whole community of streamers started banning viewers for not using the right pronouns,” he said. “If you called the character a ‘he’ or ‘she’ by accident, you were permanently banned from the chat. They even pinned comments saying, ‘if you don’t respect the pronouns, you’ll be banned.’ And this was all over a fictional character.”
The result? Players were on edge in a space that was supposed to be fun. For Jason, it all circles back to authenticity.
“Back in the day, you’d turn on your stream because you loved the game and wanted to build a community. Now it’s, let me turn on my stream and see what people want me to love,” he said. “It’s all fake people, fake content creators, just searching for income. The genuineness has flown out the window.”
Still, he’s cautiously optimistic.
“Yes, there’s been a shift. But now you have people trying to be edgy, standing on that line of being canceled because that’s what gets them fame. So it’s fake in a different way,” he explained. “Nobody knows what anyone really believes anymore. It’s just a big show.”
He also offered some advice for game developers who want to avoid creating the next Concord.
“Focus on your product. Quit worrying about what Twitter thinks. Be innovative. Stop recycling the same boxes to check. Just make the best game you can,” he recommended.
That may sound simple, but as Jason pointed out, too many developers have convinced themselves that the majority of gamers care about pronouns, rainbow flags, and inclusiveness. In reality, they just want to play the game.
And at the end of the day, it’s all about the money. The Concord flop led to a major shakeup at Sony, with leadership admitting that “<a href="https://www.gamespot.com/articles/concords-failure-led-to-increased-oversight-says-sony-exec/1100-6534243/">increased oversight</a>” was now necessary for future games. It’s safe to assume they won’t let another $400 million flop happen because developers are obsessed with pushing some DEI agenda.
Meanwhile, gamers are making their preferences loud and clear: make great games, and keep the identity politics out of it.

Game Over

GAME OVER: Sony’s $400M Flop Could Finally Signal The End Of Woke Video Games

Game Over: Sony’s $400M Flop Could Mean The End Of Woke Video Games

Culture

Video Games

Wokeness

A Texas mayor was caught on video using disturbing language berating a Christian preacher at a LGBT festival, video shows.
Jim Ross, the mayor of Arlington, Texas, targeted the preacher during a 2023 LGBT event. The shocking moments were captured by Vice, though Ross&#8217;s face is blurred and the footage has just now been <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/exclusive-arlington-mayor-jim-ross-200000969.html">uncovered</a> by The Dallas Express.
Ross claims he&#8217;s a moderate, but routinely <a href="https://www.keranews.org/politics/2023-04-05/arlington-candidates-tackle-dei-issues-transportation-development-in-naacp-forum">pushes</a> race-based and gender-based initiatives and has promoted LGBT &#8220;pride.&#8221;
“I believe y’all can have free speech. But this is some hateful s*** and I am a heterosexual guy,&#8221; Ross says in the footage, speaking to preacher Ruben Israel, who has since passed away.
“You stand out here like you are a b*da** motherf***er,” the mayor continued. “You don’t think anal sex is good, do you? Have you ever f***ed your old lady in the a**? I’d f*** your old lady in the a**.”
Ross was not done, however. He called Israel a &#8220;p**** mother***er&#8221; and told him, “Shut your a**, shut your a**, you little piece of s***. You ought to talk s***, these people around here are having a good f***ing time.”
At the time of the confrontation, Ross was serving as mayor of Arlington, and currently holds the same position.
Tarrant County GOP Chairman Bo French said Ross needs to resign &#8220;immediately&#8221; over the conduct.
Tarrant County Republican Precinct Chair TK Campbell, also speaking to The Dallas Express, said Ross&#8217;s unprofessional behavior mirrors that of prominent Democrats, who&#8217;ve clung to cursing as an apparent political strategy.
“The now Mayor of Arlington’s vile, profanity-laced rant at the late Ruben Israel, a Christian street preacher, is a disgrace,&#8221; Campbell said. &#8220;Perhaps the mayor was stressed out because of not being able to pay his taxes of late, but his unprofessional conduct mirrors the worst of today’s cursing Democrats. Leadership demands better.&#8221;
Campbell&#8217;s comments regarding taxes seem to reference Ross recently having his wages garnished by the IRS. <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/arlington-mayor-acknowledges-irs-garnishment-160013005.html">According</a> to The Dallas Express, Ross owes $940.39 in penalties and interest and has an outstanding debt of about $175,000.
During his tenure as mayor, Ross has created advisory councils based on race, religion, and identity, including black, Asian, Latino, Muslim, and LGBTQ.
In 2023, Ross defended the forums during an NAACP event. “You have to have a black advisory council because, folks, black people are not the same. Did y’all know that?” he said, <a href="https://www.keranews.org/politics/2023-04-05/arlington-candidates-tackle-dei-issues-transportation-development-in-naacp-forum">according</a> to KERA News. “Latinos are not the same. Asians are not the same.”
WARNING: Language 
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
🚨BOMBSHELL🚨 Newly surfaced footage identifies Texas Arlington Mayor Jim Ross at an LGBTQ festival telling a Christian preacher: “I’d f*ck your old lady in the *ss.” Ross used vulgar language and made explicit remarks
Read article👇.
Follow: <a href="https://twitter.com/DallasExpress?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@dallasexpress</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/Carlos__Turcios?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Carlos__Turcios</a> <a href="https://t.co/IzagUbFqb5">pic.twitter.com/IzagUbFqb5</a>
— Carlos Turcios (@Carlos__Turcios) <a href="https://twitter.com/Carlos__Turcios/status/1953919764616638727?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 8, 2025</a></blockquote>

