It wasn&#8217;t too long ago that Columbia University, like pretty much every school in the country, shut down in-person classes because of COVID. 
In fact, when Columbia&#8217;s current class of seniors began attending the school as freshmen four years ago, they had to log in to virtual classes — for their entire freshmen year. Supposedly, this was a once-in-a-lifetime event. Extreme times require extreme measures, those students were told. Never mind that those measures were pointless and did far more harm than good, of course.
Now, just a couple of years later, extreme times are back, and once again, lockdown measures are apparently required. Columbia has just shut down in-person classes yet again, in favor of mandatory &#8220;virtual learning,&#8221; for the last week of the semester. And those same Columbia seniors who had to attend online classes as freshmen are now being told to do it again as seniors.
But this time around, the reason that on-campus classes are suspended is that Columbia has been overrun by a mob of anti-Israel protesters who have occupied the lawn on campus and, in some cases, were captured on camera harassing and even explicitly <a href="https://x.com/emilykschrader/status/1782090351945085254">threatening</a> Jewish students with violence.
<iframe loading="lazy" title="001 Protest B Roll" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3cS7qzsLC6Y?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
The people occupying the lawn — most of them students — say they won&#8217;t leave until Columbia divests from &#8220;anything related to Israel.&#8221; And for some reason, Columbia didn&#8217;t immediately have these students arrested and expelled, which would have been very easy to do, and should have been done. It wasn’t, so the debacle continues. Other schools like NYU, the University of Mexico — and even &#8220;Cal Poly Humboldt&#8221; have seen similar protests.
At this rate, it seems unlikely that Columbia University&#8217;s campus will even exist in a few years. The university will probably become an online program like the University of Phoenix. The quad will transform into CHAZ 2.0, run by some theater student posing as a warlord, that&#8217;s where this is headed. The people running Columbia, like the rest of the Ivy League, very clearly don&#8217;t have any strong interest in teaching students. They&#8217;ve made it extremely clear that they&#8217;re easy to walk all over, so of course, this will keep happening.
At the same time — regardless of whether these administrators are cowards or simply incompetent or both — it&#8217;s clear that these protests serve a purpose that&#8217;s much bigger than Columbia University.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1354-here-s-the-proof-that-the-free-palestine-movement-is-just-blm-repackaged-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show</a></h4>
The disruption, it just so happens, is dominating the national news cycle right on schedule: in the spring before a presidential election. Usually we see a race riot right around this time — and as I&#8217;ve <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-media-nominates-their-new-george-floyd">discussed</a> before, there&#8217;s been no shortage of attempts by the media this year to incite them. But those attempts have all failed. And now, instead of race riots, right on cue, we have this insurgent movement to &#8220;Free Palestine.&#8221; Which is really just a race riot, repackaged, and draped in a green, black, and white flag.
These students, for the most part, don’t necessarily see this as a BLM reboot, but that’s what it is, and that’s what political forces much more powerful than the students are determined to turn it into. Those forces see an opportunity that really has very little to do with Israel or Gaza. And if they succeed, there will be a lot of violence and disruption this year that extends far beyond Columbia and Morningside Heights.
If you look around, it&#8217;s not hard to find hints that this is what&#8217;s going on. For example, take a look at what happened last night to pro-Hamas protesters who gathered outside the home of Chuck Schumer, the Senate Majority Leader. These are protesters who, for the most part, have had a free run of the campus of one of the top universities in the United States for several days. But watch what happens the moment they get near Schumer&#8217;s house:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="002 Schumer Home Protests" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vmYKMg-RMTE?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
What&#8217;s amazing about this footage is that, as you might remember, Left-wing activists recently gathered outside the home of Supreme Court justices — including Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — for weeks on end. That was part of an overt effort to intimidate the justices ahead of the Dobbs decision. But at no point were the demonstrators arrested for picketing in front of the justices&#8217; homes, even though it was a violation of federal law. The Biden administration refused to do anything about it. It was like a scene out of a third-world country.
The only guy they arrested literally called 911 and told them he wanted to murder Kavanaugh. That&#8217;s what it took to get some kind of police response.
But with Schumer, the rules are different. Hamas sympathizers and anti-Israel protesters can do what they want at NYU and Columbia and the University of Mexico and Cal Poly. The one thing they can&#8217;t do is disturb Chuck Schumer. So there are still rules, even amid all the anarchy. They just benefit the members of one political party.
As it happens, that&#8217;s not the only indication that what we&#8217;re seeing here is a kind of political operation. The Washington Examiner recently <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/2974413/major-columbia-protest-organizers-left-wing-donors/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">published</a> a deep-dive into the groups that have played a major role in promoting these Columbia protests. One of these groups is called &#8220;Jewish Voice for Peace&#8221; or JVP, which is a pro-Palestinian organization. They&#8217;ve helped with pro-Palestinian protests that have occurred not only at Columbia, but also at Harvard, UNC Chapel Hill, Ohio State, and Boston University. And, as the Examiner reports, JVP is &#8220;supported by far-left George Soros&#8217;s Open Society Network, and since 2016 has hauled in at least $650,000 from Soros-connected groups.&#8221;
Well, that&#8217;s interesting, especially if you were told that the protests at Columbia were entirely spontaneous — and entirely student-run, student-funded and student-organized. Now we&#8217;re learning that Soros-linked money is somehow involved in what&#8217;s happening at Columbia. As you probably remember, Soros-affiliated entities famously <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/13/us/politics/george-soros-racial-justice-organizations.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">poured</a> millions of dollars into so-called &#8220;racial justice initiatives&#8221; beginning four years ago, the last time we had national riots. These entities also helped elect quite a few D.A.s all over the country who promised to further BLM&#8217;s agenda by refusing to prosecute criminals. Now, according to the Examiner, Soros&#8217; Open Society Network is indirectly bankrolling some of what&#8217;s happening at Columbia, or at least the organizations involved in it.
And it gets worse. Democrats like Cori Bush and Ilhan Omar have blamed the physical violence and threatening rhetoric at these protests on so-called outside agitators. These are sitting members of Congress in the Democratic Party making that claim. They&#8217;re asserting that these agitators have nothing to do with the actual protest. But as the journalist Park MacDougald has <a href="https://x.com/hpmcd1/status/1782924163121856608" target="_blank" rel="noopener">pointed</a> out, one of the other key organizers of the Columbia protest — Students for Justice in Palestine, or SJP — is a subsidiary of the same nonprofit as one of these alleged &#8220;outside agitators,&#8221; a group called Within our Lifetimes, or WOL. The nonprofit is called the WESPAC Foundation.  In other words, there&#8217;s no daylight here between the &#8220;outside agitators&#8221; and the protesters. They are one and the same. And who funds the WESPAC Foundation, you ask? As MacDougald points out, WESPAC <a href="https://x.com/Scrollletter/status/1782838777838227669" target="_blank" rel="noopener">takes</a> a lot of money from the Tides Foundation, which in turn, has also received significant funding from the one and only George Soros.
As always, all roads lead back to Soros.
So this is starting to look like more than an isolated protest. It&#8217;s looking more like a broader and more general astroturfed effort to destabilize the country and stoke racial resentment, with the full endorsement of the Democratic Party.
There are some pretty clear signs that some of these students understand that, too.
Take the group called &#8220;Columbia University Apartheid Divest,&#8221; or CUAD. That&#8217;s a large coalition of more than 116 groups — including JVP — that are organizing the occupation at Columba Right now. Some of those groups include the &#8220;Columbia University Black Pre-Professional Society,&#8221; and &#8220;White Coats 4 Black Lives.&#8221;
You might be wondering why exactly a group of med students and other &#8220;pre-professionals&#8221; who support BLM also happen to be in lockstep in opposition to Israel and in support of Hamas. How exactly are these interests so perfectly aligned?
If you ask these students, they&#8217;ll probably tell you what Ilhan Omar&#8217;s daughter would tell you. She&#8217;s a student at Columbia who was just arrested for participating in this illegal encampment, and she&#8217;s also an avowed BLM activist. They would all say that they&#8217;re just really interested in defending allegedly marginalized people, wherever they may be — here or in Gaza. And that probably is what many of these students believe. They see anyone who&#8217;s non-white as a marginalized person. They see this as conflict between “whiteness” and marginalized people of color. For them, this is a struggle against white power structures and systemic racism and colonialism. Whiteness is the real villain here. Ask them and they will tell you this.
In reality does the war in Israel having anything to do with whiteness or systemic racism or anything like that? Of course not. But that’s how they see it. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t care. At least they certainly wouldn’t care as much as they do. There was no occupation of university campuses over the Ukraine invasion. That’s because, though leftist’s like to pretend they care about Ukraine, when it comes down to it both parties are equally white. There’s only so much sympathy they can really have for white people, even the ones in Ukraine.
But things start to get a little confusing when you look at other groups that have signed onto this collective at Columbia. They <a href="https://cuapartheiddivest.org/our-coalition">include</a> the &#8220;Columbia Queer Alliance,&#8221; the &#8220;Queer Graduate Collective,&#8221; and my personal favorite, the &#8220;Student Organization of Latines&#8221; — or “SOL.&#8221; Those are groups that, if they stepped foot in Gaza, would immediately be stoned to death. Hamas doesn&#8217;t exactly take kindly to the sorts of people who call themselves queer. So it&#8217;s a little harder to explain their membership in this coalition. But it becomes less difficult if you see these protests as many Democratic Party leaders see them — which is yet another opportunity for the Democratic Party and their various activist groups to terrorize millions of people and derail the national conversation in an election year.
It&#8217;s not exactly surprising that colleges, once again, are ground-zero for this effort. Universities have been fomenting this kind of radicalism for decades, and now they&#8217;re reaping exactly what they&#8217;ve been sowing. None of these universities deserve our sympathy. And for that matter, none of them deserve the benefit of student loan forgiveness programs, either. If anyone should pay for these students&#8217; loans, it&#8217;s the endowments of these schools, which are now so dysfunctional that it borders on comical.
Here for example are protesters late last night at Columbia, talking about dispersing into platoons so they&#8217;ll be harder to arrest:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="003 Defend The Protest Encampment" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gVQSjamk0gU?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
They&#8217;re comrades in arms, ready to fight for whatever the cause of the day is. As Aaron Sibarium points out, these protesters want to make it as difficult as possible for the police to remove them — so that when they are removed, they can claim to be victims. That is their overriding motivation here.
What they may not know, although it&#8217;s pretty obvious at this point, is that they&#8217;re not simply idiots. In an election year, they&#8217;re useful idiots. And in the next few months, the party that controls the government right now is going to take full advantage of them.

