A judge in 2021 ruled that a key part of the government&#8217;s multibillion-dollar minority contracting program was illegal, potentially giving the Trump administration inroads to kill the fraud-ridden program.
In 1953, Congress instructed the Small Business Administration to reserve some federal contracts for &#8220;disadvantaged&#8221; businesses. Beginning in 1986, SBA counted businesses owned by racial minorities as &#8220;presumptively&#8221; disadvantaged. That meant instead of an applicant having to show that he had actually faced discrimination, he simply needed to show his race. The result was the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/feds-crack-down-on-minority-contracting-schemes-d-c-s-worst-kept-secret?author=Luke+Rosiak&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=2&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Feds+Crack+Down+On+Minority+Contracting+Schemes%2C+D.C.%E2%80%99s+Worst-Kept+Secret">8(a) program</a>, a sprawling DEI enterprise that has impacted every aspect of government.
That continued even during the first Trump administration. In one case in 2018, the Department of Agriculture reserved work on a particular project for &#8220;disadvantaged&#8221; businesses, even though it internally acknowledged that doing so would cause an &#8220;adverse impact&#8221; on Ultima Services Corp, which had been doing similar work for the agency for years.
Ultima <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.tned.93612/gov.uscourts.tned.93612.1.0_1.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">sued</a> in March 2020, alleging anti-white discrimination, but the Trump administration fought it, filing a motion to <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.tned.93612/gov.uscourts.tned.93612.20.0.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">dismiss</a> in July 2020.
Documents unearthed through that lawsuit revealed that even though the government claimed being a racial minority merely provided a &#8220;rebuttable presumption&#8221; that someone had experienced discrimination that &#8220;could be overcome with credible evidence to the contrary,&#8221; it had no mechanism for someone to actually rebut it. That means even &#8220;nepo babies&#8221; and people who worked in industries where their race never experienced discrimination were put on the fast track to government contracts.
A &#8220;socially and economically disadvantaged small business&#8221; is one that is at least 51% owned by a disadvantaged person. So, soon people began forming 51-49 partnerships where one person&#8217;s role was essentially to be a racial minority so contracts could be awarded to the company with no competition, while the other provided the actual expertise and work.
That leads to increased prices, because the firms essentially have to pay a middleman&#8217;s fee. It also generates a worse work product, since the government isn&#8217;t seeking multiple bids and choosing the best.
James O&#8217;Keefe recently captured an executive from one such business admitting to <a href="https://x.com/JamesOKeefeIII/status/1981042870460252398" target="_blank" rel="noopener">being a &#8220;pass-through&#8221;</a> that collected tens of millions of dollars by being a Native American-owned company that got government contracts and subcontracted the work to others, and SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler said a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/feds-crack-down-on-minority-contracting-schemes-d-c-s-worst-kept-secret">full review</a> of the 8(a) contracting program is underway.
Discovery in the Ultima lawsuit showed that SBA has never removed a group from &#8220;disadvantaged&#8221; status, making it a permanent reparations program instead of one that worked to offset past discrimination for a specific period of time.
It also revealed that SBA made no effort to determine whether specific minority groups had faced discrimination in specific industries. It simply assumed that all minority groups were disadvantaged in all fields — even giving Indians a leg up in computer science, a field in which they have been dramatically overrepresented for its entire history.
During the course of the lawsuit, SBA implemented a rule that said people would no longer be considered disadvantaged “if their net worth exceeds $850,000, their adjusted gross income exceeds $400,000, or their total assets exceed $6.5 million.” Ultima said those thresholds &#8220;only disqualify the richest individuals.&#8221;
The Biden administration continued fighting the lawsuit, while President Joe Biden increased the goal for minority &#8220;set-asides&#8221; from 5% of all federal contracts to 15%.
But in July 2023, Judge Clifton Corker, a Trump appointee in the Eastern District of Tennessee, <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.tned.93612/gov.uscourts.tned.93612.86.0_1.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ruled</a> that assuming every minority was disadvantaged in every field was illegal, especially after Supreme Court precedent such as the 2023 Students for Fair Admissions case that ruled that affirmative action was illegal in colleges.
Biden&#8217;s excesses in flagrant racial favoritism led to court rulings that didn&#8217;t exist years prior, and included ruling against a program — also administered by the SBA — that prioritized minorities for coronavirus aid.
Corker wrote that &#8220;The Supreme Court has held that the government has a compelling interest in &#8216;remediating specific, identified instances of past discrimination that violated the Constitution or a statute.&#8217;” SBA never identified specific instances of racism that it was addressing, but merely provided nationwide statistics that showed minorities earning less money generally.
Ultima said the list of minorities given preference is essentially random, including Indian Americans, who out-earn whites, while excluding Arab Americans. Corker said SBA also &#8220;does not consider other groups, such as Hasidic Jews who have faced similarly appalling discrimination, eligible for the rebuttable presumption of social disadvantage.&#8221;
The government must identify “prior discrimination by the governmental unit involved” or “passive participation in a system of racial exclusion” before it “embark[ed] on an affirmative-action program,” Corker said, citing precedent.
SBA argued that &#8220;the presumption is flexible because it may be overcome with evidence that an individual is not socially disadvantaged,&#8221; but the judge said he &#8220;struggles to see how that process would work in practice,&#8221; with an SBA employee admitting &#8220;[t]here’s no process for a third party to question someone’s social disadvantage.&#8221;
Judge Corker said precedent requires that a race-conscious program &#8220;must be appropriately limited such that it will not last longer than the discriminatory effects it is designed to eliminate,&#8221; and have a &#8220;logical end point.&#8221; Seventy years after its advent, SBA conceded that &#8220;the 8(a) program has no termination date.&#8221;
&#8220;Defendants have failed to show that the use of the rebuttable presumption in the 8(a) program is narrowly tailored,&#8221; Judge Corker ruled. &#8220;Use of the rebuttable presumption violates Ultima’s Fifth Amendment right to equal protection of the law,&#8221; he said, enjoining the federal government from assuming that minorities are all disadvantaged.
That dealt a massive blow to the government&#8217;s multibillion-dollar DEI contracting regime.
In July 2024, the Biden SBA issued an <a href="https://www.sba.gov/federal-contracting/contracting-assistance-programs/8a-business-development-program/updates-8a-business-development-program" target="_blank" rel="noopener">advisory</a> acknowledging that most 8(a) contracts had been awarded based on the applicant&#8217;s race, with no showing of actual discrimination. It said to receive new contracts under &#8220;disadvantaged&#8221; set-asides, firms would need to &#8220;submit a social disadvantage narrative,&#8221; meaning an essay demonstrating that they are a victim.
It said, &#8220;the examples you include in your social disadvantage narrative can be related to any time in your life but must include detail of how the incident impacted your entry or advancement in the business world.&#8221; Those whose essays pass muster &#8220;will receive a Social Disadvantage Qualification letter.&#8221;
But the Biden administration may have simply sidestepped the injunction, and it is not clear how things have changed in the second Trump administration.
In July 2025, The Daily Wire submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for statistics on whether any minorities were rejected based on their essays, as opposed to disregarding the judge&#8217;s ruling by rubber-stamping them. The Daily Wire also requested copies of the victimhood essays.
Despite legal requirements, the Trump administration has not even acknowledged the FOIA request four months later. It has not responded to numerous follow-up inquiries about how it is dealing with the 8(a) program in light of the Ultima ruling, and spokeswoman Caitlin O&#8217;Dea did not return multiple phone calls.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/usaid-official-three-contractors-plead-guilty-to-half-billion-dollar-bribery-scheme">USAID Official, Three Contractors Plead Guilty To Half-Billion Dollar Minority Contracting Scheme</a>