Mayor Jim Ross

‘I’d F*** Your Old Lady In The A**’: Liberal Mayor Berates Christian At LGBT Festival

Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI)

LGBTQ

Pride

A decades-old court order that blocked the federal government from using tests to measure job applicants&#8217; skills was terminated by a D.C. judge on Friday, setting the stage for an overhaul of the federal workforce that could be one of President Donald Trump&#8217;s most lasting achievements.
In 1981, Angel Luevano sued the federal government over the Professional and Administrative Career Examination, a test that helped identify the best and brightest out of the tens of thousands who apply for government jobs each year. Luevano argued that the test kept too many blacks and Hispanics out of government, and, in the waning days of President Jimmy Carter&#8217;s administration, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) agreed to pause the test for five years.
Forty-four years later, the &#8220;Luevano Consent Decree&#8221; was somehow still intact. In January, the Trump administration filed a brief <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/feds-cant-hire-for-competence-because-jimmy-carter-said-it-was-racist-trump-wants-to-fix-that">challenging the agreement</a> — a feat which required reopening a decades-closed court case in which the original judge had died. The administration argued that it was doubtful the decree was ever appropriate, and that, with Supreme Court case law outlawing affirmative action, it was certainly not now.
Angel Luevano is still alive, and agreed to terminate the consent decree, <a href="https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69731384/luevano-v-director-office-of-personnel-management/">court papers</a> show. Luevano was represented by lawyers from Hispanic and black civil rights groups, two of whom did not return a request for comment.
For almost half a century, the federal government has operated like a college that didn&#8217;t look at SAT scores when admitting students. Rescinding the Luevano Consent Decree could take the government from safety-school status to Ivy League.
&#8220;We&#8217;re making civil service great again,&#8221; OPM Director Scott Kupor told The Daily Wire Friday.
The move opens the door to technocratic hiring assessments that allow the government to hire applicants who objectively demonstrate the most aptitude. Kupor told The Daily Wire in an interview that the move means Americans may start getting better service at government agencies, with government being more helpful and responsive.
&#8220;The lasting opportunity here is: can we change the culture of the workforce in the federal government? Can we make it a high-performance culture? That will definitely be the president&#8217;s legacy, if we can make that successful,&#8221; he said.
After the demise of the Professional and Administrative Career Examination and similar tests, the government began relying on &#8220;self-assessments&#8221; to sift through job applicants, as it was the only measure that saw a sufficient number of minorities enter government. Applicants simply declared how good they were at a task, with no attempt to verify it or compare them to other applicants. That led to a hiring process that rewarded boasting and fabrications as much as merit.
Kupor said the de facto prohibition on government checking people&#8217;s competency before hiring them had become crippling in the modern age, with people using artificial intelligence or simply copy-and-paste to take a job advertisement&#8217;s requirements and send an application asserting that they had all those skills.
The inability to use objective measures to sort the most qualified applicants from a large pool — as virtually all other large employers do — has profoundly impacted the caliber of government employees. The Luevano Consent Decree was perhaps one of the largest applications ever of the philosophy known as &#8220;disparate impact,&#8221; which holds that anything that produces racially unbalanced outcomes must inherently be racist. But the fallout went beyond just minorities, leaving little way to differentiate a brilliant white job applicant from an incompetent white applicant.
The government was represented by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon of the Department of Justice&#8217;s Civil Rights Division.
OPM General Counsel Andrew Kloster told The Daily Wire in an interview that the government did not make any concessions to reach the agreement. &#8220;They just flat out agreed,&#8221; he said. &#8220;It would not have happened without the original named plaintiff agreeing to it and the judge agreeing to accept it.&#8221;
&#8220;This is really kind of an understanding that disparate impact as a way to measure things is not the law of the land anymore. You have to actually show real discrimination. The explicit argument was that the objective tests themselves were racially biased, and obviously that&#8217;s bogus.&#8221;
It is yet to be decided whether OPM will institute a general aptitude test across agencies. But many specific job categories are likely to have their own tests. If the government is hiring, say, computer programmers, it won&#8217;t simply ask them how good they are at a programming language. Instead, it will administer a coding test to rank applicants on a uniform scale.
The hiring process used by government agencies for decades resulted in hiring that was, at best, random, and at worst, allowed the sort of cronyism and favoritism that the consent decree was supposed to avoid, Kupor said.
&#8220;We&#8217;re going to be able to attract really, really good people, because they&#8217;re going to be fairly tested for their merit,&#8221; he said. &#8220;It also really does eliminate a lot of potential for a bias in the hiring process if you actually use objective standards.&#8221;
&#8220;This is a win for fairness, as well as a win for getting American people the ability to get people with the appropriate skills into the right jobs.&#8221;