Pro-Palestinian Protests Continue At Columbia University In New York City

Here’s The Proof That The ‘Free Palestine’ Movement Is Just BLM Repackaged

Here's The Proof That The 'Free Palestine' Movement Is Just BLM Repackaged

Columbia University

Hamas

Israel

Matt Walsh

Protesters

Readers Pass

When a political fever runs hot among government officials, the Bill of Rights is often one of the first casualties. Few fevers have been as hot as the Democrats’ reaction to January 6.
It is no surprise, then, that the investigation by Democrat Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, like that of the Congressional Select Committee in 2022, obliterated a sacred norm. In this case, the chalk outline is around the Fifth Amendment.
I offer this observation as one who recently was compelled to appear in front of an Arizona state grand jury. The sole purpose is for me to repeat my prior invocation of my 5th Amendment right to remain silent in connection with an investigation into my service as an alternate elector for President Trump in 2020. This follows the shameful spectacle of Congress’ House January 6 Select Committee using footage from its investigatory video depositions to produce a slick TV show in advance of the 2022 elections to publicly shame Republican witnesses who invoked their 5th Amendment rights.
The Bill of Rights were inserted into the Constitution to protect our essential rights, and the Fourteenth Amendment applies them to the states. The Fifth Amendment contains powerful defenses against abuses of power. It includes the right to be indicted by a grand jury for serious crimes instead of at the whim of a prosecutor, prohibits the government from prosecuting someone twice for the same offense, guarantees due process when the government tries to take your life, freedom, or property, and requires the government to pay for any property it takes from you. The Fifth Amendment has one more essential protection: the government cannot force you to testify against yourself.
Importantly, the Supreme Court held in <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/353/391/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Grunewald v. United States</a> that one of this privilege’s basic functions is to protect innocent men who otherwise might be ensnared by “ambiguous circumstances.” The circumstances involving electors in the immediate aftermath of the 2020 election were indeed “ambiguous.” Alternate electors had been used in Hawaii in 1960, and the votes of John F. Kennedy’s alternates were ultimately validated long after the election. The day after the 2020 election, liberal commentators Van Jones and Larry Lessig <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/04/opinions/pennsylvania-take-time-counting-votes-opinion-jones-lessig/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">published</a> their opinion on CNN that Biden too should select alternate electors in Pennsylvania because Trump was leading in that state’s ballot count and the Democrats should contest the election. 
Speaking of ambiguity, exactly what crime Attorney General Mayes is investigating was unclear from the face of the subpoena I received: It provided no notice of the authority of the Attorney General to convene this particular grand jury, no notice of the topic being investigated or the laws allegedly broken, and yet it said that I was a target of the investigation and must testify.
Concern that Mayes is overstepping her authority for political gain is not mere speculation. Before her election in 2022, she campaigned on her certainty — before her investigation — that Arizona’s alternate electors committed a crime. Recently, Mayes <a href="https://dems.ag/democratic-ags-join-msnbc-panel-to-discuss-defending-abortion-rights/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">declared</a> that Democrat attorneys general such as herself “absolutely have to get President Biden re-elected.” With Arizona’s elections only a few months away, consider that Arizona’s investigation is somehow still ongoing nearly three and a half years after the events at issue, that other states and the federal government investigated and made their prosecutorial decisions long ago, and Mayes transparently told the press last year that, with regard to the investigation, “We’re going to make sure that we do it on <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/26/politics/mike-roman-trump-arizona/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">our timetable</a>.”
For these reasons, though I maintain my innocence of any crime, I invoked my 5th Amendment right not to be compelled to testify against myself. Longstanding tradition and practice in both state and federal proceedings provides that once an individual subpoenaed by a grand jury informs the prosecution that the individual intends to assert the Fifth Amendment privilege not to testify, the individual is not compelled to appear before a grand jury for the purpose of invoking the privilege. And yet, I and other Republican witnesses were paraded in front of the grand jury solely to invoke our rights. This has rightly provoked the <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/28/arizona-fake-electors-grand-jury-plead-fifth-00149605" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ridicule</a> of both prosecutors and defense counsel.
There is no substantive evidence in the act of invoking one’s Fifth Amendment rights. To force a witness to do so in front of the grand jury is an improper attempt to bias the grand jury and embarrass the witness. In some jurisdictions like the District of Columbia, a lawyer can be <a href="https://www.dcbar.org/getmedia/674ab822-7f43-4e47-a902-77e27d1d64d3/DC-Code-of-Professional-Responsibility-2021" target="_blank" rel="noopener">disciplined</a> for forcing a witness to appear only to invoke their Fifth Amendment right.
The damage Democrats like Kris Mayes are inflicting on the 5th Amendment, and especially their normalization of its violation for political gain, is shameful and an affront to our Constitution. Repairing this damage must be a priority for Republicans this election year.
* * *
Jake Hoffman is an Arizona state senator in Arizona&#8217;s 15th district. 
NOTE: DC Bar Ethics Opinion 31 is found on page 91 of the linked reference.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Phoenix Capitol

How Democrats In Arizona Are Damaging The Fifth Amendment

Arizona

Democrats

Fifth Amendment

January 6

Republicans

Hollywood star Neal McDonough opened up about his latest role in the apocalyptic movie “<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/studio-behind-sound-of-freedom-ready-to-release-new-apocalyptic-film-tv-series-homestead" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Homestead</a>,” harkening back to his faith as the studio finally drops the release date in theaters this year.
The 58-year-old actor has landed the role of Ian Ross, an affluent homesteader in the thriller from <a href="https://www.angel.com/movies/homestead" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Angel Studios</a>, the same studio responsible for the popular faith-based television series “The Chosen” and brought last year’s sleeper hit “Sound Of Freedom” to the big screen.
<h4>“Good Guy” Role In Apocalyptic Thriller </h4>
McDonough famously plays villains on the big and small screen, most notably in the hit Paramount+ series “Yellowstone.” But in this thriller he takes on the “good guy” role of Ross who’s <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/C5cJPBLLSjm/?igsh=MTBlZjE4YzMxOA%3D%3D&amp;img_index=2" target="_blank" rel="noopener">described</a> as a “homesteader living in the Rockies who believes he’s prepared for every eventuality — that is until he comes face-to-face with the moral dilemmas presented by civil unrest at his own doorstop.”
“When Ian is torn between his wife’s faith and the brutal realities of survival, every decision comes with gut-wrenching consequences,” the description added.
“To me, Ian is all of us,” McDonough said in a recent post shared on <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/C5cJPBLLSjm/?igsh=MTBlZjE4YzMxOA%3D%3D&amp;img_index=3" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Instagram</a> from the studio and actor. “Just a man trying to do right by his conscience-the commitments he’s made to his wife and family, to his God, and to his fellow man.”
“He doesn’t always get it right,” he added. “And really none of us do, but for the grace of God.”
During a recent appearance, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2ZvSsHEAu4" target="_blank" rel="noopener">McDonough</a> spoke briefly about his new movie and the role which is completely opposite of the parts he typically lands, noting this time he gets to play a “good guy.”
“It’s kind of Kevin Costner’s character from ‘Yellowstone’ but a much more family-friendly event,” the “Band of Brothers” star said. “It’s post-apocalyptic, what happens when the world falls apart. This guy I’m playing has lots of money and everyone wants into my homestead and my compound.”
“I hire these military guys and they’re saying no one can come in,” he added. “But my heart just breaks when I see these people and I start giving everything away.&#8221;
<h4>Hollywood And His Faith</h4>
The role seems to go along with the type of projects McDonough has said he wants to be a part of, noting in a recent <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/yellowstone-actor-neal-mcdonough-reflect-bonding-kevin-costner-devotion-faith" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Fox News</a> interview that after he went through “a hard few years” in Hollywood not finding work, he always believed God had a plan for him.
The <a href="http://www.catholicnewsworld.com/2019/01/wow-catholic-actor-neal-mcdonough-goes.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">devout Catholic</a>, who shares 5 kids with wife Ruve, said he was “blessed at a very young age to have a strong relationship with God. And it’s been paramount in my life as everyone kind of knows. Look, we all make mistakes. We’re all flawed, we’re all human. And that’s kind of what makes us beautiful at the same time.”
<div id="attachment_728239" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-728239" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-large wp-image-728239" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/04/GettyImages-1818073283-864x576.jpg" alt="LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - NOVEMBER 27: (L-R) Ruve McDonough and Neal McDonough attend the Los Angeles premiere of &quot;The Shift&quot; at AMC The Grove 14 on November 27, 2023 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Michael Tullberg/Getty Images)" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/04/GettyImages-1818073283-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/04/GettyImages-1818073283-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/04/GettyImages-1818073283-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/04/GettyImages-1818073283.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Michael Tullberg/Getty Images</div>
“And you know, especially in the films that Ruvé [Robertson] and I have been doing and … producing in the last couple of years, they talk about these things,” he added. “[They] talk about what it’s like to have your faith challenged or how you can overcome certain difficulties in life knowing that God has your back…”
And news about another one of his projects is reportedly expected to be announced soon, with Angel Studios telling The Daily Wire they are also working on another project with McDonough, though the details have yet to be released.
<h4>“Homestead” Movie And Release Date</h4>
Angel Studios first broke the news that it had completed production on “Homestead,” which is based on the best-selling book series, “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Black-Autumn-Post-Apocalyptic-Saga-READYMAN/dp/1948035170" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Black Autumn</a>,” earlier this year. And now the studio has released that the film will hit theaters on December 20th, with Angel Studios <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/C5mV5DKPIY5/?igsh=MTBlZjE4YzMxOA%3D%3D" target="_blank" rel="noopener">posting</a> that it will be out “just in time for Christmas.”
Showrunner Ben Kasica told The Daily Wire that their “goal was to create a gripping, realistic portrayal of survival that echoes the uncertainties present in today&#8217;s world. The ‘Homestead’ film and series has been a passion project for our team, aimed at sparking conversation about preparedness, community building, and resilient faith during challenging times.”
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Homestead | Official Teaser | Angel Studios" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Hf8PYgTk41A?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
The movie, which will later transition into a TV series, is <a href="https://invest.angel.com/homestead" target="_blank" rel="noopener">described</a> as “a post-apocalyptic family survival drama. A string of attacks and collapses drives troubled Green Beret Jeff Kirkham to take a job as head of security for a wealthy doomsday prepper, Ross. Ross has built an elaborate permaculture compound for friends and family.”
“As the fabric of America goes to pieces, a few dozen families scramble to ‘The Homestead’ in a last-ditch effort to survive,” it added. “They quickly discover that Ross’ elaborate plans will not protect them. Outside the gates, desperate neighbors, criminals, and opportunistic rivals look to The Homestead’s resources as a treasure trove. Inside, the community divides into factions: military versus civilian, compassionate versus practical, spiritual versus rational.” 
“Eventually, the gentle rhythms of the land permeate all, and a spirit of unity begins to overtake the community,” it continued. “As they cultivate the plants, animals, and the soil, and as they face looming destruction, their modern squabbles give way to ancient, forgotten truths.”