The Core Part Of This Federal Race-Based Contracting Program Is Illegal, Judge Says

Minority Contracting

Small Business Administration

A historically black university whose president is under scrutiny for plagiarism allegations <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/maryland-college-president-heidi-anderson-plagiarized-dissertation">reported on</a> by The Daily Wire is a &#8220;criminal enterprise to divert federal and state funds,&#8221; according to a federal lawsuit filed by the school&#8217;s former Vice Provost for Academic Affairs.
It is one of four similar lawsuits filed in the last few months against the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, its president Heidi Anderson, its provost Rondall Allen, and its diversity, equity, and inclusion czar Jason Casares, that all follow a similar pattern: A faculty member allegedly discovers wrongdoing at the university, and then is retaliated against by the university&#8217;s DEI office.
Claims from the suits paint a picture of a university with almost no academic standards, that admits <a href="https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/school/?163338-University-of-Maryland-Eastern-Shore" target="_blank" rel="noopener">90%</a> of applicants and looks the other way at cheating and truancy to avoid worsening its 17% on-time graduation rate and keep the federal student loan money flowing.
The<a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.587379/gov.uscourts.mdd.587379.1.0.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> lawsuit filed July 28</a> by Sandeep Gopalan, a Rhodes scholar who until recently was the school&#8217;s vice president for research and vice provost for academic affairs, said that after he claims to have exposed a scheme by Anderson and other top administrators to steal thousands of iPads, the university axed Gopalan&#8217;s program and Ph.D. students in retaliation.
The students were funded by a $4.6 million grant from the federal Department of Education that Gopalan had secured and the university had no ability to terminate, but it dismissed the scholars anyway, falsely suggesting that the Trump administration had cut off funding to the historically black college, he said.
&#8220;As a result of this blatantly unlawful act, highly valuable research on cancer, environmental pollution, and AI, representing thousands of hours of research work by the Plaintiff, Ph.D. students and research staff has been stopped,&#8221; the suit said.
As part of his duties monitoring compliance for the university&#8217;s accreditor, &#8220;Gopalan learned that Rondall Allen and Heidi Anderson were embezzling iPads intended for poor minorities and diverting those resources to their cronies. The thousands of iPads were purchased from a federal grant awarded by the US Department of Commerce,&#8221; the suit said.
&#8220;After being convinced that the scam was organized criminal activity based on direct observation of the devices’ stealthy storage, destruction of evidence, fraudulent documentation, attempts to trick the auditors, the apparent enablement of concealment by University System of Maryland apparatchiks, Dr. Gopalan sent whistleblower letters to federal agencies, the Maryland Attorney General’s Office, and the Board of Regents of the University System of Maryland in June 2024,&#8221; it said.
Soon after, Anderson began asking if the Ph.D. students in Gopalan&#8217;s Futures Institute program, the highest-performing students at the school, were black. &#8220;Gopalan explained that students were selected based on strict merit, but the projects had a focus on minority populations. Anderson expressed displeasure,&#8221; the suit said.
In December 2024, the lawsuit states he filed additional complaints &#8220;about Heidi Anderson and Rondall Allen’s embezzlement, diversion of federal funds, fraudulent reporting of student data to deceive the government, fraud in connection with physical plant and facilities,&#8221; including to Chancellor Jay Perman, who oversees all public universities in the state.
According to the complaint, &#8220;Anderson and Jason Casares began conspiring to steal Dr. Gopalan’s Futures Institute grant of $4.6 million,&#8221; and notified Ph.D. students that their scholarships were being revoked. The Department of Education had to step in, <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.587379/gov.uscourts.mdd.587379.1.6.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">writing</a> that the grant had not been terminated and ordering Maryland to restore it.
The willingness to terminate the university&#8217;s brightest scholars was all the more remarkable because &#8220;UMES has some of the worst student outcomes in the United States under Rondall Allen and Heidi Anderson. The 4-year graduation rate is 17% whereas the 6-year graduation rate is about 35% and graduates’ median incomes are on par with high school graduates. To Dr. Gopalan’s astonishment, Rondall Allen and Dr. Heidi Anderson were indifferent to these outcomes and appeared resentful whenever he mentioned the need to improve,&#8221; it added.
Anderson is a pharmacist, and Allen, another pharmacist, was appointed Provost in 2022. &#8220;Allen has no record of original intellectual publications and had copied and pasted Dr. Gopalan’s work to steal credit,&#8221; the suit said.
The suit asked the court to &#8220;direct the University System of Maryland Board of Regents and the Office of Attorney General to claw back Jay Perman’s $1.4 million salary, Heidi Anderson’s $450,000 salary, and Rondall Allen’s $300,000 salary and proportionate amounts from Casares.&#8221;
On Monday, Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown filed a <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.587379/gov.uscourts.mdd.587379.15.1.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">response</a> in court. It noted that Gopalan was acting as his own lawyer, and sought to have the case dismissed based in part on legal technicalities, the claim that the public college and its officials had &#8220;sovereign immunity,” and that he did not provide enough detail showing he was a victim of intentional racial discrimination.
<h2>&#8216;Private looting opportunity&#8217;</h2>
