Now it can be told: "From the moment Biden shuffled on stage at the CNN debate and bragged about beating Medicare in June 2024, there has been a steady stream of revelations about all the Democrats who were (privately) concerned or even shocked by the extent of Biden's cognitive decline," our Andrew Stiles writes. Those revelations have accelerated thanks to two recently published books "on the Democratic Party's abject failure to stop Biden from running for reelection." Stiles has the definitive list. Here's a preview:
During a September 2021 meeting with Democratic aides and lawmakers, Biden "rambled off topic, telling unrelated stories about his days in the Senate," according to Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes's Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House. Some attendees took it "as evidence that he was losing his grip." Oh well.
One year later, the journalist Chris Whipple, author of Uncharted: How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History," became suspicious of Biden's condition "when he asked to interview Biden for a book about the first two years of his presidency" and was granted access "on the condition that he provide the questions in advance via email." "It seemed clear that the president's aides didn't want to risk having him interact in real time with a reporter," he wrote—nearly three years after the fact.
By 2024, just about every Dem operative was in on the open secret, including Barack Obama's former chief of staff, Bill Daley, who (privately) confronted a longtime Biden aide over the president's use of a teleprompter at a small Saint Patrick's Day gathering. "This is crazy," he recounted in an interview with Whipple. "How are they letting this fucking thing go on?"
Rewriting history: Minnesota AG Keith Ellison has suggested the Feeding Our Future fraudsters who siphoned $250 million in federal child nutrition funds under his office's nose would have gotten away with it if not for his help with an FBI investigation. Then a leaked audio recording showed he offered to "help" the fraudsters during a friendly meeting he took with them in December 2021, when that investigation was in full swing. How does Ellison explain it all? Not convincingly, the Free Beacon's Collin Anderson reports.
Ellison defended the "routine" meeting in a Star Tribune op-ed, saying he did not know whom he was sitting down with ahead of time and was not aware of the FBI's investigation into Feeding Our Future until after the powwow. "His defense flatly contradicts a statement his office released months after the meeting crediting him with working 'for two solid years' to 'hold Feeding Our Future accountable,' including by assisting the investigation in its early stages," writes Anderson.
Ellison also said he "did nothing" for the fraudsters and "took nothing from them." Nine days after the meeting, however, "he accepted four campaign contributions totaling $10,000 from men tied to Feeding Our Future. His op-ed does not address them." We'd tell Ellison to call his office, but we're not sure he knows the number.
Mostly peaceful detainees: The latest #Resistance darling is detained Columbia activist Mohsen Mahdawi. Vermont senator Peter Welch met with him at an immigration facility in the state on Monday, describing Mahdawi as a "friend from the Upper Valley" who has "worked with some of your Jewish brothers and sisters at Columbia." Mahdawi, in turn, said his "work has been centered on peacemaking" and that most of his "partners at Columbia's campus and beyond are Jews and Israelis." Not quite.
"In the wake of Oct. 7, Mahdawi said he could 'empathize' with Hamas's decision to launch the attack and used a siren to drown out pro-Israel students protesting for the release of Israeli child hostages," our Alana Goodman and Jessica Schwalb write. Columbia students who have crossed paths with Mahdawi, meanwhile, said he "was friendly with some Jewish students—including pro-Israel ones—a few years ago through his involvement with a campus Buddhist club. But those relationships soured after Oct. 7, the students said, when Mahdawi became focused on denouncing Israel and showed a reluctance to condemn Hamas."
Mahdawi was featured in a December 2023 60 Minutes segment on campus activism at Columbia. He said he does not "justify what Hamas has done" but rather "can empathize" with their attack. Got that?
The Trump administration "made at least three overtures to a Harvard representative in an attempt to restart talks" last week, but the "school's leadership rebuffed them all," according to the New York Times. So much courage!
Executive producer Bill Owens is out at 60 Minutes, he told his staff in a memo, saying he is no longer "allowed to run the show as I have always run it." It could have to do with a hostile interview the show aired with a released Israeli hostage, a segment that reportedly angered Paramount controlling shareholder Shari Redstone.
Minnesota attorney general Keith Ellison was not aware of a federal investigation into the sprawling Feeding Our Future fraud scheme when he took a friendly meeting with its perpetrators in December 2021, he said in a Star Tribune op-ed. His defense flatly contradicts a statement his office released months after the meeting crediting him with working "for two solid years" to "hold Feeding Our Future accountable," including by assisting the investigation in its early stages.
Ellison has faced scrutiny from Republican lawmakers after a conservative think tank in the state, the Center of the American Experiment, released an audio recording of the meeting, during which Ellison told the fraudsters he was "here to help" and offered to call state officials who were skeptical of their fake food banks. The cast of mostly Somali immigrants siphoned $250 million from the federal child nutrition program during the coronavirus pandemic by falsely claiming they were serving meals to thousands of children each day.
The recording put Ellison in a difficult position. If he was indeed intimately involved in the investigation, which had been active for months at the time of the meeting, why did he rally behind its targets in private? And if he wasn't aware of it, why did his office suggest months after the meeting that the investigation would have failed without him?
Ellison did not address his office's September 2022 statement in his Star Tribune piece, though he did claim ignorance over the investigation. His doing so could bring additional scrutiny as scores of defendants in the scheme await trial.
Ellison took the "routine" December 2021 meeting, he wrote, in accordance with his "practice that if a constituent has a concern, my door is always open and my phone is always on." He did not know who he was meeting with ahead of time and was not familiar with the attendees' "complaints"—that is, that the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) had "fought" their applications for federal food funds in "a very racist, xenophobic, Islamophobic manner." They "sounded sympathetic," Ellison wrote, so he "took notes" and said he'd "look into" their case.
After the meeting, Ellison briefed his "team." It was then that he learned the fraudsters he met with "were part of an FBI investigation into Feeding Our Future," according to his op-ed.
Weeks later, in January 2022, Ellison and his office "got our first indication from the FBI of the scale of Feeding Our Future's illegal content," the op-ed states. "Until then, the FBI had not shared with my staff attorneys anything about the size of the investigation or the individuals they were targeting. The first federal search warrants were issued that same month. The first federal indictments came down eight months later."
When those indictments hit, Ellison issued his now-infamous statement, titled, "For two years, Attorney General Ellison's office has held Feeding Our Future accountable." The federal investigation and indictments, the statement said, "would not have happened" without Ellison's involvement.
"Early on, the Attorney General's Office worked side by side with MDE to flag evidence of fraud ... and most importantly, bring evidence of criminal fraud to the FBI, which led directly to the federal criminal investigation and criminal indictments of Feeding Our Future for fraud," said Ellison's then-deputy chief of staff, John Stiles.
The FBI did not mention Ellison's office in its affidavit supporting the January 2022 search warrants cited in Ellison's op-ed. Instead, it credited MDE with flagging fraud concerns in April 2021. The agency provided little to no evidence when it did so, meaning the FBI had to build its case from scratch by obtaining "records of hundreds of bank accounts," according to the affidavit. It did so over the following months, and by December of that year, when Ellison met with the fraudsters, the investigation was in full swing—and Ellison wasn't aware of it.