“The Warrant: Breaker’s Law” Photocall – 62nd Monte Carlo TV Festival

‘But For The Grace Of God’: Actor Neal McDonough On Playing A Good Guy In His New Apocalyptic Thriller ‘Homestead’

'But For The Grace Of God': Actor Neal McDonough On Playing A Good Guy In His New Apocalyptic Thriller 'Homestead'

actors

Angel Studios

Entertainment

Hollywood

Both on the campaign trail and in the White House, President Joe Biden has regaled the American public with ever more eyebrow-raising anecdotes of his apparently storied life. His latest one: cannibals may have been responsible for the disappearance of his uncle during World War II.
During a campaign visit to Scranton, Pennsylvania, last week to talk to local steelworkers, the president brought up his uncle, 2nd Lt. Ambrose Finnegan, affectionately known as &#8220;Uncle Bosie.&#8221; Finnegan was serving in the Pacific theater of World War II when he and several of his crewmates went missing on May 14, 1944, after their flight from Los Negros Island to Nadzab Airfield in New Guinea crashed.
“He got shot down in New Guinea and they never found the body because there used to be — there were a lot of cannibals, for real, in that part of New Guinea,” Biden <a href="https://nypost.com/2024/04/17/us-news/biden-suggests-uncle-eaten-by-cannibals-in-new-guinea-but-military-says-his-wwii-plane-lost-at-sea/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> during his speech. Biden had also repeated the story almost verbatim earlier that day during a visit to a WWII memorial in Scranton.
Of course, the Pentagon <a href="https://dpaa-mil.sites.crmforce.mil/dpaaProfile?id=a0Jt000001nzWi4EAE" target="_blank" rel="noopener">gives</a> a slightly different account of Finnegan&#8217;s disappearance, stating that &#8220;For unknown reasons, this plane was forced to ditch in the ocean off the north coast of New Guinea. Both engines failed at low altitude, and the aircraft’s nose hit the water hard.&#8221;
&#8220;Three men failed to emerge from the sinking wreck and were lost in the crash,&#8221; the report continues. &#8220;One crew member survived and was rescued by a passing barge. An aerial search the next day found no trace of the missing aircraft or the lost crew members.&#8221;
Like many of his other now-infamous tall tales <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/there-really-was-a-corn-pop--but-critics-cast-doubt-on-joe-bidens-oft-told-story/2019/09/16/227115c8-d8ac-11e9-ac63-3016711543fe_story.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">about</a> Corn Pop (he was a bad dude), getting <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/02/25/bidens-ridiculous-claim-he-was-arrested-trying-see-mandela/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">arrested</a> in South Africa while trying to see Nelson Mandela, and his <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/05/biden-jewish-greek-puerto-rican/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ever-changing</a> &#8220;honorary&#8221; membership in various ethnic groups, Biden&#8217;s suggestion that cannibals gobbled up his uncle may at first glance seem disrespectful, out-of-place, and even downright cockamamie.
But, out of all the other fables he&#8217;s told, this one actually may be the most plausible.
In fact, it wouldn&#8217;t be the first time a powerful American politician&#8217;s relative possibly ended up on the dinner menu of a New Guinean tribe.
Michael Rockefeller could have been anything he wanted. A scion of the extremely powerful Rockefeller family, he graduated cum laude from Harvard in 1960 with majors in history and economics.
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Michael&#8217;s father, Nelson Rockefeller, was a member of the extremely powerful Rockefeller family and one of the most influential Republican politicians of the mid-20th century. After getting his start during the Franklin Roosevelt administration, Nelson served as Undersecretary of Health, Education, and Welfare under President Dwight Eisenhower. He then served as governor of New York from 1959 to 1973, unsuccessfully ran for the GOP presidential nomination three times (in 1960, &#8217;64, and &#8217;68), and became vice president under Gerald Ford.
A whole wing of the Republican Party, the &#8220;Rockefeller Republicans,&#8221; was named after him. Rockefeller&#8217;s followers represented the more liberal faction of the party and held sway primarily in the Northeast during the 1950s and &#8217;60s. By the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, the Rockefeller Republicans had lost most of their influence within the party.
Michael became fascinated by primitive art after he was appointed at age 19 to the board of a new museum his father had just opened — the Museum of Primitive Art in New York City. Almost immediately after graduation from college, he <a href="https://peabody.harvard.edu/galleries/michael-rockefeller">joined</a> a Harvard-sponsored expedition to a remote part of New Guinea, during which he acted as a sound recordist for a documentary about the Dani tribe. He also made a foray into a remote part of southern New Guinea alongside an anthropologist <a href="https://nypost.com/2014/03/15/how-a-young-rockefeller-died-at-the-hands-of-cannibals/">to study</a> the Asmat people. The two visited over a dozen villages and collected hundreds of cultural items.
Upon his return from that expedition, Michael planned a new one to more thoroughly document the tribe&#8217;s culture and bring back even more pieces of their art for the museum.
At the time of Michael&#8217;s first expedition, the Asmat people of southwestern New Guinea had little contact with the outside world and survived without iron, paper, roads, and other technologies. They were also well-known headhunters, and cannibalism was practiced largely as a ritual to gain the power of fallen enemies. Ritual cannibalism was <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/09/06/482952588/when-people-ate-people-a-strange-disease-emerged">practiced</a> by several other remote New Guinean <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/sleeping-with-cannibals-128958913/">tribes</a> for centuries, perhaps millennia.
During the second expedition on November 18, 1961, Michael, Dutch anthropologist Rene Wassing, and two native guides <a href="https://uraf.harvard.edu/michael-c-rockefeller-memorial-fellowship">set out</a> on a makeshift raft to sail down the coast to collect more artifacts. Though Michael had previously used the craft to travel on the nearby river, it proved to be unseaworthy and the raft capsized a few miles offshore. The two natives decided to swim to shore to get help, and Michael and Wassing spent the night on the capsized raft.
Unbeknownst to them, the natives had successfully reached shore and alerted a nearby Dutch station. However, the search party dispatched by the Dutch failed to find the raft and turned back.
By morning, they had drifted very far from shore, around 10-12 miles according to most reports. Michael decided to try to make the swim to shore, despite the distance. He strapped empty gas cans to his back to keep himself afloat and set out. It was the last time Michael was seen alive. He was 23-years-old.
A Dutch patrol found Wassing still adrift later in the day on the 19th, but the only trace ever found of Michael after an extensive government search was a single gas can.
Rumors that Michael had reached shore and fallen prey to the Asmat headhunters began almost immediately. The Rockefeller family has always maintained the official cause of death: drowning.
American journalist Carl Hoffman published a book in 2014 about the disappearance, and he <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/What-Really-Happened-to-Michael-Rockefeller-180949813/">alleged</a> that Michael was indeed killed and eaten by cannibals. Hoffman reported that the Dutch colonial government at the time had attempted to crack down on headhunting and cannibalism in the region, resulting in the deaths of several natives. He theorized that Michael may have been killed in revenge. Hoffman also claimed that several natives had told him that a man matching Michael&#8217;s description had been killed and eaten, but no hard evidence has ever surfaced.
Of course, there are plenty of alternate explanations for Michael&#8217;s presumed death. He may have drowned during the long swim to shore, succumbed to heat exposure, or he may have been attacked by a shark or saltwater crocodile (known maneaters). He may have made it to shore but became lost or unable to reach help before succumbing to the elements. We&#8217;ll probably never know exactly what fate befell the young man, but it&#8217;s technically a possibility that he was killed or his dead body was cannibalized by natives.
Admittedly, it&#8217;s highly unlikely either Michael Rockefeller or &#8220;Uncle Bosie&#8221; ended up as a snack for some New Guinean tribesmen, but there&#8217;s enough of a kernel of plausibility to make it one of Biden&#8217;s more believable yarns.

Biden

Biden’s Claim That His Uncle Was Eaten By Cannibals Might Actually Be His Most Plausible Tall Tale Yet

Biden's Claim That His Uncle Was Eaten By Cannibals Might Actually Be His Most Plausible Tall Tale Yet

Joe Biden

New Guinea

Pacific Ocean

Pennsylvania

U.S.