A <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.587750/gov.uscourts.mdd.587750.1.0.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">second lawsuit</a> was filed on August 1 under the pseudonym Jacob Doe, a faculty member who says he &#8220;directly observed the top administrators of the university engaging in criminal activities.&#8221;
When Anderson took over in 2018, UMES had an enrollment of 4,800; it is now only 3,000. The passing rate in Anderson&#8217;s own field of pharmacy fell from 95% to 57%. Allen became provost a few years later, despite a background in &#8220;discount pharmacies, and no record meriting a provost position,&#8221; it said.
&#8220;Plaintiff found one cause of the university’s terrible outcomes: rogue administrators led by the president Heidi Anderson and provost Rondall Allen turning the vast investments by the federal and state governments in the university into a private looting opportunity. Unlike other normal universities where administrators are appointed pursuant to merit, credentials, and experience, at UMES many were appointed based on a propensity for corruption and collusion in Anderson and Allen’s schemes,&#8221; the suit said.
&#8220;After directly witnessing and determining that there was organized criminal activity to siphon off federal and state funds led by Defendant 1 Heidi Anderson and Rondall Allen, in Summer and Fall 2024, Plaintiff filed reports with the USM Chancellor and Board, and state and federal officials. The USM initiated a cosmetic investigation – intended to save Anderson rather than determine the truth,&#8221; it said.
&#8220;Upon learning about the Plaintiff&#8217;s complaints, the Defendants took retaliatory actions under the guise of a fake complaint alleging in December 2024 that the Plaintiff had created a &#8216;hostile working environment&#8217; for one temporary worker whose contract was due to expire in two months&#8221; – an Iranian student who, the complaint claimed, was allowed to stay in the country as a reward for going along with the scheme.
Casares, the DEI director, accused Doe of sexually harassing the temp, even though no evidence was provided that the pair had ever been in a room alone together. Casares himself left his previous job after being <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">accused</a> of sexual assault; the suit said &#8220;Casares is unemployable in US higher education and his grossly inflated salary and continued promotion by Anderson are bribes&#8221; for &#8220;intimidating faculty and staff who oppose illegal activities.&#8221;
The temp worker&#8217;s primary boss was a different professor, who witnessed every encounter between Doe and the temp, but Casares did not interview him, the suit said.
Casares was accused of telling the temp worker that “people say Turkish women are beautiful, but I prefer Persian women,&#8221; and &#8220;all work and no fun makes [her] a dull girl.&#8221; Doe said that these statements were fabricated, but that they would not meet the standard for sexual harassment even if they were true.
He said the temp worker had falsified timesheets, leading him to admonish her, and the false claim was in retaliation. Nonetheless, Doe was suspended, banned from campus and his students were told that he was fired. He filed a complaint against Casares, which was ignored, he said.
<h2>A grades for illiterates</h2>
A similar <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.589179/gov.uscourts.mdd.589179.1.0.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lawsuit was filed on August 22</a> by Ciu Fang, an &#8220;award-winning computer science lecturer&#8221; who said she was retaliated against for raising concerns that University of Maryland Eastern Shore had almost no academic standards and condoned cheating in order to keep student tuition flowing.
With enrollment plummeting, the school seemingly began relying on foreign students from countries like Iran to fill slots. Although the HBCU was a low-performing institution that few Americans wanted to attend, foreigners who wanted to come to America could use it to gain a student visa.
Iranians began taking over the faculty as well, and Asad Azemi became chair of the computer science program. &#8220;Since his arrival, Azemi expressed a preference for hiring Iranians and manipulated hiring processes to create vacancies for his friends,&#8221; the suit said, citing one job search in which 80% of candidates were Iranian.
Azemi took all the course preparation that Fang had created and appropriated it for himself, while pushing her out of a teaching slot after she was unwilling to give students passing grades even if they skipped class and did not know the material, she said.
Fang said the college admitted students with low high school grades and SAT scores, and most proved unable to master the content in her advanced computer science class, with many not showing up to class at all. But when Azemi taught the course, the failure rate was 0%.
&#8220;Many students plagiarized code from the internet and were unable to answer basic syntax questions&#8230; Dr. Azemi awarded nearly all students a grade of B or higher,&#8221; Fang said. &#8220;Azemi encourages cheating and apparently fraudulent practices to maintain a false facade of enrollment to pad his salary and deceive the federal government,&#8221; she added, saying he pressured her to change students&#8217; grades.
On March 31, Fang emailed Chancellor Perman and &#8220;filed a complaint via the USM Fraud Hotline with information about enrollment, grading, and attendance fraud in specific courses,&#8221; but investigators never contacted Fang for more information, she said.
&#8220;Perman knew that he would be embarrassed if the fraud were to be publicly revealed because of scandals at other universities under his watch,&#8221; the suit said.
(The Daily Wire exposed the president of Maryland&#8217;s flagship campus at College Park as a plagiarist<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/university-of-maryland-president-copied-rocket-science-paper-from-aussie-student" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> more than a year ago</a>, but there have been no repercussions.)