Scott Kupor And Eric Matthew Ueland Testify In Their Senate Nomination Hearing

For The First Time In 40 Years, The Federal Government Can Judge Applicants By Merit

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Jimmy Carter

Office of Personnel Management

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University of Iowa administrator Cory Lockwood was caught on camera admitting that the university has not stopped its work in the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) space, but instead has changed the terminology around it.
Townhall released undercover video of Lockwood talking about how the state legislature — in accordance with President Donald Trump&#8217;s administration and its agenda — had attempted to put an end to DEI in education. He explained that the school was continuing the work, but had to adopt different words to describe the initiatives in order to protect the funding that was at risk for those who did not comply.
WATCH:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
🚨NEW — Undercover video catches University of Iowa administrator Cory Lockwood ADMITTING to BURYING DEI initiatives so that they&#8217;re hidden from &#8220;that side.&#8221;
&#8220;There&#8217;s DEI work happening. Somebody&#8217;s not gonna have that in their job description because of the State House.&#8221;
&#8220;What… <a href="https://t.co/x37xUsvgui">pic.twitter.com/x37xUsvgui</a>
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) <a href="https://twitter.com/townhallcom/status/1950926125380567453?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 31, 2025</a></blockquote>
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&#8220;You won&#8217;t find it by Googling it, because of our state legislature,&#8221; he said of DEI initiatives at the school. &#8220;Governor, State House, they&#8217;re all &lt;sigh&gt; that side, so they&#8217;ve directed the Board of Regents to — I don&#8217;t know if &#8216;eliminate&#8217; is the right word — but stop using the words.&#8221;
Lockwood went on to make it clear the the school was doing what it could to abide by the letter of the law while actively undermining the spirit, saying, &#8220;So you&#8217;ll see words like &#8216;community&#8217; and those types of things, &#8216;belonging,&#8217; &#8216;community,&#8217; all those — we still have cultural centers here. There&#8217;s DEI work happening, I think, you know, somebody&#8217;s not gonna have that in their job description because of the State House.&#8221;
&#8220;Just to be candid, I think what most are worried about is funding, you know, because — state-funded institutions,&#8221; he added.
Townhall released a series of similar videos over the last several weeks, revealing that the same strategy — keeping the DEI initiatives, but hiding them behind relatively benign language — had already been adopted by a number of schools across the United States.

University of Iowa campus scene

‘You Won’t Find It By Googling’: U Of Iowa Official Caught On Camera Admits ‘DEI Work’ Still Happens

'You Won't Find It By Googling': U Of Iowa Official Caught On Camera Admits 'DEI Work' Still Happens