After my film &#8220;<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/videos/what-is-a-woman" target="_blank" rel="noopener">What is a Woman?</a>&#8221; became one of the most-watched documentaries of all-time, there were a couple of different responses that Leftists could have had. The easiest response would have been to simply answer the question in the title. 
Trans activists, the media, and politicians had the opportunity to provide a coherent, non-circular definition for the word &#8220;woman&#8221; — and then they would have immediately won the argument. That&#8217;s all they had to do. But, of course, trans ideology can&#8217;t provide a coherent definition of the word &#8220;woman,&#8221; so they refused to do it when I interviewed several of them for the film. And they haven&#8217;t been able to do it in the nearly two years since.
Instead, as I&#8217;ve discussed before, the Left lied about the film. They accused me of &#8220;transphobia&#8221; for allowing trans activists to explain — or rather, fail to explain — what they believe. But they didn&#8217;t stop there. On top of all the lies, one of the most powerful technology platforms in the county embarked on an effort to prevent me from speaking about the film. This platform, called Eventbrite, also tried to shut down screenings of the documentary. They claimed any event screening the film, or discussing it, violated their &#8220;Hateful Events Policy.&#8221; 
If you&#8217;re not familiar with Eventbrite, it controls roughly 50% of the event management and registration market. They&#8217;re hard to avoid, even if you want to. And on at least seven occasions, they canceled events involving &#8220;<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/videos/what-is-a-woman" target="_blank" rel="noopener">What is a Woman?</a>&#8220;, often costing event organizers like YAF thousands of dollars.
At the time, it seemed like just another example of a Left-wing company silencing political dissent. Stop me if you&#8217;ve heard that one before.
But the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation decided to look deeper into what&#8217;s going on. Under the leadership of ranking member Ted Cruz (R-TX), the committee launched a congressional investigation into several instances in which online service providers canceled services for conservative organizations and speakers. The committee probed Eventbrite, and many other companies like it, to understand what was going on internally at these companies when they made these decisions to censor conservatives. And today, we can bring you the results of that investigation, exclusively.
Here&#8217;s the topline finding from their report, which outlines the Left&#8217;s strategy for attacking the freedom of speech and association: 
<blockquote>This investigation revealed that Online Service Providers are following a new playbook for silencing conservatives that leftist organizations — including the notoriously biased Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and Anti-Defamation League (ADL)—concocted: &#8216;removing infrastructure services&#8217; that conservative organizations &#8216;need to operate&#8217; by weaponizing their terms of service.</blockquote>
In other words, what Eventbrite did to &#8220;What is a Woman?&#8221; is part of a much larger effort to deplatform anyone who disagrees with the Left, particularly on the issue of transgenderism. This is their answer to me — as well as to Libs of TikTok, swimmer Riley Gaines, and nonprofits like the Independent Women&#8217;s Forum. They can&#8217;t debate us. They have to shut us down and prevent us from speaking.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1353-the-matt-walsh-show" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show</a></h4>
The committee&#8217;s investigation exposes this effort, in great detail, for the total fraud that it is. Publicly, companies like Eventbrite will claim that they&#8217;re combating &#8220;hate&#8221; and &#8220;disinformation&#8221; when they shut down events featuring my film, for example. But in reality, the committee found, no one at Eventbrite even watched &#8220;What is a Woman?&#8221; before they decided to ban all events themed around the film.
As the report states: 
<blockquote>Eventbrite admitted to the Committee that no one involved in the decision watched What Is a Woman? film before cancelling the events. Eventbrite could not even identify a single timestamp in the trailer that it deemed to violate the Eventbrite Community Guidelines. According to Eventbrite: &#8216;[t]he overall tone and message of the all-encompassing trailer, in combination with Matt Walsh’s related public statements, helped determine the removals—not any individual timestamp.&#8217;</blockquote>
To restate, because this really is incredible: A Big Tech platform banned events involving my film, saying these events violated their &#8220;hateful events policy,&#8221; without even watching the film.
According to the committee, Eventbrite has a “Trust and Safety Team” that consists of at least 12 full-time employees who review every single case. Eventbrite describes these employees as &#8220;experts.&#8221; Experts in what? What are their qualifications? That’s never explained. But they certainly aren’t experts in the film because none of these &#8220;experts&#8221; saw the film that they wanted to ban. Instead, they looked at non-specific parts of the trailer, and my public statements. 
So let&#8217;s review. Here&#8217;s the first 45 seconds or so of the trailer for &#8220;What is a Woman?&#8221;, which is probably more than Eventbrite&#8217;s experts watched:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="001 WIAW Trailer" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5FH0NaDVThw?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
That is the alleged &#8220;hateful content&#8221; that, apparently, Eventbrite finds disqualifying. No one can use Eventbrite to show the film or even discuss it. It&#8217;s not exactly convincing. So, maybe to cover their bases, Eventbrite told the committee that they banned my events for a few other reasons. Specifically, they said my public statements were hateful.
What public statements, exactly? Eventbrite provided three examples — all of them are from before the film was released. 
The first example is my appearance on a Dr. Phil episode entitled &#8220;The Gender Pronoun Debate,&#8221; from January 19, 2022. The whole episode runs for the better part of an hour, and again, there&#8217;s basically no chance that Eventbrite&#8217;s experts watched it. But here&#8217;s a representative part:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="002 Dr Phil What Is A Woman" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/v5it2lACi60?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
According to Eventbrite, the fact that I used the words &#8220;mental illness,&#8221; &#8220;charade,&#8221; and &#8220;theatrical production&#8221; to describe men who pretend to be women, and vice versa, is evidence that I&#8217;m a very hateful person, and I shouldn&#8217;t be allowed to host events.
Additionally, Eventbrite says that in a May 2021 episode of this show, I discussed gender surgeries being performed on children — including double mastectomies — as morally akin to rape and child molestation. Apparently, that&#8217;s hateful. If you have a problem with child butchery, then Eventbrite won&#8217;t allow you to have a platform. They’re right, by the way. It is hateful. I do hate this kind of abuse against children.
There was one other objection that Eventbrite made, concerning the children&#8217;s book I wrote called &#8220;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Johnny-Walrus-Matt-Walsh/dp/1956007059" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Johnny The Walrus</a>.&#8221; Of course, they didn&#8217;t actually read this book, anymore than they watched my film. I can’t blame them though. The book is probably above their reading level. But it was featured at the beginning of my appearance on the Dr. Phil show, which is how I assume they heard about it. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="003 Johnny The Walrus" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_0cGSzj-R7o?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
So the book, as you probably know, is about a little boy who pretends to be a walrus. People encourage him to start changing his appearance and getting surgery to transform into a walrus. And the book takes the position that this is a bad idea. It teaches that human children should recognize that they are human children, not walruses. But to Eventbrite, this is apparently a problem. They told the committee that it&#8217;s hate, so it’s bad.
The funny thing is that, as the committee&#8217;s investigation makes clear, Eventbrite doesn&#8217;t really know what their hateful conduct policy even says. Either that or they lied to the committee. 
As the report reads: 
<blockquote>On February 27—days before the March 1 event—Eventbrite removed the event’s page from its website and notified the organizer that it had done so because the event violated the Eventbrite Community Guidelines. Eventbrite told the Committee that it sends a standard notification when removing an event for violating its Hateful Events Policy. As reflected in the figure below, however, in the version Eventbrite sent to the organizers of the Stanford event, Eventbrite directly stated that the problem with the Matt Walsh event was that it &#8216;expresse[d] views&#8217; that violated the Eventbrite Terms of Service.</blockquote>
In other words, Eventbrite&#8217;s standard &#8220;Hateful Events Policy&#8221; doesn&#8217;t say anything about prohibiting certain views. They wrote up a custom notification just for one of my events, and then apparently forgot about it. This kind of ad hoc reasoning is extremely common on the Left and particularly among online service providers. It&#8217;s yet another symptom of an ideology without any real principles.
As I alluded to earlier, of course, this isn&#8217;t just affecting me. The committee outlines numerous other instances of online platforms shutting down events for conservatives, including a November 2023 event featuring the swimmer Riley Gaines at UC Davis. 
The school&#8217;s College Republicans worked with Eventbrite to set up a registration page so that students could sign up and attend for free. But in late November, Eventbrite canceled the whole thing. They notified the organizers that events cannot espouse hatred or harass anyone based on a series of characteristics, including sexual orientation, national origin, immigration status, gender identity, religion, ethnicity, or disability. Notably, Eventbrite doesn&#8217;t prohibit hatred based on &#8220;sex discrimination,&#8221; so it&#8217;s okay to deride women and pretend they don&#8217;t exist. Trans activists are free to do that all they want.
But Riley Gaines was shut down — not because of anything on her event page, but because she previously made social media posts affirming that biology is real. One of the posts cited by Eventbrite is an October 10, 2023, post from Gaines, in which she says:
<blockquote>Women are not menstruators, bleeders, chestfeeders, cervix-havers, uterus-owners, egg-producers, or people with birthing capacity. Women are just women. Adult human females.</blockquote>
According to Eventbrite, which apparently makes up its standards as it goes, that&#8217;s hateful conduct.
Along those lines, the committee investigated the communications platform Slack for canceling the workspace of Libs of TikTok. Slack informed the committee: 
<blockquote>[w]hat makes [Libs of TikTok] problematic is that Libs of TikTok has a specific audience, and they are taking this information and posting it to that specific audience so that everyone in that audience sees it at the same time.</blockquote>
Now, I&#8217;ve read that explanation about five times, and it still doesn&#8217;t make any sense. But as best I can tell, they&#8217;re admitting that nothing Libs of TikTok said was objectionable. And really, it couldn&#8217;t be; she&#8217;s just reposting deranged content from Leftists. So instead of making any factual argument, Slack apparently complains that a lot of people are seeing the factual information provided by Libs of TikTok, and they&#8217;re becoming hateful as a result. Somehow this alleged audience reaction makes Libs of TikTok&#8217;s conduct a violation of Slack&#8217;s policies against &#8220;inciting hatred.&#8221;
She didn&#8217;t direct anyone to engage in any hateful conduct. She simply posted the truth about what&#8217;s happening. And that&#8217;s not allowed anymore.
This is a standard that obviously, if the Left were to employ against itself, would result in the immediate deplatforming of the Washington Post, pretty much every trans activist who&#8217;s ever used social media, the entirety of CNN and MSNBC and the rest of the legacy media. But it&#8217;s not a real standard and it&#8217;s not meant to be administered fairly. Instead, as the committee notes, this standard was essentially invented by the ADL, the SPLC, and other well-funded Left-wing activist groups. 
<blockquote>Although Slack did not specifically point to them with regard to its Libs of TikTok investigation, notably, the left-wing SPLC has described Libs of TikTok as an &#8216;extremist&#8217; account and ADL labeled Libs of TikTok/Chaya Raichik as an &#8216;extremist&#8217; in its &#8216;Glossary of Extremism.&#8217;</blockquote>
The same designation applies to me. Quoting again from the report: 
<blockquote>Eventbrite did not say that it relied on ADL in deciding to cancel the What Is a Woman? events, but notably ADL—which Eventbrite’s Trust and Safety Team generally relies on as a source—has labeled Matt Walsh as an &#8216;extremist commentator.&#8217;</blockquote>
This is the strategy that&#8217;s been unearthed by this congressional committee. Motivated in part by guidance from Left-wing activist groups, large online tech platforms are doing everything they can to make sure conservatives can&#8217;t communicate or stay in business. There are several other examples. For instance, the report says that the Independent Women&#8217;s Forum, or IWF, was kicked off the fundraising platform Bonterra for defending women’s rights. Bonterra categorized IWF as some sort of &#8220;anti-LGBT&#8221; outfit, whatever that means, all because they believe biology is real. Therefore, they&#8217;re not allowed to raise money, I guess.
In its report, the committee suggests that this situation could be resolved by legislation — or at least, addressed in some way by legislation. But the ideal resolution, as the committee suggests in its conclusion, is for new online service providers to flood the market and offer an alternative. That is the only response to this insanity that&#8217;s sustainable — and it&#8217;s a very workable solution.
Because of this committee&#8217;s investigation, we know that the companies censoring conservatives are really staffed with complete, bumbling morons who have no idea what they&#8217;re doing. That means they&#8217;re powerful, yes, but they&#8217;re also vulnerable. Now it&#8217;s time to replace them before they silence us.

Insider Investigation Reveals The Absurd Details Behind Eventbrite’s Decision To Ban Me From Its Platform

Insider Investigation Reveals The Absurd Details Behind Eventbrite's Decision To Ban Me From Its Platform