Perman&#8217;s assistant merely referred her to Casares, who wrote a report taking Azemi&#8217;s side, without interviewing Fang&#8217;s witnesses, she said. Then Anderson personally <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.589179/gov.uscourts.mdd.589179.1.25_1.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">emailed Fang to terminate her</a> without explanation. &#8220;The abrupt unlawful firing whilst the appeal process was ongoing is illegal retaliation,&#8221; Fang said.
Fang said Anderson developed personal animosity toward her years earlier. Fang had also worked as a personal trainer at the school&#8217;s gym, and &#8220;Heidi Anderson, who is obese,&#8221; asked a school coach to help her lose weight. The coach refused to continue helping Anderson due to her poor attitude, and delegated it to Fang. Anderson insisted on losing weight while refusing to do the necessary workouts, and became &#8220;resentful,&#8221; she said.
On October 31, Maryland filed a <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.587379/gov.uscourts.mdd.587379.15.1.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reply</a> to the federal court that was similar to its motion in the first case, raising technical legal objections without denying specific allegations.
<h2>Director of Human Resources</h2>
The university&#8217;s former Director of Human Resources, Rosalie Hornbuckle, also filed a <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.589179/gov.uscourts.mdd.589179.1.13.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">whistleblower complaint</a>, though not a lawsuit. Hornbuckle said she was terminated several months into her job after identifying &#8220;payment to individuals who were placed in fictitious jobs&#8221; and other misconduct.
The complaint alleged a large number of employees remained on paid leave for long periods after being accused of wrongdoing. She said in one case, Casares placed a staff member on paid leave after a complaint of discriminating against white students; six months later, Casares claimed that he had been investigating but had not taken any notes.
As another cited example, a finance employee arrested with a &#8220;large amount of marijuana packaged for sale&#8221; was provided severance instead of simply being terminated; Hornbuckle couldn&#8217;t understand why until learning that he was the nephew of the school&#8217;s budget director, she said.
The Daily Wire previously reported on a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/maryland-college-president-heidi-anderson-plagiarized-dissertation" target="_blank" rel="noopener">fourth lawsuit</a>, by former agriculture professor Donna Satterlee, who said that a Kenyan who was &#8220;incapable of writing in English at the level required of university professor&#8221; took over her department and made her do much of the work, while black faculty took credit and received much higher salaries.
After she called for a study that would publish salary information broken down by race, Casares&#8217;s DEI department accused her of bullying her boss, and she was placed on &#8220;transitional terminal leave.&#8221;
On October 31, Maryland’s attorney general filed a <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.586969/gov.uscourts.mdd.586969.21.1_1.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reply</a> in court saying that Satterlee signed papers agreeing not to sue the university in exchange for nine months of severance, and that the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission declined to pursue a complaint she filed with it.
<h2>Cyber Warrior Diversity Program</h2>
The Daily Wire separately obtained a contract signed in August 2019 by President Anderson with Lance Andre Lucas for a &#8220;Cyber Warrior Diversity Program.&#8221; The next year, Lucas<a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-md/pr/baltimore-businessman-lance-lucas-sentenced-18-months-federal-prison-honest-services-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> pleaded guilty</a> to bribing a state lawmaker $42,500 to create a state law pushing such a program, because he anticipated it would benefit his company.
“I’m from Baltimore for real, for real Baltimore … this is the least illegal thing that I’ve ever done,” he told Maryland Delegate Cheryl Glenn as he handed her cash in his Porsche.
The contract signed by Anderson said &#8220;the State of Maryland is paying a total of $10,000 dollars [sic] per student. The Cyber Warrior Diversity program direct cost [sic] are $7000 or 70%. University of Maryland Eastern Shore Cyber Warrior Diversity Program administrative cost [sic] are $3000 or 30%.&#8221;
&#8220;Once payment is made to University of Maryland Eastern Shore by the State of Maryland trough [sic] MHEC they [sic] have 30-90 days period of grace to pay Digit All City for program direct cost [sic] incurred,&#8221; it continued.
It said Lucas&#8217;s firm would run a computer science course, saying &#8220;The SWDP [sic] courses offer the hard and soft skills needed to work in this industry.&#8221; It is not clear why the school did not simply use its existing computer science program–taught by faculty like Fang–for that.
The<a href="https://mgaleg.maryland.gov/2018RS/bills/sb/sb0615E.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> bill</a> creating the program allocated $2.5 million to black colleges to create programs &#8220;to train students in computer networking and cybersecurity,&#8221; and said &#8220;the governing entity at each institution is responsible for administering the program at that institution.&#8221;
Spokesmen for Anderson and Chancellor Perman both declined to comment on the lawsuits against the Eastern Shore college, citing policies on ongoing litigation.
Anderson hired a lawyer to threaten The Daily Wire with a lawsuit after it presented <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/maryland-college-president-heidi-anderson-plagiarized-dissertation" target="_blank" rel="noopener">side-by-side academic papers</a> showing thousands of words of her dissertation were identical to older papers by others. University spokesman Robert Vickers said the lawyer was hired by Anderson personally, not by the school.