Ellison explains that ignorance by noting in his op-ed that, at the time of his meeting, "Feeding Our Future still wasn't a household name." But it was familiar to Ellison. When the fraudsters referenced Feeding Our Future during the meeting, Ellison responded, "I've heard that name." It's unclear how. At the time, attorneys in Ellison's office were defending MDE from a Feeding Our Future lawsuit, which argued that the agency was taking too long to approve the nonprofit's funding applications. Ellison, however, was also unfamiliar with the suit, he acknowledged both during the meeting and in his op-ed.
"This is the first I'm really hearing about it," he told the fraudsters. "You know, I got 400 people at the AGs office. … They don't run them all past me." Ellison's op-ed includes a similar explanation. "By state law, the Attorney General's Office is the lawyer for more than 100 state agencies and other entities," it states. "We have thousands of cases and investigations open at any time."
Nine days after the meeting, Ellison accepted four campaign contributions totaling $10,000 from men tied to Feeding Our Future. His op-ed does not address them—instead, it says Ellison "took a meeting in good faith with people I didn't know" and "did nothing for them and took nothing from them."
Ellison's office declined to comment.
The Feeding Our Future case represents the largest COVID fraud discovered in the United States. Federal officials charged 70 defendants in the scheme. Thus far, 37 have pleaded guilty and 7 have been convicted. The others have yet to be tried.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) humiliated herself on Sunday when asked if she regretted her repeated praise of former President Joe Biden's mental fitness, which continued until the moment he dropped out of the race. "I said what I believed to be true," Warren said during an interview with liberal podcaster Sam Fragoso. "Look, he was sharp, he was on his feet. I saw him [at a] live event, I had meetings with him a couple of times ... the question is, what are we gonna do now?"
Warren, who is best known for pretending to be Native American, was almost certainly lying.
From the moment Biden shuffled on stage at the CNN debate and bragged about beating Medicare in June 2024, there has been a steady stream of revelations about all the Democrats who were (privately) concerned or even shocked by the extent of Biden's cognitive decline since taking office in 2021. They didn't say anything at the time, obviously, because they didn't want to anger the president—a notoriously vindictive narcissist—and they didn't want to help Donald Trump by validating his attacks on Biden's fitness for office. Two recently published books—Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, and Uncharted: How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History by Chris Whipple—shed even more light on the Democratic Party's abject failure to stop Biden from running for reelection, even though many believed he was too old and cognitively impaired to serve another four years.
Now it can all be told. Here are 30 examples, based on reporting that emerged suddenly (and conveniently) after the disastrous debate had removed all doubt regarding Biden's decline, of powerful Democrats expressing their (private) concern about the president's age and health.
2021
1) Biden "rambled far off topic, telling unrelated stories about his days in the Senate" during a September 2021 meeting at the White House with Democratic aides and lawmakers, Allen and Parnes reported in Fight. "Some wrote it off as a sentimental trip down memory lane, while others took the departure from talks about his sweeping economic proposal as evidence that he was losing his grip."
2022
2) In the summer of 2022, Jill Biden met with potential donors in Boston, where Bain Capital's chairman, Joshua Bekenstein, suggested the president "could leave public life proud of a one-term legacy," and urged Biden to "give other Democrats time to get in the race" by announcing his intention not to run again, according to a New York Timesreport published earlier this year. Bekenstein had been "under the impression that Mr. Biden had promised to be a one-term candidate" on account of his age. The first lady "listened but did not reply."
3) The New York Times published a report in June 2022 based on interviews with dozens of "frustrated" Democratic lawmakers and party officials. "Nearly all" of them worried (anonymously) that Biden's age was a "deep concern about his political viability." These Democrats, the Times reported, have "watched as a commander in chief who built a reputation for gaffes has repeatedly rattled global diplomacy with unexpected remarks that were later walked back by his White House staff, and as he has sat for fewer interviews than any of his recent predecessors."
4) Days later, Mark Leibovich published a column in the Atlantic urging Biden not to run again, noting the "recurring theme" he kept hearing from Democrats who supported the president. "He just seems old," a senior administration official told Leibovich several weeks earlier.
5) Whipple, author of Uncharted, recounted that he first grew suspicious of Biden's condition in September 2022, when he asked to interview Biden for a book about the first two years of his presidency. The interview was granted on the condition that Whipple provided the questions in advance via email so that Biden (or someone else) could answer them in writing. "It seemed clear that the president’s aides didn’t want to risk having him interact in real time with a reporter," Whipple wrote.
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2023
6) Biden used a teleprompter at a Los Angeles fundraiser in February 2023, according to the Wall Street Journal. All questions were screened in advance. Donors found this "frustrating" because they had "expected a more free-flowing exchange."
7) John Morgan, a prominent Democratic fundraiser, told the New York Times in February 2023 that Biden's age would be "one of the most hard-hitting arguments" against him. "It doesn’t take a genius to say, 'Look, with his age, we have to really think about this,'" Morgan said while making the case that Biden's age would be less of a liability if Kamala Harris wasn't such an underwhelming replacement. "I can’t think of one thing she’s done except stay out of the way and stand beside him at certain ceremonies."
8) A month after announcing his reelection campaign in April 2023, Biden met with "nervous New York donors" at the home of billionaire Hamilton James, the former president of Blackstone. It did not go well. "His comments [about a second term], dropped into a 35-minute stump speech that meandered from Ukraine to his childhood, were meant to reassure," the New York Times reported in January. "But to some donors, the comments had the opposite effect. Several left with the same worries over Mr. Biden’s age that they had when they arrived. They told one another afterward that he hardly sounded like an energized, motivated candidate."
9) Biden "made so many rambling remarks at other fund-raisers over the summer [of 2023] that several supporters called his advisers to plead for him to be more focused and on message," according to the Times. Others worried that "the wear and tear of the presidency was taking its toll" on Biden.
10) Attendees at a June 2023 fundraiser in New York wondered if Biden "had the faculties to compete for the presidency" after he delivered a slurred speech and his "body locked up for a moment," Allen and Parnes wrote. "It wasn’t just physical," said a longtime acquaintance of Biden who was at the fundraiser and had "witnessed similar episodes from time to time during his presidency." Another attendee feared that Biden "might not make it to Election Day."
11) This may or may not have been the same New York fundraiser where Biden left attendees "struck by how fragile he seemed," according to a Wall Street Journal report published in July 2024. At one point, Biden was unable to recall the word for "veteran," and asked the group for help describing a person who had served in the military.
12) The Journal reported that Biden "seemed at a loss trying to answer questions about the Middle East from people in a photo line" at another New York fundraiser in June 2023. He only answered after an aide whispered in the president's ear.
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13) Biden was "frighteningly awful" at another June 2023 fundraiser in California hosted by Kevin Scott, chief technology officer at Microsoft. Bob Woodward's latest book, War, released in October 2024, revealed that attendees likened Biden to "your 87-year-old senile grandfather wandering around the room, saying to women guests, 'your eyes are so beautiful.'" One Democratic donor said Biden "could not wait to sit down and only took two pre-arranged questions," but still struggled to speak coherently. The president "seemed to wander off point" despite carrying "a handful of note cards with the answers printed out."