Big Tech

Opinion

Riley Gaines

Social Media Censorship

What Is A Woman

Much to the annoyance of the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA), <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/california-school-teacher-with-no-interest-in-defunding-the-police-takes-stand-for-first-amendment-rights" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Glenn Laird</a> refuses to go away quietly.
After decades as a Los Angeles teacher, Laird is involved in a messy <a href="https://www.freedomfoundation.com/labor/la-teacher-sues-utla-says-demand-to-defund-police-was-the-last-straw/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lawsuit</a> with the union over its reluctance to allow him to opt out of membership and dues as prescribed by law. Last week, the case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. 
What makes his experience so compelling for the public — and embarrassing for UTLA — is that Laird is neither a malcontent nor a union-basher by inclination. He is, in fact, a much-decorated educator who served for many years as UTLA campus chapter co-chair.
But when the union began advocating several years ago to “defund the police” and put students’ and teachers’ lives at risk, he’d had enough.
Over the years, Laird has witnessed countless violent acts on campus, including the death of a former student, and was outraged that UTLA would call for the removal of law enforcement from the district’s schools.
“I couldn’t in good conscience continue to pay dues to an organization that was campaigning against something that is so personal to me,” explained Laird. “I support fully funding the police to keep our students safe.”
He responded by opting out of his UTLA membership and requesting it stop taking his money to fund messaging with which he disagrees.
His legal right to do so is unequivocal. In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed in Janus v. AFSCME that unions could no longer take public employees’ money for use in political speech without their consent.
The ruling also specified that by agreeing to give money to a public labor union, workers are waiving their First Amendment right against compelled speech.
In the case of Glenn Laird, UTLA tried to have it both ways.
They told Laird his previous agreement was an effective waiver of his First Amendment rights, even though he signed it before Janus was even decided.
Even more to the point, the union refused to honor the terms of Laird’s actual agreement, which allowed him to end the deduction of his money. He specifically objected to the last union agreement he signed with UTLA by striking out the language supposedly restricting his ability to end his membership at any time with a felt marker.
UTLA kept taking his money without his consent anyway.
In other words, the First Amendment did not matter.
Left with no alternative, Laird took UTLA and the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) to federal court. Represented pro bono by the Freedom Foundation, he asked the court to rule on the scope of his constitutional rights, and to acknowledge UTLA’s violations.
But UTLA doesn’t want a judge to decide the constitutional claims.
Instead, its leaders cut him a check for the money deducted from his pay without his consent and asked him to please drop the case.
This tactic has become all too common among public unions trying to avoid their responsibilities under the First Amendment.
Laird refused to dismiss his lawsuit, and with good reason. Because his case is about more than the return of his money. In fact, Laird is donating the entire amount he received from UTLA to a nonprofit group that helps disadvantaged students in the Los Angeles area.
When judges at both the lower court level and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the union, the Freedom Foundation filed a request with the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in.
Glenn Laird’s case is about a judicial acknowledgment and vindication of his First Amendment rights by a federal judge. As long as unions can cut checks using their members’ dues dollars to make lawsuits disappear, judges will never have the opportunity to rule on the actual constitutional issues, rendering the First Amendment and Janus decision meaningless.
“Hopefully the Supreme Court will find my case worthy of making a ruling,” concluded Laird. “Janus set the stage, but now we need to build on that precedent so unions and lower court judges don’t continue to ignore the Supremes.”
While it should not take a federal lawsuit for unions to recognize their responsibilities under the Constitution, UTLA doesn’t get to put a price tag on the First Amendment and cannot kill a case by simply doing the right thing after the fact.
For one principled Los Angeles teacher, the fight is far from over.
* * *
Timothy R. Snowball is a civil rights attorney with Freedom Foundation, where his practice is focused on protecting the First Amendment rights of government workers to make their own decisions about whether to join or support public sector unions.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Supreme Court and Cherry Blossoms

L.A. Teacher’s Fight With Union Appealed To Supreme Court

L.A. Teacher's Fight With Union Appealed To Supreme Court

Defund The Police

Education

Los Angeles

Police

Supreme Court

Teachers Unions

There is a cadre of students at Columbia University who decided to occupy the center of the campus and harass Jewish students.
They yelled “Stop killing children” and “Go back to Poland” as the Jewish students were simply trying to get from campus back to their dorm rooms. They chanted for Hamas to hit Tel Aviv. They tried to form a human chain to keep Jewish students out. One anti-Semitic student decided to stand right in front of several pro-Israel protesters suggesting they be killed with rockets.
The Columbia University Orthodox rabbi <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/beltway-confidential/2974295/at-columbia-jews-must-not-hide-apologize/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">issued a message</a> to all the Jewish students strongly recommending they return home as soon as possible and remain home “until the reality in and around the campus is dramatically improved. It is not our job as Jews to ensure our own safety on campus. No one should have to endure this level of hatred, let alone at school.”
These protests are designed to harass and intimidate students in violation of all codes of ethics and conduct at the private university.
Over at Yale, similar levels of anti-Semitic activity occurred. Additionally, Yale students were cheering as the American flag came down.
At Northwestern University, the dean of students attended an anti-Israel protest targeting Hillel, the nonpartisan Jewish Student Community Center. Protest organizers were demanding the university end its relationship with Hillel, which is just a Jewish community organization existing on campus.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1952-congress-passes-massive-aid-package-for-ukraine-israel-taiwan-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a> </h4>
The revolutionary class is generally not a bunch of impoverished people who simply are trying to work a job and feed their families. Typically, it&#8217;s upper crust elites who have nothing better to do with their time and no sense of purpose so they decide to join in.
Now, the White House has put out a statement on anti-Semitism at Columbia. Andrew Bates commented on the situation, <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/4610110-white-house-condemns-blatantly-antisemitic-protests-amid-ongoing-unrest-at-columbia/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">saying</a>, “While every American has the right to peaceful protest, calls for violence and physical intimidation, targeting Jewish students and the Jewish community are blatantly AntiSemitic, unconscionable, and dangerous — they have absolutely no place on any college campus, or anywhere in the United States of America. And echoing the rhetoric of terrorist organizations, especially in the wake of the worst massacre committed against the Jewish people since the Holocaust, is despicable. We condemn these statements in the strongest terms.”
Perhaps Biden’s administration should stop trying to please Hamas spokespeople in the United States.
The most amusing tweet came courtesy of Marc Caputo, who&#8217;s a national political reporter for The Bulwark. He <a href="https://twitter.com/MarcACaputo/status/1782083324208611611" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote</a>, “With its top journalism school and journalism review, Columbia holds an esteemed place in media. So how did @CJR, Columbia profs &amp; the reporters it produces miss the formation of so much anti-Israel or ant-Semitic bias fostered at &amp; around the school? How did NY media miss it?”
How did the New York media miss it? The answer: They didn&#8217;t miss it. They fostered it. For years, the New York Times has refused to cover attacks on Jews in New York City so long as those attacks were being committed by minority criminals. Intersectionality is a hell of a drug, and this entire world view has promoted anti-Semitism, particularly at elite institutions.
Open anti-Semitism has been on the rise for legitimately decades on campus. It was rife on campus when I was there 20 years ago. It&#8217;s particularly rife from the radical Muslim community, and it&#8217;s been fostered by a Left-wing college administration across campuses for two generations that believes in the intersectional hierarchy of victimhood, in which Muslims outrank Jews.
<h4><a href="https://onelink.to/dwapp" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILY WIRE APP</a></h4>
Leftists have a cheap and easy way of signaling their anti-Westernism and anti-Americanism without actually having to say they&#8217;re anti-Western and anti-American. They just put it all on Israel. All the reasons they use to hate Israel are reasons that also apply to the United States. They understand there might be consequences if they talk about how America is an evil colonial power and how American soldiers are human rights violators. So instead, they say it about Israel because it’s a cheap and easy way to virtue signal.
This then transmutes into anti-Semitism because the conspiracy theory by the far-Left has always been that there is a cadre of powerful people who have all the systems to their benefit. Jews are a minority group that is disproportionately successful in American society, and since the leftists believe the system must be rigged by those who are successful, anti-Semitism rises.
What&#8217;s even worse is that on college campuses, this went from a generalized worldview to an article of faith.
A lot of people were puzzled why after October 7, the worst atrocity against Jews since the Holocaust, all of this anti-Semitism sprang up. Normally, you would expect to see the reverse after a giant atrocity by an open, evil terrorist group against Jews of all sorts, including predominantly Left-wing Jews living in the Gaza envelope. Why did you see this massive outpouring of support for Hamas? 
The answer is that it&#8217;s an article of faith for members of the Left, proverbial skin in the game, to show fealty to the intersectional ideal by suggesting that even the worst human beings on planet Earth, like Hamas, are actually just victims of some sort of intersectional hierarchy. The more you pay fealty to the worst people in the world, the more you have shown your fealty to the cause.
And that&#8217;s how you end up with people who are doing the vicious work at Columbia University.
The most highly-educated people on planet Earth often have the least amount of wisdom.
And there&#8217;s nothing new about that because smart people can talk themselves into — and out of — virtually anything.