Heidi Anderson / University of Maryland Eastern Shore

This Black College Is A ‘Criminal Enterprise,’ Ex-Top Official Says In Lawsuit

Education

Maryland

University of Maryland

The Regents of the Texas A&amp;M University System voted unanimously on Thursday to adopt a policy requiring college presidents to sign off on any course that could be interpreted as pushing “race and gender ideology or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity.”
The new policy seeks to prevent another controversy like the one that erupted at Texas A&amp;M earlier this year when an English professor was filmed pushing pro-LGBT talking points during a children’s literature course. The policy approved by regents defines race ideology as “attempts to shame a particular race or ethnicity” or anything that “promotes activism on issues related to race or ethnicity rather than academic instruction,” The Texas Tribune <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2025/11/13/texas-am-regents-race-gender-ideology-course-audit/">reported</a>. Gender ideology is defined under the policy as “a concept of self-assessed gender identity replacing, and disconnected from, the biological category of sex.”
The policy also prohibits professors from teaching any material that is not consistent with the approved syllabus. Enforcement of the policy is set to begin at all 12 colleges in the Texas A&amp;M University System in the spring 2026 semester.
“What we’re doing is pretty simple,” regent Sam Torn told The Texas Tribune. “It’s not as complex. We’re simply making sure that we do educate, and we’re simply making sure that we teach what the course syllabus specifies that we teach.”
Videos obtained and shared by Republican Texas state Rep. Brian Harrison and <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">first reported</a> by The Daily Wire in September showed children’s literature professor Dr. Melissa McCoul advocating for leftist views on race and gender and asking one student who pushed back on her arguments to leave a lecture. The children’s literature course included material that advocated for introducing leftist gender ideas to children. One of the slides in the class was titled “Let’s talk gender in children’s lit!” and argued that “Childhood is the time for figuring out how to be a boy, girl, man, woman, or another gender.”
In a phone call with the student who publicly opposed the leftism espoused in the literature course, then-Texas A&amp;M President Mark Welsh said, “There’s not a problem” with teaching LGBT literature as long as the university makes it clear it will be part of a class. When the student asked Welsh if any more changes would be made, such as firing McCoul, Welsh accused the student of attempting to “pick a fight,” adding that the university would not punish the professor.
Welsh <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/texas-am-president-to-resign-after-leftist-politics-infiltrated-university-childrens-lit-course">stepped down</a> as Texas A&amp;M president less than two weeks after the videos and details of the children’s literature class were made public. A rule implemented in September requires that all course content at each of the Texas A&amp;M System’s 12 schools be audited.
“It’s a serious system-wide review of every course, every syllabus,” Torn said on Thursday. “We are examining the body of knowledge behind each degree, low-producing programs, workforce relevance and financial stewardship.”
Rep. Harrison <a href="https://x.com/brianeharrison/status/1989310142291100113">celebrated</a> after the regents approved the new policy on race and gender ideology, saying that his use of social media to highlight the issue at Texas A&amp;M “has done more this year to combat woke indoctrination than the entire Texas House and Texas Senate… combined.”
Some professors are concerned that the policy will only add confusion.
Geography professor Andrew Klein told the board of regents, “The vagueness of the language is problematic. Faculty are now assuming that all instructions in the topic of concern will be prohibited. Will subjects like medicine, public health and law, where such content is required to prepare professionals for the Texas workforce, be disallowed?”
Philosophy professor Martin Peterson added that academics must “seek the truth,” arguing, “When we seek the truth, we sometimes have to explore ideas that touch on controversial issues.”
“It is not always clear what counts as advocating for an ideology in those contexts,” Peterson said.
European history professor Miranda Sachs argued that the new rule would prevent her from addressing certain historical topics, such as the Holocaust. Regent John Bellinger responded to Sachs’s comment, saying, “There’s got to be some common sense in this.”
“I think we’re taking it a little bit too far when [we say] that we’re not going to teach about what happened in world wars,” Bellinger said.

Texas A&M

Texas A&M Restricts ‘Race And Gender Ideology’ After Leftist Literature Course Exposed