14) Biden delivered another "painful" performance on June 27, 2023, at a fundraiser in Maryland. "He never completed a sentence," Democratic donor Bill Reichblum recalled. "He would start to talk about something, jump somewhere else. He told the same story three times in exactly the same way and it meandered so much ... It was striking." Woodward explained that he didn't learn about any of these concerns from Democratic donors until after the debate in 2024.
15) Rep. Eric Swalwell (D., Calif.), who had attacked Biden for being too old as a candidate in the 2020 Democratic primary, grew "concerned about Biden's mental acuity" in July 2023 following his interaction with the president at a White House picnic, according to Allen and Parnes. "When they came face-to-face, Biden did not immediately recognize his onetime rival for the party’s nomination," the authors wrote in Fight. "Swalwell had to cue Biden with personal details to remind him."
16) In Uncharted, Whipple recounted a dinner party he attended in July 2023. Guests included the elderly liberal journalists Carl Bernstein and Robert Caro, who predicted that Biden would not be the nominee in 2024 because Democratic leaders would soon "approach Joe Biden—the way Barry Goldwater and his colleagues approached Richard Nixon in 1974. And they will say, ‘Mr. President, for the good of the party and the country, we believe you should step aside.'"
17) In the summer of 2023, a former top Biden adviser "who had met with the president told an associate the meeting was 'not good' and that Biden had noticeably aged since they had last seen each other," according to a Journal report published several days after the debate.
18) The Journal report also notes that, prior to the Democratic primaries, some donors expressed their concern to Hollywood executive Jeffrey Katzenberg, an unofficial adviser to the White House, about "whether Biden should be the nominee, given his advanced age." Other donors, meanwhile, "kept their concerns quiet because they didn’t want to risk their access or influence."
19) At a New York fundraiser in September 2023, Biden "retold the same anecdote twice—leaving at least one attendee shaken and worried about his age," the Journalreported the day after the disastrous debate.
20) At the Democratic National Committee's fundraising retreat in September 2023, one donor asked Biden's deputy campaign manager for advice on how to handle "the stream of concerns they've heard" about Biden's age, according to Politico. Another Biden donor said they had tried to discuss concerns about Biden's age with DNC officials, who "just refused to even acknowledge it was a problem."
21) That same month, Hollywood megadonor Ari Emanuel confronted longtime Biden adviser Ron Klain, during a private confab in Aspen, raising doubts about Biden's fitness for office and demanding to know: "What's your plan B?" According to Allen and Parnes, Emanuel argued it was "grossly irresponsible for someone of Biden’s age, who is already clearly slowing down, to run for president again." CNN wrote that the testy exchange "underscored the long-held reservations among influential Democrats about the viability of Biden months before the debate."
22) Later that month, according to CNN, Biden spoke at the annual gala of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, where "attendees took notice of his slurring of words and at times, appearing confused. Some started to wonder: Is this more than just his stutter?"
23) At some point in 2023, Kamala Harris's communications director Jamal Simmons "developed an entire messaging plan" to prepare for the possibility that Biden could die in office. "Anything can happen to any president, Simmons thought. But the likelihood of Biden dying is greater," Allen and Parnes reported.
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2024
24) In March, a Democratic operative who interviewed for a high-level job with the Biden campaign was shocked by the president's demeanor. "I was like, what is happening here?" she told Whipple. "He wasn't asking questions. It was everyone else, not him. And it felt like they were just trying to cover up that he didn’t really know what was going on." The operative explained that the Biden campaign appeared to be struggling on account of Biden's low energy and inability to function in public settings. "Part of their discussion on the strategy of the campaign was 'Hey, in 2020 we had this great excuse of the basement, of COVID, to keep him out of the public eye.' We no longer have that excuse. What do we do?'" she recalled. "They were saying, 'He doesn’t have the energy. He can’t go on the campaign trail all the time. How do we fix that?'"
25) That same month, Barack Obama's former chief of staff, Bill Daley, was stunned that Biden used a teleprompter at a small Saint Patrick's Day gathering at the White House."This is crazy," he recalled in an interview with Whipple. Daley confronted longtime Biden aide Tom Donilon. He wanted to know why no one had spoken to Biden about stepping aside. "How are they letting this fucking thing go on?" Daley asked.
26) In May, Daley grew even more concerned after attending a Biden campaign fundraiser in Chicago. "I’ll tell you, I got rattled," he told Whipple. "They had a receiving line, a photo line. And I had not seen the president up close in a couple of years. And I went through it with my wife—and he was friendly and all that, but he was just not the same guy." Daley called Biden's chief of staff, Jeff Zients, and begged him not to let the president go on stage with Trump at the CNN debate. "Do not do this," he said. "I’m telling you, don’t do it. I’m just telling you, come up with something, but do not do it."
27) Former House speaker Nancy Pelosi was also concerned about the debate. Biden had awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in May. Afterward, Whipple reported, she "couldn't shake the realization that Joe Biden was a shadow of himself."
28) Barack Obama was "shocked" but "not surprised" by Biden's horrendous debate performance. "Obama knew from experience how the job aged a man, and he could see the effects when he watched Biden on television and in their rare joint appearances," Allen and Parnes wrote. The former president did not share these views publicly.
29) Klain, who served as Biden's chief of staff until 2023 and returned to help the president prepare for the CNN debate, was "startled" by Biden's condition. According to Whipple, the longtime Democratic operative was "struck by how out of touch with American politics" Biden was, and after watching the president appear "fatigued, befuddled, and disengaged" during limited prep sessions, he "feared the debate with Trump would be a nationally televised disaster." At one point during the debate prep sessions, Klain recalled, Biden "abruptly announced that he needed to get some sun," then "shuffled out the door and off to the pool, where he sank into a lounge chair and fell sound asleep." Nevertheless, Klain was one of the last remaining Democrats who insisted that Biden should stay in the race.
30) George Clooney, the Hollywood actor and Democratic donor, hosted a fundraiser for Biden in June, several days before the debate. He said nothing at the time, but Clooney was alarmed by what he saw. On July 10, nearly two weeks after the debate—when Biden's decline could no longer be dismissed as a right-wing conspiracy theory—Clooney wrote an op-ed in the New York Times acknowledging what most Americans already knew. "It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe 'big F-ing deal Biden of 2010," the actor wrote. "He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate."
Clash of the titans: Harvard sued Trump over frozen grants and rescinded contracts, setting up a high-stakes showdown that will test the administration’s strategy for reforming higher education.
The move came exactly one week after Harvard informed the administration that it would not accept its policy demands. Trump froze $2.2 billion in Harvard funds shortly thereafter. Harvard threw the next punch with its lawsuit. Trump froze another $1 billion in funds from there.
"Harvard's attorneys argue that administration's actions violate a federal law that governs the disbursal of grants and loans and which stipulates that the 'termination of or refusal to grant or continue' federal financial assistance is meant to be 'a remedy of last resort,’" writes the Free Beacon’s Collin Anderson. "The lawsuit also argues there is little connection between the Trump administration’s stated goal—compelling universities to crack down on campus anti-Semitism—and the means it is using to achieve that end."