Iowa

Townhall

The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, might not have a diversity, equity, and inclusion office anymore, but it’s still pushing DEI goals and flying under the radar in a heavily Republican state, a university department head said in a video obtained by The Daily Wire. 
Casey A. Barrio Minton, Professor and Department Head of Counselor Education, was caught on camera last month saying that Tennessee’s “Access and Engagement” office, which used to be called the “Diversity and Inclusion” office, isn’t “a whole lot different.” 
“They practice DEI?” Barrio Minton was asked in the video.
“They do,” she replied, “And they do many of the same things.” 
“I haven’t noticed a big shift in the programming. I haven’t noticed a big shift of climate on campus beyond trying to ride the waves,” Barrio Minton added. 
President Donald Trump signed an <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/ending-illegal-discrimination-and-restoring-merit-based-opportunity/">executive order</a> immediately after he took office in January, calling DEI policies “illegal” and stating, “It is the policy of the United States to protect the civil rights of all Americans and to promote individual initiative, excellence, and hard work.” 
Even though Barrio Minton admitted that the University of Tennessee continues to push DEI, she argued that the school is compliant with federal law. 
“The law essentially says you can’t force DEI training on staff or whatnot. And they also say no student shall be penalized for their failure to subscribe to any of these beliefs, right?” Barrio Minton continued. “So, some people took that to mean you can’t teach about racism or systemic oppression or privilege. That was the interpretation. That’s not what the law says.” 
“The university has been very clear to us: the law says we don’t punish people based on their beliefs, but we don’t punish people. We educate,” she said. 
The professor and department head said that she wasn’t concerned about the federal government going after Tennessee over DEI since the Trump administration has focused on universities in blue states. 
“Most of the fireworks that are happening are happening in very blue areas,” Barrio Minton continued. 
The Trump administration cut nearly $40 million in federal grants handed out to the University of Tennessee, the Knoxville News Sentinel <a href="https://www.knoxnews.com/story/news/education/2025/05/09/university-of-tennessee-system-loses-37-65m-in-federal-grants-what-we-know/83463831007/">reported</a> in May. Those cuts were part of the president’s wider spending cuts that affected universities across the country and not due to anything Tennessee did in violation of federal law. 
As an example of how Tennessee continues to focus on DEI, Barrio Minton said the school recently put in “all-inclusive restrooms,” called “All Vol” restrooms — a reference to the school&#8217;s mascot, the Volunteers — for trans-identifying students to use. 
“The inclusive restrooms are ‘All Vol’ restrooms, like a single stall, inclusive, accessible restroom,” she said. 
“Instead of all gender [restrooms]?” she was asked. 
“Yeah. You know, we had a number of trans students, so there became an initiative to convert a small restroom to be an ‘All Vol’ restroom,” Barrio Minton added. 
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Exclusive video shows a University of Tennessee department head boasting about DEI flying under the radar in a red state. <a href="https://t.co/QHFLx5anit">pic.twitter.com/QHFLx5anit</a>
&mdash; Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDailyWire/status/1950212494254862605?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 29, 2025</a></blockquote>
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In response to a Daily Wire inquiry, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, sent a statement from Randy Boyd, the President of the University of Tennessee System, on “Clarifying the Role of Access and Engagement.” 
“The purpose of access and engagement is to support academic access, foster community partnerships and promote merit-based student success. These efforts are directly aligned with our System’s Statement of Aspirations, which commits us to removing barriers to educational opportunity and ensuring every Tennessean has the chance to succeed,” Boyd said. “Let me be clear: access and engagement is not DEI in disguise. All our work must and will remain fully compliant with state and federal law.” 
Boyd added that he has launched an independent review of the Access and Engagement office’s “activities across the UT system.”  
“This review will be prioritized to ensure our ongoing compliance with federal and state laws, as well as adherence to my charge,” the UT System president added. “As an additional measure, we are instituting mandatory training for all employees across the system to ensure that everyone knows the laws and regulations applicable in this space.”
The Daily Wire also reached out to Barrio Minton, requesting comment. 
The department head isn’t the only University of Tennessee staffer to give a glimpse of how the school is pushing DEI. Will Eakin, a coordinator for Tennessee’s Access and Engagement office, <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/watch-dei-efforts-were-rebranded-2-red-state-colleges-skirt-trump-orders-staffers-admit">said</a> in a recording obtained by Fox News that they play &#8220;a chess game&#8221; to “make sure that it aligns so that we can do the work that we&#8217;re trying to do, while also catering to the Department of Education.” 
The University of Tennessee is one of numerous colleges across the country under federal <a href="https://www.ed.gov/about/news/press-release/us-department-of-educations-office-civil-rights-sends-letters-60-universities-under-investigation-antisemitic-discrimination-and-harassment">investigation</a> for potential antisemitism and discrimination on campus. 
“The University of Tennessee is currently under investigation by the Department of Education for potential Title VI violations relating to antisemitic harassment and discrimination on campus. We expect all academic institutions that receive taxpayer support to abide by federal law and will continue to vigorously hold violators accountable,” Education Department Press Secretary Savannah Newhouse told The Daily Wire. 
Tennessee Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn sent a letter to the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, last week after video footage showed employees discussing the school’s continued DEI priorities. 
“As a beneficiary of federal funding, UTK has a responsibility to align with the President’s executive order and return to a focus on providing quality education to your students,” Blackburn wrote. 
An administrator at another Tennessee college, Vanderbilt University in Nashville, was also <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/exclusive-video-vanderbilt-administrator-caught-saying-dei-remains-part-of-what-we-do?author=Zach+Jewell&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=EXCLUSIVE+VIDEO%3A+Vanderbilt+Administrator+Caught+Saying+DEI+Remains+%E2%80%98Part+Of+What+We+Do%E2%80%99">caught on camera</a> discussing how the college pursues DEI goals. 
“All the things that I would say are components of DEI work are part of what we do,” said Vice Provost for Student Affairs and Dean of Students G.L. Black in a video obtained by The Daily Wire and published last week. “Even if we don’t label everything as DEI work.”
After The Daily Wire published its report on Vice Provost Black’s comments, Vanderbilt released a statement, saying that it has hired a law firm to review &#8220;the specific circumstances related to the recordings&#8221; and identify &#8220;steps the university can take to ensure &#8230; all employees act in accordance&#8221; with policies.