Pro-Palestinian Protests Continue At Columbia University

Anti-Semitic Left Strikes At Columbia University

Anti-Semitism

New York City

Palestine

Protests

Yale University

Here&#8217;s a statistic that, if you have a job in corporate America, may be the single least surprising piece of information you&#8217;ll hear all year.
It turns out that every single one of the Fortune 100 companies — 100% of them — has made a public <a href="https://www.hrdive.com/news/2022-fortune-companies-dei/627651/">commitment</a> to DEI on their website. There isn&#8217;t a single outlier in the top 100 companies in this country. Chris Rufo looked into this, and he found that they all have a stock DEI page. Whether you go to Amazon or Target or Dell or Verizon or Home Depot, or banks or insurance companies or anywhere else, you&#8217;ll find the same platitudes — boilerplate about the importance of the alphabet people, parental leave for birthing folks, outreach to historically black colleges, and so on.
This total uniformity took hold relatively quickly, within just the last few years. Publicly, the explanation for this change is that all of these companies are suddenly very concerned about racial justice. They&#8217;re upset about George Floyd and so on. But privately, there&#8217;s another very clear reason for it. The leadership of all of these companies understand very well that if they stop practicing DEI — if they, say, start hiring all of their employees based on merit instead of skin color — then the federal government will try to destroy them.
This is a dynamic that normally plays out behind the scenes, away from public scrutiny. But this week, in one very dramatic case, it spilled out into the open. The convenience store chain Sheetz, which has more than 700 locations all over the country, was just sued by the Biden administration after they rejected the federal government&#8217;s attempt to shake them down with a settlement. What was Sheetz&#8217;s crime, you ask? Did they sell bad gasoline? Poisoned hot dogs? Did their name violate communications decency laws?
According to the Biden administration, Sheetz broke the law by refusing to hire applicants who failed a criminal background check. Apparently, the Biden administration believes this is a racist policy because many of the people who fail these background checks are nonwhite. And to be clear, that&#8217;s the entire accusation. The Biden administration is not claiming that Sheetz intentionally discriminated against anyone on the basis of race, or any other legally protected characteristic. They&#8217;re not claiming that Sheetz used these background checks as part of a racist white supremacist scheme.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1352-biden-administration-declares-that-criminal-background-checks-are-racist-against-black-people-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show</a></h4>
Instead, the Biden administration is using a theory of discrimination known as &#8220;disparate impact,&#8221; which was enshrined into civil rights law many years ago. Under this theory, a lack of discriminatory intent doesn&#8217;t matter. All the government has to show is that a policy disproportionately affects members of certain racial groups, without a clear business purpose, in a manner that could reasonably be avoided.
In a moment, I&#8217;ll get into the lawsuit, and I&#8217;ll explain why it&#8217;s a complete farce, even if you buy into the whole &#8220;disparate impact&#8221; theory.
First, however, I want to contrast two local news reports about what&#8217;s happening to Sheetz. The first one is from WCNC in Charlotte, North Carolina, and the second one is from CBS 17 in Durham. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="001 Sheetz Lawsuit" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/OMATs4CZbSg?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
You&#8217;ll notice that the CBS News report doesn&#8217;t even mention what Sheetz is accused of doing, really. They don&#8217;t talk about the background checks at all. They just lead you to believe that Sheetz is accused of discriminating against &#8220;black, Native American and multiracial&#8221; people, with no context whatsoever.
So maybe you&#8217;re starting to see how the shakedown works. The federal government shows up to a major corporation. They accuse them of racism based on no evidence whatsoever. And then they demand millions of dollars, including back pay for a bunch of employees. And if the company doesn&#8217;t comply, then the administration sues them, and the media basically accuses the company of racism. This is why many companies choose to head off the whole problem in the first place, by openly discriminating against white people. If you do that, then the Biden administration won&#8217;t touch you.
Let&#8217;s get into the specifics of the case because that&#8217;s the only way to truly understand how insane this is.
Within the last few months, a couple of job applicants at Sheetz filed complaints with the E.E.O.C., saying they&#8217;ve been discriminated against under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. And the E.E.O.C., which is a federal agency, agreed with them. Here&#8217;s what the Biden administration wrote in their lawsuit:
<blockquote>[Sheetz] committed a continuing, companywide practice in violation of Title VII with respect to a class of Black, American Indian/Alaska Native, and multiracial job applicants who did not pass [Sheetz&#8217;s] criminal justice history screening by failing to hire them for all positions because of race. &#8230; For instance, Black job applicants have failed Defendants’ criminal justice history screening, and consequently are denied employment, at a rate exceeding approximately 14.5%, while White job applicants have failed Defendants’ criminal justice history screening, and consequently are denied employment, at a rate of under approximately 8%.</blockquote>
The complaint notes that the number of Indians and multiracial applicants who are denied on this basis is roughly the same.
A few points here. First, given what we know about black crime rates, these numbers are actually a lot closer than you&#8217;d expect. Nationally, according to FBI data, black people <a href="https://oll.libertyfund.org/publications/liberty-matters/2024-02-13-systemic-racism-in-crime-do-blacks-commit-more-crimes-than-whites" target="_blank" rel="noopener">make up</a> more than 26% of total arrests, and the imprisonment rate for black Americans is over five times the rate for whites. But the Sheetz data only shows a disparity of around 7%. And according to the EEOC, Sheetz is looking at both convictions as well as arrests when it runs its background checks.
More importantly, notice what&#8217;s being conflated here. The complaint states that Sheetz is failing to hire these applicants &#8220;because of race.&#8221; But what they&#8217;re really saying is that Sheetz isn&#8217;t hiring applicants who failed a criminal background check. Any reasonable person can see that those are two very different rationales. And indeed, on its website, the E.E.O.C. makes this distinction clear. <a href="https://www.eeoc.gov/newsroom/eeoc-sues-sheetz-inc-racially-discriminatory-hiring-practice" target="_blank" rel="noopener">They state:</a>
<blockquote>The lawsuit does not allege that Sheetz was motivated by race when making hiring decisions.</blockquote>
This is the sort of madness that the legal theory of &#8220;disparate impact&#8221; breeds. The Left knows that it can&#8217;t find any examples of actual direct discrimination against black people in this country anymore — and certainly not at Sheetz. So instead, the Left has invented this notion of disparate impact to create discrimination where it doesn&#8217;t really exist. The problem is that literally everything — every policy, every rule, every standard, in every context — will have a &#8220;disparate impact.&#8221; The impact felt by any individual or group will vary according to their situation. If we cannot have standards that create a disparate impact, then we cannot have any standards at all. Which of course is the point.
<h4><a href="https://onelink.to/dwapp" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILY WIRE APP</a></h4>
Supposedly, there are limits to this legal theory of &#8220;disparate impact.&#8221; The DOJ lists these <a href="https://www.justice.gov/crt/fcs/T6Manual7#C" target="_blank" rel="noopener">exceptions</a> on its website. For example, it&#8217;s acceptable to have a policy that yields a &#8220;disparate impact&#8221; — if the policy is &#8220;important&#8221; and justified by the organization&#8217;s mission. This is an exception that clearly applies to this situation. There is a blindingly obvious reason why a convenience store wouldn&#8217;t want to hire criminals: They don&#8217;t want to get robbed. This is a point that should not need any elaboration whatsoever in a sane society.
But we don&#8217;t live in a sane society anymore, so I will elaborate. Also, it&#8217;s an excuse to show one of the best videos to come out of Georgia this year. This is footage of a robbery at a convenience store that may be the single worst inside job ever recorded on camera. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="002 Gas Station Clerk Robbed" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/lUUAZx374-c?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
&#8220;It&#8217;s unclear if the robber&#8217;s fist actually connected to Patel&#8217;s face.&#8221; That&#8217;s the polite way of putting it. It takes the cops a little while but they eventually blew the whole scheme wide open — mainly because the accomplice was hanging out right outside the store when they arrived, and cash started falling out of his pocket when they questioned him.
In any event, the point is that if this clerk applies to Sheetz, they should be able to reject him because of his criminal history. His ethnicity does not matter. The fact he&#8217;s a criminal matters. Convenience stores get robbed all the time — including by their own employees. It&#8217;s clearly &#8220;important&#8221; to the business of a convenience store to root out criminals.
I read the entire complaint from the Biden administration, and I couldn&#8217;t find a single argument to the contrary. Instead, they fault Sheetz for failing to contact applicants to request additional information after they fail their criminal background checks. The Biden administration doesn&#8217;t say what &#8220;additional information&#8221; might be relevant, but they say that Sheetz is racist because they don&#8217;t request it. Additionally, the Biden administration faults Sheetz for failing to name the &#8220;specific condition&#8221; that&#8217;s the basis for their decision, when applicants have multiple criminal convictions. And apparently, Sheetz doesn&#8217;t have a whole committee making these decisions, nor is there a &#8220;procedure&#8221; for appeals.
None of this is remotely relevant to racism, nor does it disprove the obvious fact that hiring criminals is a bad idea for a convenience store. So it doesn&#8217;t really address the relevant legal issues in any way.
You get the sense that Sheetz was stunned by the Biden administration&#8217;s claims to the contrary. The federal government&#8217;s complaint goes on to state that:
<blockquote>The Commission engaged in communications with Defendants to provide Defendants an opportunity to remedy the discriminatory practices. &#8230; [but] the Commission was unable to secure from Defendants a conciliation agreement acceptable to the Commission.</blockquote>
In other words, Sheetz didn&#8217;t back down in the face of this blackmail. So now they have a massive lawsuit to deal with, along with defamatory media coverage. 
Obviously, this is one of the more egregious examples you&#8217;ll ever see of the soft bigotry of low expectations — or the soft bigotry of no expectations, in this case. If I were black, I would be highly insulted by the idea that a criminal background check presents some kind of insurmountable hurdle for me specifically. It&#8217;s a lot like saying black people can&#8217;t possibly obtain voter identification, which is another common claim you&#8217;ll hear from the Biden administration. What the Left is effectively saying is that there&#8217;s simply no chance for black, Indian, or &#8220;multiracial&#8221; job applicants to stop committing a disproportionate amount of crimes. 
So, instead of doing anything to get them to commit less crime, we have to pretend that business owners are the real criminals. If they refuse to hire nonwhite applicants for any reason, they&#8217;ll get a lawsuit. But of course, they can continue to discriminate against whites all they want.
Sheetz seems to understand that. And there are already signs they&#8217;re going to cave. In response to this lawsuit, Sheetz issued a statement <a href="https://csnews.com/sheetz-reaffirms-commitment-di-following-eeoc-lawsuit" target="_blank" rel="noopener">saying:</a> 
<blockquote>Diversity and inclusion are essential parts of who we are &#8230; We take these allegations seriously. We have attempted to work with the EEOC for nearly eight years to find common ground and resolve this dispute.</blockquote>
It&#8217;s not exactly a full-throated defense of their position, which is obviously the correct one. And as their statement notes, this has been going on for a long time — eight years in fact. So there&#8217;s some history here. I looked into it, and it turns out that this isn&#8217;t the first time the EEOC has filed a lawsuit like this. Back in 2019, the EEOC under the Trump administration <a href="https://www.eeoc.gov/newsroom/dollar-general-pay-6-million-settle-eeoc-class-race-discrimination-suit" target="_blank" rel="noopener">sued</a> Dollar General for:
<blockquote>…denying employment to African Americans at a significantly higher rate than white applicants for failing the company&#8217;s broad criminal background check.</blockquote>
What was the result? A $6 million settlement and a three-year consent decree.
According to a top EEOC attorney at the time,
<blockquote>This case is important because Dollar General is not just providing relief for a past practice but for the future as well. &#8230; If the company plans to use criminal history, it must retain a criminologist to develop a fair process. Unlike other background checks based on unproven myths and biases about people with criminal backgrounds, Dollar General&#8217;s new approach will be informed by experts with knowledge of actual risk.</blockquote>
It&#8217;s hard to believe it&#8217;s a real quote. They&#8217;re saying it&#8217;s an &#8220;unproven myth and bias&#8221; to believe that someone with a previous history of criminal behavior is more likely to commit other crimes in the future. You don&#8217;t need any statistics to know how absurd that is. You just need common sense. But here are the statistics anyway. According to the DOJ&#8217;s <a href="https://cops.usdoj.gov/html/dispatch/04-2022/reintegration_resources.html#:~:text=State%20prisoner%20recidivism%20rates%20average,Durose%2C%20and%20Markman%202018)." target="_blank" rel="noopener">own numbers:</a>
<blockquote>&#8230; at least half of citizens released from incarceration will recidivate in some way following release. </blockquote>
And according to other <a href="https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/repeatarrests.html#:~:text=Our%20analysis%20finds%20that%2027,to%20jail%20within%20a%20year." target="_blank" rel="noopener">estimates</a>, including a survey from Prison Policy, roughly a third of people who are arrested report that they&#8217;re re-arrested for another offense within a year. There are about a million other data points you can find. But suffice it to say, it&#8217;s not a &#8220;myth&#8221; that criminals are more likely to reoffend. It&#8217;s an extremely basic and obvious fact. And yet the EEOC pretended it&#8217;s not real. Now Dollar General needs an &#8220;expert&#8221; to tell them they&#8217;re being racist if they reject a black guy with five prior convictions.
How did that go completely unnoticed at the time? Why didn&#8217;t the Trump White House override what the EEOC was doing and fire everyone involved? Who knows. The most likely answer is that the White House wasn&#8217;t aware of it. And if that&#8217;s the case, it&#8217;s hard to think of a better argument that the federal government needs to be cut in half immediately, for starters, and most of these unelected bureaucrats need to find new jobs. They have gone rogue and they&#8217;re implementing policies that defy all logic, and they should be fired en masse.
That should be the first executive order if, in fact, there is a second Trump administration. With the Sheetz case, the Biden administration is trying to shake down yet another company in order to erase the distinction between criminals and noncriminals. This is economic sabotage. And it simply can’t be allowed to succeed.