Can't stop, won't stop: What is it with Columbia activists and tents?
With the one-year anniversary of the school's "Gaza Solidarity Encampment" looming, a keffiyeh-clad Columbia alumna set up a tent just outside of the main campus gate, where masked agitators had chained themselves. The NYPD, unburdened by the historically lengthy approval process needed to enter campus, quickly arrested the tent enthusiast. Columbia public safety officials cut her friends' chains. They still refused to leave.
A Columbia spokeswoman said the "small disruption" did not impede "the ability of our students to attend classes as normal." But Columbia senior Eden Yadegar told our Jessica Costescu and Jessica Schwalb that the demonstration "disrupted most of her class on the seventh floor of Hamilton Hall," the building activists stormed and occupied last year.
Family tradition: It’s not just Hunter Biden who plays fast and loose with the nation’s tax laws. His sister Ashley has gotten in on the act, according to a complaint from the National Legal and Policy Center watchdog group.
At the center of the complaint is the trauma recovery center Ashley launched in Philadelphia at the height of her father's presidency, the Women's Wellness Spa(ce). It got off the ground thanks to at least $500,000 in seed funding from Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s Archewell Foundation and the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, according to the nonprofits' disclosures. "But the Women’s Wellness Spa(ce) told a much different story to the IRS, reporting in its 2023 tax filing that it received just $170,296 from all sources that year, and that it didn’t receive any contributions from a single source greater than $5,000, seemingly contradicting the financial reporting of its two largest benefactors," writes our Andrew Kerr. "Ashley Biden signed the document as the charity’s president under penalty of perjury."
Hunter's financial misdeeds were wiped clean thanks to a pardon from Old Joe. Ashley "was one of the few members of Joe Biden's immediate family who didn't receive a pardon from the former president."
No more free ride: The Department of Education "will resume collections of its defaulted federal student loan portfolio" in two weeks, it announced Monday, marking the first time the department has "collected on defaulted loans since March 2020."
The DNC's official X account took aim at the Trump White House for "using 30,000 real eggs" for this year's annual Easter Egg Roll. Last year, Biden used 64,000
Tread carefully: Today is a worldwide "day of rage" over Israel's war on Hamas. Israel’s National Security Council is warning of potential "violent incidents against Israelis." We'll keep you posted.
Alex Soros, the heir to multibillionaire Democratic megadonor George Soros, in an interview mocked the founders of Facebook and Uber for having "really believed their own bullshit" and groaned at the mention of a climate group that his family has bankrolled for years.
Facebook and Uber founders are "a bunch of nice Jewish boys who kind of gamed the system and, 'Oh, let's not become doctors, lawyers; I'm helping the world by putting taxis out of business,'" Alex Soros, who is Jewish, toldNew York magazine as he sat in an Uber en route to a museum exhibition in New York
Unlike Soros, who now oversees his father's $20 billion political empire, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Uber founders Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp grew up in relatively ordinary households and did not inherit their fortunes.
Soros, known for his lavish lifestyle, ties to political elites, and relationship with Hillary Clinton confidante Huma Abedin, took over his father's empire in 2022—frustrating many longtime insiders, who had expected his older, more measured half-brother to inherit the role, according to New York. George Soros is one of the biggest donors to liberal causes through his Open Society Foundations, spending more than $18 billion of his fortune on everything from soft-on-crime prosecutors to a fake news network to anti-Israel nonprofits.
When one of those groups, the environmentalist Sunrise Movement, came up during the interview, Alex Soros made a face and groaned. "What the hell did they do, by the way?" he said. The Soros family's Democracy PAC has donated hundreds of thousands to Sunrise Movement alone, including $250,000 during the 2020 election cycle, the Washington Free Beaconreported at the time.
Soros "says his priority remains power, however the Democrats can attain it," New York reported. His goal, meanwhile, is "to prevent more winning" from President Donald Trump and Republicans.
Both Soros and his father are "result-driven," he told the magazine—"we like to win."
Sen. Peter Welch (D., Vt.) visited detained Columbia University activist Mohsen Mahdawi on Monday, calling him a "friend" and praising his work with "Jewish brothers and sisters" on Columbia's campus. In the wake of Oct. 7, Mahdawi said he could "empathize" with Hamas's decision to launch the attack and used a siren to drown out pro-Israel students protesting for the release of Israeli child hostages.
Mahdawi, who, like fellow Columbia activist Mahmoud Khalil, saw the Trump administration revoke his green card, is at an immigration facility in Vermont as he fights his deportation. Welch released a video of their Monday meeting at the facility, during which he described Mahdawi as a "friend from the Upper Valley," commended him for "staying so positive despite your circumstances," and asked him to describe how he has "worked with some of your Jewish brothers and sisters at Columbia."
"Most of my partners at Columbia's campus and beyond are Jews and Israelis," Mahdawi said. "My work has been centered on peacemaking, and all what I am doing, I am being a human."
Some Columbia students, who spoke on background to describe Mahdawi's campus activism candidly, told a different story. They told the Washington Free Beacon that Mahdawi was friendly with some Jewish students—including pro-Israel ones—a few years ago through his involvement with a campus Buddhist club. But those relationships soured after Oct. 7, the students said, when Mahdawi became focused on denouncing Israel and showed a reluctance to condemn Hamas.
When pro-Israel activists on campus called for the terror organization to release the child hostages it took during the attack, for example, Mahdawi blared a loud alarm that drowned out the speakers. He has also criticized Columbia for allowing Israeli students who served in the military to attend and called on the school to boycott the Jewish state.
Mahdawi praised three terrorist leaders in the Al Qassam Martyrs' Brigade who were killed, including his "cousin," a prominent field commander whom he called a "fierce resistance fighter," the Free Beaconreported.
"Here is Mesra who offers his soul as a sacrifice for the homeland and for the blood of the martyrs as a gift for the victory of Gaza and in defense of the dignity of his homeland and his people against the vicious Israeli occupation in the West Bank," wrote Mahdawi in an Instagram post.
Mahdawi also sought to defend Hamas’s attacks and said they were provoked by Israel. Two weeks after Oct. 7, he told a local paper that "Hamas is a product of the Israeli occupation." He also co-authored a statement published by anti-Israel campus groups that downplayed Palestinian terrorism as the "right to resist the occupation of their land."
"If every political avenue available to Palestinians is blocked, we should not be surprised when resistance and violence breaks out," the statement read.
In an interview with 60 Minutes, Mahdawi alluded to criticism over that statement. He denied justifying Hamas's actions but said he "can empathize" with them.
"I did not say that I justify what Hamas has done. I said I can empathize. To empathize is to understand the root cause and to not look at any event or situation in a vacuum. This is for me that path moving forward," he said.
Welch's office did not respond to a request for comment. The senator's meeting with Mahdawi comes as growing numbers of Democratic lawmakers began pushing for his release.
On Tuesday, 68 members of Congress sent a letter to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem calling the deportation efforts against Mahdawi "immoral, inhumane, and illegal."
The State Department is formally removing the Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, the office former president Joe Biden created and appointed John Kerry to lead as part of his aggressive agenda to combat global warming, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.