American Universities

Gender

Leftism

Politics

Texas

Texas A&amp;M

For decades, a portion of all federal contracts has been &#8220;set aside&#8221; for minority- and women-owned businesses, which can be awarded millions of dollars with little or no competition.
The 8(a) program, operated by the Small Business Administration, is meant to help &#8220;socially and economically disadvantaged businesses.&#8221; But in practice, the program has led to open corruption and the waste of hundreds of billions of dollars, with &#8220;disadvantaged&#8221; firms often simply &#8220;partnering&#8221; with a non-minority firm that owns 49% of the company, but does much of the work.
Take ATI Government Solutions, a firm that claimed Native American ownership to get 8(a) status. Its website focuses on its &#8220;Tribal Advantage: <a href="https://atisolutions.us/tribal-advantage/">Procurement Advantages</a> for Government and Industry by Partnering with ATI,&#8221; even though all the executives listed on its <a href="https://atisolutions.us/team/">leadership page</a> appear to be white.
Last month, <a href="https://x.com/JamesOKeefeIII/status/1981042870460252398" target="_blank" rel="noopener">O’Keefe Media Group</a> published an undercover video in which Anish Abraham, senior director at ATI Government Solutions, acknowledged that his company was a “pass-through” that got a $100 million contract, kept $65 million, and paid another firm $45 million to do the work.
Melayne Cromwell, a black woman who previously worked as director of contracts at ATI, was also captured saying the firm only does 20% of the work. “A lot of our subcontractors bid on contracts that were perfect in their industry, but because they weren’t Native American, they wouldn’t win it, so we bid on it for them, and they became our subcontractor,” she said.
Now, top officials say set-aside contracting, a mainstay of the Washington swamp, could be changing for good.
Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), the chair of the Senate Committee on Small Business, wrote to SBA&#8217;s inspector general October 30, saying &#8220;over the years an egregious pattern has emerged where a special subset of 8(a) participants, the &#8216;Super 8(a)’s,&#8217; may be taking undue advantage of their ability to obtain sole-source awards in unlimited amounts.&#8221;
&#8220;I request the SBA OIG immediately investigate ATI, its Super 8(a) parent entity Susanville Indian Rancheria, and its network of 8(a) subsidiaries,&#8221; she wrote in a letter obtained by The Daily Wire.
On Saturday, SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler said that &#8220;As part of our ongoing investigation into ATI Government Solutions, SBA has uncovered and now suspended a network of SEVEN additional companies connected to its CEO Firmadge Crutchfield.&#8221;
&#8220;Their names have been provided to law enforcement. Thank you to every federal agency that has joined us in the effort to crack down on fraud in the 8(a) Program for &#8216;socially and economically disadvantaged&#8217; small businesses.&#8221;
Ernst told The Daily Wire &#8220;I will not rest until every last fraudster is held accountable and the program is reformed. Administrator Loeffler has done a tremendous job and I am confident that she will ensure that exploitation of the SBA’s small business programs is no longer excused or overlooked.”
Ernst said in her letter that the Biden administration &#8220;tripled the 8(a) contracting goals from 5 percent to 15 percent,&#8221; but when she requested reports that are required to be filed with the SBA by certain minority-contracting firms to monitor for fraud, she found that &#8220;Biden’s SBA failed to track and retain them.&#8221;
&#8220;It is obvious that the Biden Administration’s indifference toward meaningful oversight in the 8(a) program allowed swindlers and fraudsters to treat federal contracting programs like personal piggy banks&#8230; Small business contracting programs were never intended to function as welfare systems for favored classes or give no-bid contracts to do-nothing companies,&#8221; she wrote.
&#8220;Penalties against rulebreakers have not been swiftly and resolutely imposed. Deterrence has completely failed&#8230; This stops now,&#8221; she continued.
She requested &#8220;All documents and communications related to any disciplinary or corrective actions SBA has taken on 8(a) firms over the last 5 years, including suspensions, disbarments, and removals from the 8(a) Program initiated by the SBA,&#8221; and asked:
<ul class="ul-list" data-mark="*">
<li class="md-list-item">When would a contractor be suspected of violating the limitations on subcontracting?</li>
</ul>
<ul class="ul-list" data-mark="*">
<li class="md-list-item">What is the specific process that occurs when a prime contractor is suspected of having violated the limitations on subcontracting, up to and including resolution?</li>
</ul>
<ul class="ul-list" data-mark="*">
<li class="md-list-item">Have any contractors been found to have violated the limitations on subcontracting over the last 5 years?</li>
</ul>
Ernst also wrote to the SBA&#8217;s Inspector General, who has found abuse of minority contracting programs for decades.
She said there is little reason to believe anyone is actually tracking whether the minority-owned company actually does at least half of the work, as required, rather than having their &#8220;partner&#8221; or subcontractors do it.
&#8220;While this requirement is designed to restrict small businesses from acting as pass-through companies for ineligible firms, in practice, weak enforcement of this rule leaves the door open for abuse,&#8221; she wrote. &#8220;In the coming days and months, I expect to see significant 8(a)-related accountability actions and investigations initiated.&#8221;
In June, Walter Barnes III, the founder of contractor Vistant (previously known as PM Consulting Group, or PMCG), pleaded guilty to paying bribes in exchange for <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/usaid-800m-migration-feds-bribes" target="_blank" rel="noopener">$544 million</a> in USAID contracts. The court documents established that Barnes&#8217; firm got contracts through being a black-owned firm; then, when it earned so many millions of dollars that it &#8220;graduated&#8221; from the 8(a) program, it would enter into 49%-51% &#8220;partnerships&#8221; with other firms that still had disadvantaged status. A USAID contracting official was able to ensure that contracts went to the people who paid him bribes because his minority status gave him the power to &#8220;sole-source&#8221; awards, instead of being obligated to give it to the lowest-price firm.
This year, the Justice Department stated that Vistant, as a corporation, was guilty, but granted it a deferred prosecution agreement. Despite more than a half-billion dollars going to a firm that was involved in massive fraud, the company is still eligible for contracts, and the government has continued to send it work through partnerships with &#8220;disadvantaged&#8221; firms.
The Daily Wire reported in June that the government allowed Vistant to tap into potential contracts amounting to as much as $800 million through a partnership with CollaborateUp, a &#8220;small business&#8221; <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/usaid-800m-migration-feds-bribes">operating out of a house</a>.

SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler and Senate Small Business Chair Joni Ernst

Feds Crack Down On Minority Contracting Schemes, D.C.’s Worst-Kept Secret

Fraud

Joni Ernst

Kelly Loeffler

Students at Michigan State University hoping to become the educators of the next generation are forced to take a race-centered course that follows &#8220;the guiding principles of the Black Lives Matter&#8221; movement and requires students to read from a book condemning &#8220;whiteness.&#8221;
Course materials obtained by the <a href="https://yaf.org/news/race-obsessed-course-forced-on-future-educators-at-michigan-state/">Young America&#8217;s Foundation</a> group on MSU&#8217;s campus and shared with The Daily Wire show that one class for future teachers pushes leftist theories on race. The introductory three-credit class, &#8220;<a href="https://reg.msu.edu/Courses/Search.aspx?CourseID=342088#Results">TE 101: Social Foundations of Justice and Equity in Education</a>,&#8221; is required for all Secondary Education majors at MSU and is typically taken before their junior year. TE 101&#8217;s course description states that it emphasizes &#8220;racial justice, equity, and social identity markers.&#8221;
The syllabus for TE 101 states that the class is &#8220;committed to the Guiding Principles of the Black Lives Matter Movement, Learning for Justice’s Social Justice Standards, and the principles of the Abolitionist Teaching Network.&#8221;
One Michigan State education major, who wished to remain anonymous, told The Daily Wire that 90-100% of the class is focused on race.
&#8220;This class is an indoctrination of modern racial ideology,&#8221; the student said.
Asked if sitting through hours of leftist ideology becomes discouraging, the student replied, &#8220;No, it actually makes me want to pursue this degree more. It makes me want to be able to teach children instead of these other people.&#8221;
&#8220;Because I feel like there is a lack of conservatives in education,&#8221; the student added. &#8220;We see how the other side has done with these students.&#8221;
The only book TE 101 students are required to read for the semester includes a section that condemns &#8220;whiteness&#8221; as a privilege that &#8220;will never allow true solidarity to take place.&#8221;
The <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Want-More-Than-Survive-Abolitionist/dp/0807069159">book</a>, &#8220;We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom,&#8221; by Bettina Love, &#8220;argues that the US educational system is maintained by and profits from the suffering of children of color.&#8221; The author writes that for education reform to take place, leaders must &#8220;approach education with the imagination, determination, boldness, and urgency of an abolitionist.&#8221;
One excerpt from the book focuses on how &#8220;whiteness&#8221; cannot be included in the fight for education reform.
<blockquote>“Whiteness cannot enter spaces focused on abolitionist teaching. Whiteness is addicted to centering itself, addicted to attention, and making everyone feel guilty for working toward its elimination. Whiteness will never allow true solidarity to take place. Those who cling to their Whiteness cannot participate in abolitionist teaching because they are a distraction, are unproductive, and will undermine freedom at every step, sometimes in the name of social justice. Being an abolitionist means you are ready to lose something, you are ready to let go of your privilege, you are ready to be in solidarity with dark people by recognizing your Whiteness in dark spaces, recognizing how it can take up space if unchecked, using your Whiteness in White spaces to advocate for and with dark people. And you understand that your White privilege allows you to take risks that dark people cannot take in the fight for educational justice.”</blockquote>
Each of the three groups mentioned as being pivotal to the class has a history of advocating for radical leftist ideas. The course syllabus links to &#8220;<a href="https://www.dcareaeducators4socialjustice.org/black-lives-matter/13-guiding-principles">Guiding Principles</a>&#8221; of the BLM movement, which include radical leftist ideas on race and gender. Among the 13 BLM movement principles listed on the website for &#8220;D.C. Area Educators for Social Justice&#8221; are commitments to be &#8220;queer affirming&#8221; and &#8220;trans affirming.&#8221; The &#8220;Guiding Principle&#8221; under transgender affirmation vows to &#8220;dismantle cis-gender privilege and uplift Black trans folk, especially Black trans women who continue to be disproportionately impacted by trans-antagonistic violence.&#8221;
Join us now during our exclusive Deal of the Decade. Get everything for $7 a month. Not as fans. As fighters. Go to <a href="https://get.dailywire.com/subscribe/plus/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">DailyWire.com/Subscribe</a> to join now.
<a href="https://www.learningforjustice.org/about">Learning for Justice</a>, the second group listed on the syllabus, is part of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which aims to be &#8220;a catalyst for racial justice in the South and beyond, working in partnership with communities to dismantle white supremacy, strengthen intersectional movements and advance the human rights of all people.&#8221; The SPLC has been condemned for placing Christian and conservative organizations on its &#8220;Hate Map&#8221; that publicly tracks groups and individuals that it deems radical and hateful. Learning for Justice&#8217;s &#8220;<a href="https://www.learningforjustice.org/sites/default/files/2022-09/LFJ-Social-Justice-Standards-September-2022-09292022.pdf">Social Justice Standards</a>&#8221; seek to teach children as young as five years old about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
The Abolitionist Teaching Network, another group that guides the MSU education class, encourages teachers to become activists.
&#8220;Abolitionist Teaching Network leverages teachers&#8217; and workers&#8217; power by offering resources for agitators and activists,&#8221; the group <a href="https://www.ewlhub.org/professional-development-resource-guide/abolitionist-teaching-network-">states</a>.
Another MSU education student who previously took TE 101 and spoke to The Daily Wire on condition of anonymity, said that the hyper-focus on race continues in courses beyond TE 101, especially in &#8220;<a href="https://reg.msu.edu/Courses/Search.aspx?CourseID=342088#Results">TE 102: Pedagogy and Politics of Justice and Equity in Education</a>.&#8221;
&#8220;I&#8217;ve had to write papers on different identities. You can choose race, gender, sexuality, income status. I think the goal is to have most students write about their whiteness,&#8221; the student said. &#8220;They teach that white people can&#8217;t see their identity. The core tenet of these classes feels like white people, especially white men, are the number one objection to what stands in the way of a better education system and a better society.&#8221;
The conservative student group, Young America&#8217;s Foundation, which first highlighted TE 101 at MSU, called the course&#8217;s content &#8220;divisive and discriminatory.&#8221;
&#8220;This kind of rhetoric only pushes Americans further apart, and is not only a waste of taxpayer money at a publicly funded university, but also a waste of students’ time,&#8221; Michigan State YAF added in a statement. &#8220;Do we really want our future educators teaching our children that an entire race is evil?&#8221;
Michigan State defended the class. A spokesperson for the university told The Daily Wire that the course &#8220;aligns with national teacher preparation standards, and its associated curriculum is reviewed through well-established academic governance processes at the department, college, and institutional level.&#8221; The spokesperson added that courses and curricula are approved by the department, which requires sign-off from the dean, and then approval by an independent curriculum committee.
Courses and curricula are also reviewed by the Office of Accreditation, Assessment, Curriculum, and Compliance and the University Curriculum Committee. After those reviews, the University Curriculum Committee votes for final approval.
&#8220;Michigan State University remains firmly committed to academic freedom, scholarly inquiry, and the preparation of educators who are well equipped to serve all students,&#8221; the MSU spokesperson added.
Since coming into office in January, President Donald Trump has signed executive orders seeking to crack down on DEI teachings at public universities. The Trump administration has <a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-dei-universities-investigated-f89dc9ec2a98897577ed0a6c446fae7b">launched</a> investigations into dozens of universities across the country over accusations that they pushed DEI programs on students and faculty, which led to racial discrimination.