University of Tennessee

University Of Tennessee Department Head Boasts Of DEI Flying Under The Radar In Red State

American Universities

Tennessee

NASHVILLE, Tenn.—A Vanderbilt University administrator was caught on camera admitting that the school is actively pursuing diversity, equity, and inclusion goals in violation of President Donald Trump&#8217;s executive action cracking down on colleges pushing the leftist DEI agenda.
G.L. Black, the Vice Provost for Student Affairs and Dean of Students, said last month that the school remains &#8220;thoughtful around DEI work&#8221; and its &#8220;focus on belonging and building communities and sustaining communities and access and resources,&#8221; according to a video obtained by The Daily Wire.
&#8220;All the things that I would say are components of DEI work are part of what we do,&#8221; Black added. &#8220;Even if we don&#8217;t label everything as DEI work.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
Footage obtained by The Daily Wire shows the <a href="https://twitter.com/VanderbiltU?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@VanderbiltU</a> Vice Provost for Student Affairs admitting that the university continues to push DEI, &#8220;even if we don&#8217;t label everything as DEI work.&#8221; <a href="https://t.co/MZbv8enIgf">pic.twitter.com/MZbv8enIgf</a>
— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDailyWire/status/1948423032411688999?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 24, 2025</a></blockquote>
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Along with being nationally recognized for its pre-law and business programs, Vanderbilt — located in Nashville, Tennessee — is also a leading medical school, <a href="https://news.vumc.org/2024/03/11/school-of-medicine-in-top-10-in-nih-funding-survey-2/#:~:text=Vanderbilt%20University%20School%20of%20Medicine,of%20the%20last%2010%20years.">receiving</a> hundreds of millions of dollars in funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Last year, Vanderbilt ranked 10th in the country in total research support from the NIH.
After taking office in January, President Trump signed multiple executive orders targeting DEI practices in the federal government and at federally funded colleges and universities. In one executive <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/ending-illegal-discrimination-and-restoring-merit-based-opportunity/">order</a>, Trump blasted DEI policies, saying they &#8220;undermine our national unity, as they deny, discredit, and undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement in favor of an unlawful, corrosive, and pernicious identity-based spoils system.&#8221;
Vanderbilt told The Daily Wire that it remains &#8220;fully compliant with all applicable federal and state laws&#8221; and added that it is &#8220;aware of recent covert recordings by external groups on university campuses nationwide.&#8221;
&#8220;Any comments by individual employees that suggest otherwise do not reflect university policy and are being reviewed through appropriate channels,&#8221; the university said.
Vice Provost Black did not return a request to comment from The Daily Wire.
After publication of this article, Vanderbilt released a statement saying that it hired the law firm Baker Donelson, which &#8220;will be tasked with reviewing the specific circumstances related to the recordings and identifying steps the university can take to ensure all employees fully understand the university’s policies and consistently act in accordance.&#8221;
&#8220;The university will review the findings and recommendations of the report and take any appropriate follow-up actions,&#8221; the statement added. &#8220;As part of our protocol, staff involved will step back from regular responsibilities to allow the review to unfold.&#8221;
The Education Department told The Daily Wire that Vanderbilt is already under investigation &#8220;for allegedly engaging in race-exclusionary practices in their graduate programs.&#8221; That <a href="https://www.ed.gov/about/news/press-release/office-civil-rights-initiates-title-vi-investigations-institutions-of-higher-education-0">investigation</a>, which was announced in March, also targets 44 other universities nationwide. The Education Department alleges that Vanderbilt&#8217;s PhD Project, which focuses on providing networking opportunities for PhD students, “limits eligibility based on the race of the participants.”
&#8220;We expect all academic institutions that receive taxpayer support to abide by federal law and will continue to vigorously hold violators accountable,&#8221; the Education Department added.