In a statement to the Free Beacon, a senior State Department official confirmed the office has been shuttered, noting that its mission did not align with the Trump administration's agenda. Webpages for both Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate and the State Department's initiatives relating to the environment were recentlydeleted.
"This climate office has long been captured by ideology instead of common sense policy. The new chapter of the State Department will not include this office," the official told the Free Beacon. "This is part of a broader effort to empower regional bureaus and embassies to effectively carry out diplomacy."
The action is part of a broader effort the sprawling agency announced Tuesday morning to streamline its operations, save taxpayers money, and ensure it is capable of delivering on President Donald Trump's foreign policy agenda. "In its current form, the department is bloated, bureaucratic, and unable to perform its essential diplomatic mission," Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, adding that the agency has become "beholden to radical political ideology."
And it signals the Trump administration's continued departure from the Biden-era approach to foreign policy that made climate change a centerpiece of its engagements with foreign nations. In one of his first actions leading the State Department, for example, Rubio initiated the immediate withdrawal of the United States from the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, which he said undercut the nation's intention to become the world's most dominant energy producer.
"The Trump Administration is focused on reducing the everyday cost of living for the American worker, not apologizing to foreign governments for unleashing America’s energy dominance," a senior White House official told the Free Beacon.
Overall, the Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate was given an annual budget of nearly $17 million and a staff of about 30 officials during the Biden administration, according to documents obtained by watchdog group Protect the Public's Trust.
In naming Kerry the first-ever special presidential envoy for climate, Biden gave him a seat on both the White House cabinet and National Security Council, and empowered him to spearhead international negotiations, engage directly with foreign heads of state, and lead American delegations at numerous global climate conferences.
Kerry—who served in the role for three years between January 2021 and early 2024—used the position to wage an all-out assault on fossil fuels and aggressively push a transition to green alternatives like solar panels. Kerry also targeted the agricultural industry for its carbon footprint, leading to calls from dozens of lawmakers for Biden and then-agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack to disavow the comments.
The Free Beacon previously reported that Kerry's office regularly consulted with far-left environmental organizations as he pursued his green agenda.
Kerry also faced criticism from Republican lawmakers and energy experts for lambasting fossil fuel reliance in the West, but seemingly looking the other way as China rapidly expanded its reliance on coal power to sustain its growing manufacturing sector. The House Oversight Committee opened a probe into Kerry's talks with his Chinese counterparts in 2023 and later threatened to subpoena him after his office failed to hand over requested documents.
Despite its high-level role in American foreign policy, the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate Office remained tight-lipped about its staff and operations throughout the Biden administration.
The Free Press first reported Rubio's actions to streamline the State Department's structure. The outlet cited internal documents showing the agency's plans to close 132 offices, including those launched to further human rights, counter extremism, and prevent war crimes.
Kerry was also accused of hypocrisy—the climate conferences he attended were often hosted at upscale resorts and he racked up tens of thousands of flight miles on gas-guzzling jets. Kerry's family also owned its own private jet for much of his tenure as special presidential envoy for climate.
The Trump administration slapped sanctions on an Iranian national and his corporate network for laundering hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of illicit petroleum products "to evade U.S. sanctions and generate revenue for Iran," the Treasury Department announced on Tuesday.
Iranian shipping magnate Seyed Asadollah Emamjomeh has worked with Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) to illegally transport the hardline regime’s heavily sanctioned crude oil and liquefied petroleum gas, or LPG, to foreign markets across the globe, according to the department. Emamjomeh once attempted to transport LPG from Houston to China, though the effort failed. The ship he used, TINOS 1, is still in anchorage off Houston and was hit with sanctions under the latest order.
Emamjomeh’s shipping empire, the Treasury Department says, helped generate revenue for Iran’s "nuclear and advanced conventional weapons programs" as well as its "regional proxy groups and partners such as Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Hamas." Emamjomeh was sanctioned alongside his son, Meisam Emamjomeh, as well as a constellation of international companies controlled by the duo.
"Emamjomeh and his network sought to export thousands of shipments of LPG—including from the United States—to evade U.S. sanctions and generate revenue for Iran," Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement. "The United States remains committed to holding accountable those who seek to provide the Iranian regime with the funding it needs to further its destabilizing activities in the region and around the world."
The sanctions are the latest salvo in an escalating series of measures meant to cripple Tehran’s international oil trade and bankrupt the regime. They come as the Trump administration engages in negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program—negotiations that have sparked concerns among supporters of the "maximum pressure" sanctions campaign over mixed messages regarding Tehran's ability to enrich uranium under a prospective deal.
While most of the Trump administration’s recent sanctions have targeted Tehran’s crude oil business, Emamjomeh primarily moves LPG—a lesser known but still hugely profitable sector.
For more than a decade, the Treasury Department says, Emamjomeh and his son have "owned and operated an LPG sales, transportation, and delivery network using multiple Iran and UAE-based companies." One of these companies, Caspian Petrochemical FZE, is part of an international network "that has exported thousands of shipments of LPG from Iran to Pakistan" and conducted "tens of millions of dollars in business on behalf of Persian Gulf Petrochemical Industry Commercial Co. (PGPICC)," an IRGC affiliate that was sanctioned in 2019.
The elder Emamjomeh owned the UAE-based Pearl Petrochemical FZE until October 2024, when he passed ownership down to his son. That company, which was also included in the latest sanctions package, drew headlines in June 2024 when its TINOS I ship attempted to load LPG products from the United States and sell them in China.
Emamjomeh’s son, Meisam, currently serves as the director and chief executive officer of the U.K.-based Worldwide LP Limited, which maintains ties with his father’s Iran-based companies, according to the Treasury Department.
Nine additional Emamjomeh-controlled companies, including one with a monopoly on the National Iranian Gas Company’s LPG deliveries, will now face sanctions: Parsa Fidar Paydar Engineering and Technology Company, Nilgon Parsa Caspian Shipping Company, Arsa Gas Company, Pasar Gas Company, Petro Parsa Caspian Iranian Company, Pasar Gas Novin Trading Company, Parsa Salakh Qeshm Industrial Complex, Parsa Trabar Caspian International Transportation Company, and Parsa Trabar Persia International Transportation Company.
Under the sanctions, all American property and interest in property belonging to Emamjomeh and his son will be blocked, including their TINOS I ship. The action essentially freezes all U.S.-based assets from moving unless Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control gives the green light, which is unlikely in the near term.
"This revenue funds Iran’s malign behavior, particularly the regime’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs and its support for terrorist proxies," the State Department said in a statement. "Iranian companies continually adapt their networks to evade sanctions and sell to foreign customers. The United States is committed to sanctioning Iranian firms that fund the regime's destabilizing conduct."
President Donald Trump is reportedly meeting on Tuesday with Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, a man who, as Qatar's prime minister, is a major financial backer of both Hamas and Harvard University.
Al Thani, who also serves as Qatar's foreign minister and is a member of the ruling family that also includes Qatar's emir, arrived in the United States this week for meetings with senior federal officials. They include Trump himself, according to reports.
The meeting comes one day after Harvard sued the Trump administration for freezing more than $2 billion in grants and contracts to the Ivy League university. It also comes as Qatari officials attempt to revive a Hamas ceasefire deal. Al Thani, in his role as Qatar's second most powerful official, is a top ally of both parties.