“now hiring” sign posted on business door

Biden Administration Declares That Criminal Background Checks Are Racist Against Black People

Biden Administration

Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI)

EEOC

Over the past several days, we have witnessed Columbia University, one of the oldest institutions of higher education in America, transform into a hellscape of virulent anti-Semitism masked under the thinly veiled guise of anti-Israel protests. 
The quad where I so fondly remember spending my days as an undergraduate is now home to a university-sanctioned encampment of hate, sequestering Columbia’s Jewish community into their dorm rooms — and even leaving campus entirely — in fear of their physical safety. New York Mayor Eric Adams’ <a href="https://twitter.com/NYCMayor/status/1782169502118969434">offers</a> to activate the NYPD to dispel the pro-Palestinian mob have fallen on deaf ears with university administrators, including President Minouche Shafik. Unfortunately, this unfolding chaos is just a new chapter of anti-Semitism that has long been embedded in the culture at Columbia and other elite universities nationwide.
As an American Jew, I was proud to serve as president of Columbia’s largest pro-Israel group, then known as LionPAC, during my junior year in 2010-2011. My tenure involved routinely responding to a variety of protests against the Jewish state. Mock “apartheid walls” and cardboard cutouts of Israeli tanks were erected on Low Steps. Holocaust deniers, hosted by Students for Justice in Palestine, spoke freely under the infinite confines of “academic freedom”. And students simply trying to walk to class were subjected to “die ins” on College Walk, where anti-Israel activists donning fake IDF uniforms and machine guns would pretend to slaughter Palestinians, who would lay lifeless on the ground for minutes on end. These charades were no surprise at a university that hosted one of the world’s most prolific Holocaust deniers, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and tenured Professor Joseph Massad, who <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/just-another-battle-or-palestinian-war-liberation/38661">called</a> Hamas’ October 7th slaughter of innocent Israeli Jews a “stunning” and “astonishing” display of “Palestinian resistance”.
In other words, today’s protests are a natural manifestation of Columbia’s seemingly limitless tolerance for anti-Semitism. There is ample room for reasonable debate about the war between Hamas and Israel and the Israeli government’s policies vis-à-vis Palestinians. That is not the goal of these demonstrations. Jewish students are being verbally assaulted with calls to “go back to Europe,” and rather than clearing the encampment, Columbia has instead cancelled in person classes to the detriment of all students.
In my experience, Columbia’s pro-Israel faculty have always eschewed public activism out of fear of professional exile or termination. Columbia Business School assistant professor Shai Davidai, who has been heroically outspoken about the horrific conditions on campus and the administration’s abject failure to protect students, on Monday was <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/pro-israel-professor-denied-entry-at-columbia-university" target="_blank" rel="noopener">denied entry</a> to campus. Meanwhile, anti-Israel professors are allowed to freely celebrate terrorism and promulgate genocide with little to no repercussions.
At best, Columbia’s feckless administration is demonstrating a shocking inability to distinguish between free speech and hate speech. At worst, they are complicit in an egregious, coordinated effort to harass and bully Jewish students to flee campus altogether — a tactic employed from time immemorial against the Jewish people.
President Shafik’s young tenure at the helm of Columbia will be defined by what she does next. She can either continue to protect those espousing unfettered anti-Semitism, imperiling the safety of its students and their ability to attend classes. Or she can use this moment to send a message that those who call for genocide against the Jewish people will not enjoy safe harbor at Columbia.
This week, Jews around the globe will come together to celebrate Passover by retelling the story of the ancient Israelites’ enslavement and exile in Egypt. Now is the moment to prove that the suffering of our ancestors was not endured in vain. The Jewish people must remain steadfast and resolute against those who seek our destruction.
I commend the bravery of Professor Davidai and those Jewish students on campus who refuse to be intimidated by these hateful masses. The answer is not to retreat, but no student should ever be forced to choose between their physical safety and attending classes. President Shafik must allow the NYPD to disperse these mobs, arrest those who refuse to leave, and restore order to an institution that once stood as a hallmark of America’s promise.
 * * *
Michael Shapiro, Columbia University Class of 2012, is a former communications advisor and speechwriter for House Speaker Paul D. Ryan.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

I Used To Run Columbia’s Pro-Israel Group. This Anti-Semitism Is Nothing New.

Gaza

Hostages

Ivy League

For those who don&#8217;t spend their Sunday mornings glued to the television — and their Sunday afternoons attempting to dig through a week&#8217;s worth of network and cable news media spin — The Daily Wire has compiled a short summary of what you may have missed.
This Sunday, all eyes were on House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) — and despite some rumblings from a few House Republicans threatening to take his gavel via the same Motion to Vacate that ousted former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) — members of both parties (surprise!) came to his defense.
Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) sang Johnson&#8217;s praises on ABC&#8217;s &#8220;This Week,&#8221; saying that his efforts to shepherd an aid bill — for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan — through the House over the objections of some within his own party had displayed a &#8220;profile in courage.&#8221;
&#8220;I am so proud of the Speaker, Mike Johnson,&#8221; McCaul told ABC host Jonathan Karl. &#8220;He went through a transformation &#8230; putting the nation above yourself.&#8221;
Johnson, when asked about attempts to oust him from the speakership, said that his intention was simply to do his job, not to walk around the Capitol fretting about whether or not someone would put forth a Motion to Vacate.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
House Speaker Mike Johnson displayed a “profile in courage” by pushing through $95 billion in aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan despite opposition from some members of his own party, GOP Rep. Michael McCaul says. 
“He went through a transformation.” <a href="https://t.co/EtsIH1fSpA">https://t.co/EtsIH1fSpA</a> <a href="https://t.co/MHqjFrv9ut">pic.twitter.com/MHqjFrv9ut</a>
&mdash; This Week (@ThisWeekABC) <a href="https://twitter.com/ThisWeekABC/status/1782039779476992405?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 21, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The Foreign Affairs Committee Chair went on to say that he believed Johnson had done &#8220;the right thing&#8221; in supporting the aid package, arguing that the United States could not abandon Ukraine the same way President Joe Biden&#8217;s administration had abandoned Afghanistan.
&#8220;I think the stock in Mike Johnson has gone way up. I think the respect for him has gone way up — because he did the right thing.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
“I think the stock in Mike Johnson has gone way up. I think the respect for him has gone way up — because he did the right thing,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul tells <a href="https://twitter.com/jonkarl?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@JonKarl</a>. <a href="https://t.co/EtsIH1fSpA">https://t.co/EtsIH1fSpA</a> <a href="https://t.co/0rkUJAoF1A">pic.twitter.com/0rkUJAoF1A</a>
&mdash; This Week (@ThisWeekABC) <a href="https://twitter.com/ThisWeekABC/status/1782045250770423842?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 21, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Despite being a member of the opposition party, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) threw his support behind Johnson as well — largely because of his work to pass the Ukraine aid package — and said that he would even go so far as to vote to support the Republican Speaker, should a Motion to Vacate force another vote.
&#8220;I would actually vote to table any motion to vacate him &#8230; He did the right thing here and he deserves to keep his job until the end of the term,&#8221; Khanna told Karl. But Khanna made it clear his goodwill toward Johnson would be short-lived, noting that he believed Democrats would retake the House in November — so once the current term ends, he believes the new House Speaker might be House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.).
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna tells <a href="https://twitter.com/jonkarl?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@JonKarl</a> that he would vote to support Speaker Mike Johnson if Republicans tried to remove him for securing Ukraine aid. 
&quot;He did the right thing here and he deserves to keep his job until the end of this term.” <a href="https://t.co/xaDuxyoG51">https://t.co/xaDuxyoG51</a> <a href="https://t.co/znG8X4S0KR">pic.twitter.com/znG8X4S0KR</a>
&mdash; This Week (@ThisWeekABC) <a href="https://twitter.com/ThisWeekABC/status/1782050865592807523?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 21, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Even Donna Brazile, former interim Chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), voiced her tentative approval of Speaker Johnson: &#8220;I have to say this, I&#8217;m a Louisianan, I&#8217;m always proud when Louisiana people come through — especially someone with LSU ties.&#8221;
She went on to say that while Johnson was certainly not what she would call a &#8220;moderate,&#8221; &#8220;at the end of the day, he decided to go with history and to be the soul who understood what&#8217;s at stake.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Speaker Johnson “decided to go with history and to be the soul who understood what’s at stake,” former DNC chair <a href="https://twitter.com/donnabrazile?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@DonnaBrazile</a> says after Democrats helped Johnson avoid defeat on foreign aid bills despite GOP objections. <a href="https://t.co/Dlkg8lTeqJ">https://t.co/Dlkg8lTeqJ</a> <a href="https://t.co/Cs0vbRXy8g">pic.twitter.com/Cs0vbRXy8g</a>
&mdash; This Week (@ThisWeekABC) <a href="https://twitter.com/ThisWeekABC/status/1782107737217740931?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 21, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Several other shows on the Sunday circuit played variations on the same theme.
On CBS&#8217; &#8220;Face the Nation,&#8221; Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK) told host Margaret Brennan that he didn&#8217;t think there would be enough Republicans to vote Johnson out of the Speakership.
&#8220;You gotta take anything seriously,&#8221; Cole said of the threats to oust Johnson — but he also said that he didn&#8217;t believe they&#8217;d be successful because not as many Republicans would oppose Johnson as had opposed McCarthy and some Democrats (like Khanna) were likely to vote to protect Johnson because they agreed with him on the Ukraine aid at least.
He also argued that too many House members — from both parties — likely remembered how chaotic things had been when they did not have a Speaker at all. &#8220;They also had a taste of what it&#8217;s like to go without a speaker for three weeks. I don&#8217;t think they want that again,&#8221; he said.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
“I don&#39;t think so,” GOP Rep. <a href="https://twitter.com/TomColeOK04?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@TomColeOK04</a> says when asked whether eight Republicans would vote to oust Speaker Johnson after the Ukraine aid vote.
&quot;They also had a taste of what it&#39;s like to go without a speaker for three weeks. I don&#39;t think they want that again.&quot; <a href="https://t.co/p3m39zbyLn">pic.twitter.com/p3m39zbyLn</a>
&mdash; Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) <a href="https://twitter.com/FaceTheNation/status/1782068043431964899?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 21, 2024</a></blockquote>
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Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) addressed the issue on CNN&#8217;s &#8220;State of the Union,&#8221; saying, &#8220;The House is a rough and rowdy place, but Mike Johnson is going to be just fine.&#8221;
&#8220;Unlike Joe Biden&#8217;s poor Uncle Bosie, I think Mike Johnson&#8217;s going to avoid the cannibals in his own party,&#8221; Republican commentator Ken Jennings agreed. &#8220;He stood up to them this weekend, and the adults retook control of the U.S. Congress &#8230; I think and I hope that Democrats will continue to stand with Mike Johnson for a functional Congress.&#8221;
&#8220;You know, there&#8217;s a wide middle in this country,&#8221; Jennings continued, saying that Johnson&#8217;s goal appeared to be to drag American politics &#8220;away from the dysfunctional fringe&#8221; and back into that middle space.
Former White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield agreed, saying that Johnson &#8220;should absolutely get credit for taking a bold position here. He probably decided, you know what, this job isn&#8217;t worth having if I&#8217;m not doing something. So I think it was impressive and I think the way he laid out a values-driven argument, particularly for Ukraine, was impressive.&#8221;
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Republican Rep. slams hardliners in his own party: &#39;The way you take care of a bully is you bloody their nose.&#39;<a href="https://twitter.com/RepTonyGonzales?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@RepTonyGonzales</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/JamalSimmons?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@JamalSimmons</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/KBeds?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@KBeds</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/ScottJenningsKY?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@ScottJenningsKY</a> join <a href="https://twitter.com/DanaBashCNN?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@DanaBashCNN</a> to discuss the threats to oust House Speaker Mike Johnson. <a href="https://t.co/IDbCimn03K">pic.twitter.com/IDbCimn03K</a>
&mdash; State of the Union (@CNNSOTU) <a href="https://twitter.com/CNNSOTU/status/1782064560762925294?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 21, 2024</a></blockquote>
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Not everyone got the memo that Sunday was Mike Johnson’s day, however. Former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, for example, kept hammering the same nail she&#8217;s been working at since landing her MSNBC show — &#8220;Inside With Jen Psaki&#8221;: former President Donald Trump.
The majority of Psaki&#8217;s show was an interview with Governor Gavin Newsom (D-CA) — who has often been floated as a likely replacement candidate in the event that President Joe Biden has to exit the 2024 race — and while they focused primarily on abortion, they did take time to discuss Trump&#8217;s Manhattan hush-money trial.
Psaki brought up the trial — along with reports that some people believe it actually helps Trump more than it hurts him — and asked Newsom how he would explain to voters why the trial matters.
The California governor argued briefly that it should matter to everyone — but quickly pivoted to warn Psaki that he didn&#8217;t think it helpful in the long run to give more attention to Trump. &#8220;When we&#8217;re focusing on him, I do worry, electorally, that he has a slight advantage. I&#8217;m a little concerned about the overindulgence &#8230; The consequential nature of a criminal trial is profound and outsized in some respects, but not more outsized than democracy.&#8221;
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.<a href="https://twitter.com/GavinNewsom?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@GavinNewsom</a>: “When we&#39;re focusing on him, I do worry, electorally, that he has a slight advantage. I&#39;m a little concerned about the overindulgence&#8230; The consequential nature of a criminal trial is profound and outsized in some respects, but not more outsized than democracy.&quot; <a href="https://t.co/wH5z41qetA">pic.twitter.com/wH5z41qetA</a>
&mdash; Inside with Jen Psaki (@InsideWithPsaki) <a href="https://twitter.com/InsideWithPsaki/status/1782109034075590764?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 21, 2024</a></blockquote>
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Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA)