Black Fist/Michigan State

‘Indoctrination’: MSU Forces Future Teachers To Take Class Rooted In Black Lives Matter

'Indoctrination': MSU Forces Future Teachers To Take Class Rooted In Black Lives Matter 'Principles'

Michigan

Michigan State University

Race

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.
Morning Wire is available on video! You can watch today’s episode here:
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If you would rather listen to your news, today’s edition of the Morning Wire podcast can be heard below:
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<h2 style="text-align: center;">Democrat Shutdown Enters Day 17</h2>
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-987421" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/22No-Kings22-In-D.C-300x169.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="169" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/22No-Kings22-In-D.C-300x169.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/22No-Kings22-In-D.C-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/22No-Kings22-In-D.C-768x432.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/22No-Kings22-In-D.C-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/22No-Kings22-In-D.C.jpg 1920w" sizes=" (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
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>
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-987423" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Legacy-Media-Rebuild-300x169.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="169" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Legacy-Media-Rebuild-300x169.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Legacy-Media-Rebuild-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Legacy-Media-Rebuild-768x432.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Legacy-Media-Rebuild-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Legacy-Media-Rebuild.jpg 1920w" sizes=" (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
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>
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-987425" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Conservative-Journalists-Snubbed-300x169.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="169" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Conservative-Journalists-Snubbed-300x169.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Conservative-Journalists-Snubbed-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Conservative-Journalists-Snubbed-768x432.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Conservative-Journalists-Snubbed-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Conservative-Journalists-Snubbed.jpg 1920w" sizes=" (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
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

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.
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-980103 size-full" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/advantages.jpg" alt="" width="1812" height="1410" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/advantages.jpg 1812w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/advantages-300x233.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/advantages-740x576.jpg 740w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/advantages-768x598.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/advantages-1536x1195.jpg 1536w" sizes=" (max-width: 1812px) 100vw, 1812px" /></div>
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.
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-980105" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/evans.jpg" alt="" width="1812" height="1510" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/evans.jpg 1812w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/evans-300x250.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/evans-691x576.jpg 691w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/evans-768x640.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/evans-1536x1280.jpg 1536w" sizes=" (max-width: 1812px) 100vw, 1812px" /></div>
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.
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-980107" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/caldwell.jpg" alt="" width="1218" height="542" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/caldwell.jpg 1218w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/caldwell-300x133.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/caldwell-1024x456.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/caldwell-768x342.jpg 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1218px) 100vw, 1218px" /></div>
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.
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-980113" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/findings.jpg" alt="" width="1096" height="298" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/findings.jpg 1096w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/findings-300x82.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/findings-1024x278.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/findings-768x209.jpg 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1096px) 100vw, 1096px" /></div>
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;
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-980185" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/boettcher.jpg" alt="" width="1218" height="720" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/boettcher.jpg 1218w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/boettcher-300x177.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/boettcher-974x576.jpg 974w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/boettcher-768x454.jpg 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1218px) 100vw, 1218px" /></div>
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-980187" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ploeger.jpg" alt="" width="1218" height="1402" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ploeger.jpg 1218w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ploeger-261x300.jpg 261w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ploeger-500x576.jpg 500w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ploeger-768x884.jpg 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1218px) 100vw, 1218px" /></div>
This story has been updated with a statement from Anderson.

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

Civil Rights

College

Plagiarism

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>.
<a class="c-link c-link--focus-visible" href="https://get.dailywire.com/subscribe/plus/?utm_campaign=fall40&amp;utm_content=fallsale&amp;utm_medium=website&amp;utm_source=editorial" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-stringify-link="https://get.dailywire.com/subscribe/plus/?utm_campaign=fall40&amp;utm_content=fallsale&amp;utm_medium=website&amp;utm_source=editorial" data-sk="tooltip_parent">Get 40% off new DailyWire+ annual memberships with code FALL40 at checkout!</a> 
&#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

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?”
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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

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