Qatar has given Harvard $3.8 million since 2020, federal records show. It is also one of Hamas's primary funders and sheltered the terrorist group's leaders in the wake of Oct. 7. The gulf state has a major lobbying presence in Washington, D.C., and has spent billions trying to influence U.S. policy over the past two decades.
The Trump administration has mulled sanctions against some Qatari nationals as part of an effort to crack down on pro-Hamas campus groups, the Washington Free Beaconreported last month. At the same time, some administration officials and members of Trump’s inner circle have also signaled their support for Qatar. Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff recently called Qatar an "ally of the United States" and said it has "moderated quite a bit."
Trump ally Bernard Kerik, the former New York Police Department commissioner, registered as a foreign agent of Qatar earlier this month, according to lobbying disclosure records.
Rep. Eric Swalwell’s campaign spent tens of thousands of dollars after the election on childcare expenses for the California Democrat, raising potential ethics concerns for a lawmaker who has been accused in the past of using his campaign war chest as a "personal piggybank."
According to campaign finance records, the Swalwell campaign spent $42,321 on "childcare" from Nov. 8, three days after the election, to March 31. The payments, which are roughly equal to the median American annual income, went to two of the Swalwell family’s longtime babysitters, and Bambini Play & Learning Center, a Washington, D.C.-area Spanish language immersion preschool where tuition is around $3,000 per month.
The payments raise potential ethics concerns for a lawmaker who has been accused by government watchdog groups in the past of using his campaign warchest as a "personal piggybank."
The Federal Election Commission permits political candidates to use campaign funds to cover the costs of childcare and babysitters, but only for expenses incurred in connection with their campaigns. But the post-election period is typically slow for most lawmakers, many of whom take vacation after the brutal months of the campaign trail or re-focus attention on legislative duties.
"If the spending is not directly related to campaign activities, then it is a personal expense—and it is illegal to use campaign funds for personal expenses," said Kendra Arnold, executive director of the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust, a conservative watchdog group. She noted there is little oversight on campaign spending, making it difficult to determine whether the expenditures are above-board.
"However, where there is significant spending after an election or consistently high payments, these facts may indicate it is not a campaign related expense and is instead a personal one," Arnold said.
Swalwell’s childcare expenditures work out to roughly $2,800 spent per month on each of the Democrat’s three children. It also works out to nearly $300 spent per day.
Swalwell makes nearly $180,000 from his congressional salary. He also was paid $31,815 for "consulting services" by Smersh LLC., a media production company founded by several former CIA officers. Swalwell’s wife reported between $100,000 and $1 million from her business, according to Swalwell’s most recent financial disclosure.
Swalwell has been accused before of using his campaign to pay for personal expenses. One conservative watchdog group filed an FEC complaint against Swalwell over his elaborate spending on luxury hotels, swanky restaurants, and luxury car services, accusing the Democrat of using his campaign coffers as his "personal piggybank." Swalwell’s campaign paid $50,000 for tickets to last year’s Super Bowl between the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers, which Swalwell, a 49ers super fan, attended with his wife, the Washington Free Beaconreported. Swalwell’s campaign paid $540 to a babysitter days after the big game, though it is unclear whether that was related to the Super Bowl.
Swalwell has defended the elaborate spending as legitimate campaign expenditures. Swalwell said in 2021, amid questions about his campaign payments for babysitters, that campaign funds were used to cover childcare costs "while at campaign events." The FEC ruled in favor of Swalwell in 2022 after he sought permission to use campaign money to pay for "overnight childcare" incurred while he was out of town for campaign events.
Swalwell, who is perhaps best known for his relationship with a female Chinese spy named Fang Fang, also sought authorization to use campaign funds to pay for childcare while he traveled overseas in connection with his congressional duties, the Free Beaconreported. The commission denied that request. Republican commissioner Trey Trainor blasted Swalwell’s request, saying he’s "never seen campaign donors treated so disrespectfully."
It is unclear what campaign events Swalwell attended after the November election. Swalwell does not publish a schedule of his campaign stops, and his congressional and campaign offices did not respond to requests for comment.
Swalwell has relied heavily on his campaign for years to pay babysitters. The campaign spent more on childcare than any candidate in the House or Senate from Nov. 6 to Dec. 31, according to campaign records. He was trailed by Sen. Ruben Gallego (D., Ariz.), who famously rode shirtless on camels with Swalwell in the Qatari desert during a congressional junket in 2021. Gallego’s campaign paid $6,189 in December to Au Pair in America, which matches host families with live-in babysitters as part of an "international student exchange program."
A Minnesota prosecutor is allowing state employee Dylan Adams to skirt criminal charges for vandalizing Tesla cars and causing more than $20,000 in damages, even after surveillance footage caught Adams vandalizing the vehicles.
While police described the video as clear evidence that Adams committed felony-level vandalism, Hennepin county attorney Mary Moriarty (D.) declined to charge the 33-year-old, a program consultant at Democratic governor Tim Walz's Department of Human Services. Surveillance footage shows Adams keying six parked Teslas and stripping their paint—just weeks after Walz mocked the electric car company, saying that watching Tesla stock fall gave him "a little boost during the day."
Adams is not a political appointee, a Walz administration spokesperson said.
Instead of facing charges, Adams will be enrolled in a diversion program for first-time, low-level offenders, which the county attorney's office said helps "ensure the individual keeps their job and can pay restitution, as well as reducing the likelihood of repeat offenses."
The prosecutor's decision comes as Tesla has seen a nationwide surge in vandalism and arson over CEO Elon Musk's role in the Trump administration. Attorney General Pam Bondi has called these attacks "domestic terrorism" and announced last month that three individuals accused of targeting Tesla facilities with Molotov cocktails are facing up to 20 years in prison.
Moriarty became Hennepin County's top prosecutor in January 2023 following donations from groups such as Faith in Minnesota, which has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding from Democratic megadonor George Soros's Open Society Foundations. She has come under scrutiny for repeatedly refusing to prosecute accused rapists and killers, according to the New York Post. In her first week on the job, for example, Moriarty dismissed charges against a 35-year-old man accused of raping a teenage girl, citing attorney misconduct.
Minneapolis police chief Brian O'Hara said his department is "frustrated" by the county attorney's decision.
"The Minneapolis Police Department did its job. It identified and investigated a crime trend, identified, and arrested a suspect, and presented a case file to the Hennepin County Attorney Office for consideration of charges," O'Hara told Minneapolis outlet KARE.
"This case impacted at least six different victims and totaled over $20,000 in damages," O'Hara continued. "Any frustration related to the charging decision of the Hennepin County Attorney should be directed solely at her office."
The National Security Council categorically rejected claims surfaced in a news report that a senior staffer previously worked for the Israeli government before subsequent calls from anti-Semitic groups, like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), emerged for that staffer’s dismissal.
Merav Ceren, now helping to steer White House policy for Israel and Iran, is a "patriotic American," Brian Hughes, a deputy national security adviser, said in a statement provided to the Washington Free Beacon. He was responding to assertions first leveled by Ryan Grim and Saagar Enjeti on the Substack site, Drop Site News, that Ceren had "formerly worked for the Israeli Ministry of Defense." She had not, Hughes said.