Another Vanderbilt employee was recently caught on camera saying that the university&#8217;s DEI agenda has remained unchanged, even if the name has changed, Fox News <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/watch-dei-efforts-were-rebranded-2-red-state-colleges-skirt-trump-orders-staffers-admit">reported</a>. She said the new names for DEI help &#8220;clue people in.&#8221;
&#8220;At one point, you know, everybody, like different universities, were under investigation for their, like, DEI practices and stuff like that. So, that&#8217;s why I think the naming has changed,&#8221; said Ivie Carmouche, an academic coach at the university&#8217;s Center for Student Wellbeing.
&#8220;We&#8217;re in the Center for Student Wellbeing — like I said, we have things that clue people in and let people know that this is a safe space for everybody,&#8221; she added. &#8220;Belonging and Communities is like as close to that DEI work you can probably get. Previously, they were the Center for Social Justice and Identities.&#8221;
Yet another Vanderbilt employee was recently caught discussing the school&#8217;s DEI policies and ripping Republican Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn.
&#8220;We have this one, gosh I think she&#8217;s a representative or something like that, and I just heard that she may run for governor. And I&#8217;m going, oh God, help us,&#8221; said Janet Roberts, Vanderbilt&#8217;s Peabody Facilities Manager. &#8220;She&#8217;s ridiculous.&#8221;
&#8220;We are heavily supported by federal funding &#8230; we&#8217;re not advertising diversity and inclusion lectures,&#8221; Roberts added. &#8220;We&#8217;re flying under the radar.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
🚨BUSTED: <a href="https://twitter.com/VanderbiltU?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@VanderbiltU</a>&#39;s Janet Roberts was CAUGHT ON CAMERA disparaging Sen. Marsha Blackburn and hiding the school&#39;s DEI practices. 
&quot;God help us&#8230;[<a href="https://twitter.com/MarshaBlackburn?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@MarshaBlackburn</a>&#39;s] ridiculous&quot;
&quot;We are heavily supported by federal funding&#8230;[so] we&#39;re not advertising diversity and… <a href="https://t.co/CIxV6FCrwe">pic.twitter.com/CIxV6FCrwe</a>
&mdash; Townhall.com (@townhallcom) <a href="https://twitter.com/townhallcom/status/1948057680871886969?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 23, 2025</a></blockquote>
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Blackburn on Wednesday wrote to Vanderbilt University Chancellor Dr. Daniel Diermeier to express her &#8220;concern regarding reports that Vanderbilt University is concealing its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs instead of fully complying with President Trump’s executive action to end wasteful DEI programs in educational institutions,&#8221; The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/exclusive-blackburn-warns-tennessee-universities-against-hiding-dei-programs-behind-coded-language">reported</a>.
&#8220;Renaming woke DEI programs to circumvent compliance and public scrutiny degrades the educational experience of your students and the trust placed in institutions of higher education like Vanderbilt,&#8221; Blackburn added. &#8220;As a beneficiary of federal funding, Vanderbilt has a responsibility to align with the President’s executive order and return to a focus on providing quality education to your students. Instead of rebranding harmful, woke DEI initiatives, woke DEI initiatives, Vanderbilt should focus on the important work of research and workforce development that the institution does so well.&#8221;
Administrators at two other Tennessee universities, the <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/watch-dei-efforts-were-rebranded-2-red-state-colleges-skirt-trump-orders-staffers-admit">University of Tennessee</a> and <a href="https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2025/07/16/belmont-university-is-hiding-illegal-aliens-on-campus-n2659728">Belmont University</a>, were recently caught on camera discussing their respective institutions&#8217; DEI goals.
This article has been updated to include an additional statement from Vanderbilt.

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EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: Vanderbilt Administrator Caught Saying DEI Remains ‘Part Of What We Do’

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