Sunday Media Wrap: All Eyes On Mike Johnson As House Pushes Through Spending Bill

ABC News

CBS News

Media

Mike Johnson

MSNBC

Politics

Ukraine-Russia War

On April 20, 1999, the American conscience was seared as millions of heartbroken citizens watched the unthinkable stream across their TV screens.
Two students walked into my school, Columbine High School, and perpetuated pure evil, murdering 12 of my classmates and a brave teacher before killing themselves.
During the ordeal, I was hiding under a library desk, listening as the murderers taunted innocent people, killing at will like it was a game — some dark movie where they were the anti-heroes attempting to teach society a sick and twisted “lesson.”
My heart felt like it would beat out of my chest as the shooters killed my two friends, Matt and Isaiah, right next to me. Isaiah was going to be the first person in his family to graduate; instead, he spent his final moments being called racial slurs. Matt was, without a doubt, one of the nicest guys on the football team.
I thought I was next, but somehow I survived. After the shooters left the room, I remember hearing God clearly tell me, “Get out of there.” It was a calm, peaceful, and powerful voice that forced me to my feet before I somehow mustered the courage to yell to everyone else, “Let’s get out of here!”
We immediately escaped before the killers could return, but 10 of our peers were killed in that library. All of the carnage unfolded in just 7 and a half minutes, but it felt like an eternity. Tragically, my sister, Rachel Joy Scott, was one of the others murdered that day just 30 yards away from where I was hiding.
In Rachel’s final moments, she was taunted for her Christian faith yet had the courage not to deny God, even at gunpoint. Her example of faith, hope, love, and devotion, 25 years later, is still inspiring millions of kids across the globe.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but this event would try to define me for the rest of my life — but I refuse to let it. We are more than the events that happened in our past. After the shooting, however, I was broken but didn’t know it.
I pressed on, learning, growing, and healing along the way.
As I’ve shared my story with thousands of kids and families over the years, I’ve come to find solace in efforts to make lasting change by pointing others to hope, even amid tragedy.
My goal? To change hearts and save lives. And I’ve often looked to Rachel’s example to accomplish this quest. To know Rachel was to love her. With a tilt of her head, she had a smile that could light up a room. After her death, we heard story after story about her small acts of kindness that made a huge difference in others’ lives.
Since Rachel left us, her seven personal journals have given an even deeper lens into her love for God and people.
She was real, authentic, and raw about her struggles. Rachel worked to establish the right belief system — one that would guide her with the faith and values she espoused. Her wisdom surpassed that of a normal 17-year-old, which is why her story has inspired books, a movie, and so much inspiration along the way.
My family and I have been committed to sharing her with the world, using a platform that rose from tragedy to inspire people through the power of story. We travel to schools, address students, and speak out in the media about the root causes of moral decay.
Others who faced the unthinkable at Columbine have also used the event for good. I’m proud of my family, especially my parents Darrell Scott and Beth Nimmo, and my community – people like our principal, Frank DeAngelis, fellow library survivor Patrick Ireland, and other victims&#8217; families and classmates who have made a positive difference out of something horrible.
“Look hard enough…and you’ll always find a light,” Rachel wrote in one journal entry. “Open your eyes to the love that can be.” She added, “Glory only comes when one pursues their dreams.”
Rachel’s writing revealed her compassion, non-judgemental disposition and a forgiving attitude toward others. One month before she died, she wrote an essay for her English class entitled, “My Ethics: My Codes of Life.” In it, she said, “How do you know that trust, compassion or beauty will not make this world a better place?”
Ultimately, what made Rachel stand out was a willingness to be used by God and a selflessness in stepping up and out for others. Rachel’s story has likely prevented around a dozen school shootings and saved thousands from suicide. It’s the very chain reaction of goodness she had wanted to have in her life.
So, as we reflect on the 25th anniversary of Columbine, I must ask: No matter what you face, what kind of chain reaction are you aiming to ignite? That’s a challenge to us all and I’m fortunate enough to have a sister who has shown me the way.
* * *
Craig Scott is a survivor of the Columbine High School shooting. He was in the library, where ten students were killed, including two of his friends that had hidden next to him under a table. Craig escaped only to learn his sister, Rachel Joy Scott, was the first person killed. For more than 20 years, Craig has dedicated his life to making a difference in schools. In speaking with more than a million people, Craig has positively impacted school cultures by sharing lessons learned from Columbine and challenging students to value themselves and others.
Billy Hallowell contributed to this article.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

25th Anniversary Of The Columbine School Shooting Marked In Colorado

25 Years Since Columbine, My Sister Rachel’s Legacy Lives On

Colorado

Public Schools

School Shooting

Democrat Party officials say they are now facing a critical shortage of intimidating insults with which to silence people who have opposing opinions. According to Democrat Vladimir Mohammed Jihad Lenin Chu Mohammed, Chairman of the Leftist Agency of Derogatory Intimidation, or LADDIE — or LADY, depending on your pronouns — the shortage could endanger Joe Biden’s chances of re-election in the event he comes back to life before November.
Mr. Lenin Chu Mohammed spoke to The Daily Wire on condition of anonymity, saying, “We started by calling conservatives racist, but that made it sound like hating white people might be a bad thing. So we moved on to calling them Hitler, but then we found out that Hitler believed in authoritarian government, imprisoning dissenters, and hating Jews, which is our entire platform. Finally, we tried calling them Christian Nationalists, but then we discovered that means people who believe in God and love their country, which turns out to be almost everybody except us. If we don’t come up with a new intimidating insult soon, we won’t be able to silence opposition and we’ll be forced to try to rationalize our policies, which obviously would be a disaster.”
An unnamed Democrat source named Sergei Mohammed Wong Nikita Jihad says Democrat strategists have been working around the clock to come up with a brilliant new plan to replenish their supply of intimidating insults by using words that mean absolutely nothing so they can’t be turned against them. In a memo leaked by an anonymous Democrat source named Rashida Ilhan Alexandria Tucker Carlson, the unnamed LADDIE-or-LADY chairman Lenin Chu Mohammed writes, “In the past, meaningless words have worked well for the Democrat party. We used such sentences as ‘The border is secure,’ ‘trans-women are women,’ ‘the demonstrations are mostly peaceful,’ and ‘George Floyd was an innocent man murdered by racist police’ in which certain words were completely devoid of any recognizable meaning, like the words ‘secure,’ ‘women,’ ‘peaceful’ and ‘innocent man murdered by racist police.’”
Thus, in the hope of preventing future shortages of intimidating insults, the LADDIE or LADY is proposing that Democrats simply start hurling complete gibberish at their opponents in angry voices that make it sound insulting.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1177-america-down-the-memory-hole">WATCH: The Andrew Klavan Show</a></h4>
For instance, a proposed Joe Biden speech was leaked by an anonymous source close to LADDIE or LADY named Fang Fang Jihad Tucker Vladimir Ilhan Stalin. The Biden speech says: “Never before have we faced so great a threat to ka-boob-acy as the rise of radical far-right Maga scabadabalism in the halls of rinky-tinkadum. Since the founding of this great ka-boob-nik rinkytinkadum has rejected scabadalism in the name of all that’s kaboo-bastic, but now scabadalists are thralling every sconus of kaboobacy’s tinkadum until the very swillingforth of sentastic fillemup tooters on the flink of shooga-boogacy. This admino-groin will unthrall the scabadabs from kaboob-nik’s rinkytinks and restore kaboobik wumpas of sheroob-adum or my name is not Joe Biden, if that is my name.”
This proposed speech was later withdrawn when it turned out Biden had already said something similar in off-the-cuff remarks he had made to a 12-year-old girl while he was chasing her around the room trying to smell her hair.
As the shortage of intimidating insults moves toward crisis, an anonymous source within the DNC named Ubersturmfuhrer Hamas von Mao tse Sanders Pressley-Ramirez, says the party is exploring more radical options, like trying to justify their policies to sentient human beings with the capacity for reason, or if that’s not possible, then just to leftist women, or if even they’re too intelligent, maybe just the CEO of NPR.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, Mister Miss Uberstormfuhrer Pressley-Ramirez told The Daily Wire, “We figure, hey, we convinced our voters the climate is a crisis, killing babies is a human right, butchering children will change their sex, and Joe Biden wasn’t making money off his family’s influence peddling business, we might also get them to believe we’re turning the country to crap for a good reason. We just have to explain that high food prices help you lose weight or that letting unchecked illegals flood the country will make it easier to find a gardener who’ll murder your mother-in-law. After all, these people voted for us. How smart can they be?”
* * *
Andrew Klavan is the host of “The Andrew Klavan Show” at The Daily Wire. He is the bestselling author of the Cameron Winter Mystery series. The third installment, “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/House-Death-Cameron-Winter-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B0BW1ZTVP9?ref_=ast_author_dp" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The House of Love and Death</a>,” is now available. Follow him on X: @andrewklavan
This excerpt is taken from the opening satirical monologue of “<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1177-america-down-the-memory-hole" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Andrew Klavan Show.</a>”
The views expressed in this satirical article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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