"Merav was never employed by the Israeli Defense Ministry, let alone was she an Israeli official. She did a policy fellowship studying resource management in the West Bank, which is overseen by the Israeli Ministry of Defense, which required her to liaison with them for her research," Hughes said. "She is a patriotic American committed to implementing President Trump’s agenda, and these lies are efforts to undermine the President’s agenda."
Ceren is a longtime Republican policy hand in Washington, D.C., and has previously worked for Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) and Rep. James Comer (R., Ky.).
Drop Site News, founded by longtime progressives Grim and Jeremy Scahill, beats a consistently anti-Israel drum. Its news report was based on a 2016 biography for Ceren posted to the website of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which erroneously stated that "she worked at Israel’s Ministry of Defense."
The report reverberated across the anti-Israel corners of the internet. CAIR demanded the Trump administration drop her from the National Security Council. The non-profit has faced accusations of financing Islamic terrorism and was named by the FBI as an unindicted co-conspirator in a 2008 Hamas financing probe. Just days after Hamas's Oct. 7 massacre, a top CAIR leader said the slaughter of Jews made him "happy"—prompting the Biden administration to cut ties with the organization.
The Quincy Institute, an isolationist think tank funded by George Soros and Charles Koch that advocates for normalized relations with Iran, also seized on the report, labeling Ceren as a "former Israeli Ministry of Defense official."
It's not Drop Site's first brush with misinformation. The website has also publicly cast doubt on widely substantiated accounts of Hamas's sexual violence on Oct 7. In July 2024, Drop Site published a gushing interview with Hamas leaders, calling the massacre a "righteous rebellion."
The ordeal comes as Israel weighs a strike on Iran's nuclear facilities. At the same time, the United States is embroiled in negotiations over a second nuclear deal with Tehran.
Ashley Biden's charity has a $500,000 discrepancy in its books, a watchdog alleged in a complaint filed with the IRS on Monday.
During the height of her father’s presidency in 2023, Ashley Biden launched a walk-in trauma recovery center in Philadelphia equipped with infrared saunas to help women overcome mental health challenges. Known as the Women’s Wellness Spa(ce), the former first daughter’s charity supposedly got off the ground with at least $500,000 in seed funding in 2023. Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s Archewell Foundation and the Silicon Valley Community Foundation each reported in their tax forms granting $250,000 to Ashley Biden’s charitable venture in 2023, figures that should have been reflected in the Women’s Wellness Spa(ce)’s Form 990 tax filing.
But the Women’s Wellness Spa(ce) told a much different story to the IRS, reporting in its 2023 tax filing that it received just $170,296 from all sources that year, and that it didn’t receive any contributions from a single source greater than $5,000, seemingly contradicting the financial reporting of its two largest benefactors. Ashley Biden signed the document as the charity’s president under penalty of perjury.
To Paul Kamenar, an attorney with the National Legal and Policy Center watchdog group, the documents show that Ashley Biden’s charity clearly violated IRS rules by failing to disclose $500,000 in contributions it received in 2023. Kamenar filed a complaint on behalf of the watchdog group on Monday demanding the IRS audit the Women’s Wellness Spa(ce) to discover if it failed to report any other grants in 2023 and possibly impose sanctions upon the former first daughter for violating the agency’s financial disclosure rules.
"Ashley Biden’s failure to disclose to the IRS receiving $500,000 in grants in 2023 raises the question of what other contributions is she hiding," Kamenar told the Washington Free Beacon.
Tax malfeasance is somewhat of an endemic problem among former president Joe Biden’s children. Ashley Biden’s brother, Hunter Biden, unlawfully claimed tens of thousands of dollars in payments to prostitutes and sex clubs as legitimate business expenses during the 2010s when he was addicted to crack cocaine. Hunter Biden in September faced up to 17 years in prison after pleading guilty to failing to pay at least $1.4 million in taxes between 2016 and 2019, but those charges were wiped clean from his record after his father granted him a blanket pardon for any crimes he may have committed since 2014.
Joe Biden also issued blanket pardons for his brothers, James and Francis, and his sister, Valerie, and their spouses. Ashley Biden was one of the few members of Joe Biden’s immediate family who didn’t receive a pardon from the former president.
An accountant for Ashley Biden’s charity, Greg Mangasarian, told the Free Beacon that the Archewell Foundation and Silicon Valley Community Foundation pledged their respective $250,000 grants in 2023 but didn’t distribute the bulk of the funds until 2024.
"The Women’s Wellness Space received $150,000 in 2023 and will report the balance in 2024," Mangasarian said.
Be that as it may, Kamenar said, the Women’s Wellness Spa(ce) uses the accrual method of accounting, which means it's required to disclose grants when they’re committed, not when they’re received. The watchdog said Ashley Biden could possibly have to pay a fine if the IRS confirms his assessment that she made errors in her charity’s 2023 tax return.
Archewell and the Silicon Valley Community Foundation did not return requests for comment.
Markle, a close confidant of Joe Biden’s sister, Valerie Biden Owens, was a vocal supporter of the former president during his successful election and has long been rumored to be eyeing a future career in politics, the New York Postreported. Kamenar said her $250,000 contribution to Ashley Biden’s charity in 2023, when Biden was committed to running for a second term, could have been intended to indirectly curry favor with the then-president.
Kamenar isn’t the only watchdog raising questions about Markle’s contribution to Ashley Biden’s charity. The Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at the Heritage Foundation in February called for "significant scrutiny" of the donation and whether Markle and Prince Harry gave the funds to find a way into Joe Biden’s inner circle, the Daily Mailreported.
Kamenar’s complaint Monday builds upon another IRS complaint he filed against Ashley Biden’s charity in March alleging she vastly overreported the amount of time she spent working for Women’s Wellness Spa(ce) and failed to disclose all the members of its board of directors in its 2023 tax return.
CBS Studios will settle a case brought by a script coordinator who accused the company of using illegal racial quotas to discriminate against straight white men.
Lawyers for both sides informed the court of the agreement on Friday, according to the Hollywood Reporter. The case was filed in California by Brian Beneker, a script coordinator for the TV show SEAL Team, who alleged that "he was repeatedly denied a staff writer job after the implementation of an 'illegal policy of race and sex balancing.'"
Under that policy, Beneker said, CBS Studios instituted hiring quotas for "less qualified applicants from certain groups, namely those who identify as minorities, LGBTQ, or women," according to the Hollywood Reporter.
News of the settlement announcement comes as the Federal Communications Commission investigates DEI policies in media companies. While FCC chairman Brendan Carr said in a February letter to Comcast and subsidiary NBCUniversal that he is investigating whether the companies' DEI policies are discriminatory, NBC is clinging to racial quotas in hiring, a source told the Washington Free Beacon late last month.
Paramount, CBS Studios' parent company, is seeking FCC approval of a proposed merger with Skydance. The commission is also investigating CBS News's decision to edit an October interview with then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris in what critics have called an attempt to make Harris's answers sound more coherent.
While both sides have not disclosed the terms of the agreement, Beneker, who was represented by a group founded by White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, sought at least $500,000, the position of full-time producer on SEAL Team, and a ban on hiring discrimination at the company, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
Miller's boss, President Donald Trump, has cracked down on DEI policies at a wide variety of institutions, including universities, law firms, and the military.
Major media companies such as Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Paramount have started backing away from DEI amid the crackdown, the Hollywood Reporter noted, with Paramount scrapping "staffing goals tied to race, ethnicity, sex, and gender" and the collection of "gender and diversity data for most U.S. job applicants."
The New York Police Department arrested a keffiyeh-clad Columbia University alumna who set up a tent outside a main campus gate on Monday afternoon. She was engaged in an anti-Israel protest alongside roughly two dozen masked agitators, including about 10 who chained themselves to the entryway.
The group was demanding the release of pro-Hamas Columbia activists Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi from Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody. The student and alumni groups behind the protest also called on the Ivy League university to open its campus gates, disclose its financial investments, divest "from companies profiting from Israel’s genocide and apartheid of the Palestinian people," and establish itself as a "sanctuary campus."
HAPPENING NOW: Several Columbia students and alumni have chained themselves to a university gate pic.twitter.com/PGpvNV2uMm
The activists held signs that read "Free Our Prisoners, Free Them All," "ICE off campus," and displayed a banner with their demands. They also tied cards with the names of Palestinians killed during Israel’s war on Hamas to the gate, chanted "There is only solution, intifada revolution," "We want divestment, now, now, now," "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be Arab," and loudly banged on drums.
Chants of "Intifada revolution" at the protest outside of @Columbia’s gates. Not really clear what "intifada" has to do with opening the gates, but maaaaybe these protests aren’t as "principled" and "pro-peace" as people claim they are… pic.twitter.com/tCf36AmkAj
— Columbia Jewish & Israeli Students (@CUJewsIsraelis) April 21, 2025
The protest and arrest comes as Columbia struggles to rein in campus anti-Semitism, which has caused leadershipinstability and cost the university $430 million in federal funding. The university’s new acting president, Claire Shipman, promised to enforce policy changes, including restrictions on masking, protests that disrupt classes, and consistent discipline in an effort to restore that funding.
A Columbia spokeswoman told the Washington Free Beacon that Public Safety asked the protesters for identification, but didn’t say if they complied as university policy requires. Columbia’s Public Safety cut the locks after about an hour, though the protesters remained.
"We are monitoring a disruption involving about 10 individuals on Amsterdam Avenue chained to the campus gates. Public Safety has cut the locks, and individuals have been asked for identification. All chained individuals remained outside the gates, and NYPD is on site monitoring the small demonstration that remains outside the gates," the spokeswoman said.
"We will follow all applicable policies and procedures for addressing potential violations. This small disruption has not impeded the ability of our students to attend classes as normal; all scheduled campus activities have proceeded as planned," she continued. "Our focus is on ensuring a safe campus for our community and preserving our core mission to teach, create, and advance knowledge."
A Columbia senior, Eden Yadegar, however, said the protest—which took place near several academic buildings—disrupted most of her class on the seventh floor of Hamilton Hall. The protest began at noon and was still ongoing as of 6 p.m.
"The Palestine Solidarity Coalition protestors’ ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be Arab’ chants and calls for divestment from the Jewish state disrupted almost the entirety of my 75-minute class," Yadegar, who previously led the university’s Students Supporting Israel group, said. "Their right to protest does not infringe on the rights of others to learn, work, and study—which is the exact mission of the university that Columbia claims to want to re-center. But because Columbia has allowed many of the organizers of these spectacles to continue doing so without holding them accountable, it’s no wonder such disruptions have become commonplace."
Protesters in attendance Monday included Barnard College student and anti-Israel activist Maryam Iqbal, who was arrested during last spring’s illegal encampments at Columbia, and Layla Saliba, a social work graduate student and organizer with Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD)—one of the most notorious anti-Semitic campus groups. In fighting her suspension for participating in the terror-tied "Palestinian Resistance 101," event, Saliba sought the counsel of Stanley Cohen, an attorney who had been acquainted with former Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.
This is the second protest this semester in which Columbia students attached themselves to a campus gate. On April 2, four students used chains and padlocks to secure themselves to the St. Paul’s Chapel Gate while demanding the names of the trustees who "collaborated" with the Trump administration that resulted in Khalil’s arrest. The protesters chanted "globalize the intifada" as a crowd of prospective students passed by and held signs that read "Pigs aren’t kosher" and "Israel bombs, Columbia pays." Later in the evening, a second group chained themselves to a nearby campus fence.
Khalil has helped lead CUAD, which facilitated last spring’s illegal campus encampments, has publicly endorsed Hamas's "armed resistance," and routinelyengages in anarchism. The group also encourages its members to become involved with a designated terror financier and has hosted speakers on campus who have endorsed terrorism against Jews. A federal judge ruled on April 11 that Khalil—who has been in ICE custody since March 9 after the Trump administration revoked his visa and green card—can be deported.
Mahdawi, a Columbia student who was expected to enroll in a university graduate program in the fall, also had his green card revoked by the Trump administration and was taken into custody last Monday. The campus radical has repeatedly expressed support for Hamas, saying he empathizes with the terrorist group and argued that it’s "a product of the Israeli occupation."
Harvard University filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration on Monday, arguing that the administration violated its constitutional rights when it froze more than $2 billion in Harvard grants and contracts. Without that money, the lawsuit states, Harvard "would need to operate at a significantly reduced level."
The move, which Harvard president Alan Garber announced in a letter to colleagues, sets up a high-profile legal battle that is likely to have far-reaching implications for President Donald Trump's efforts to take on higher education.
As part of those efforts, the administration has slashed or frozen billions in federal grants and contracts to universities across the country. Harvard's attorneys argue that the administration's actions violate a federal law that governs the disbursal of grants and loans which stipulates that the "termination of or refusal to grant or continue" federal financial assistance is meant to be "a remedy of last resort."
"The Government made no effort to follow those procedures—nor the procedures provided for in Defendants' own agency regulations—before freezing Harvard's federal funding," it continues. Harvard's full complaint, filed in U.S. district court in Massachusetts, can be read here.
The lawsuit also argues there is little connection between the Trump administration's stated goal—compelling universities to crack down on campus anti-Semitism—and the means it is using to achieve that end. That is, slashing funding that mostly goes to scientific and medical research. The cuts, Harvard's attorneys argue, impact "medical, scientific, technological, and other research" that "aims to save American lives." The administration "has not—and cannot—identify any rational connection between anti-Semitism concerns" and those cuts, according to the complaint, which states that Harvard is committed to "combatting anti-Semitism, one of the most insidious forms of bigotry" on its own accord.
Harvard's complaint also argues that the school was already tackling the problem of campus anti-Semitism, citing a number of "changes to clarify the scope of prohibited conduct aimed at Jewish and Israeli students." It points to the adoption in January of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's definition of anti-Semitism, though Harvard adopted that definition only as a part of a settlement with Jewish students who had sued the school over "severe and pervasive" campus anti-Semitism. In another example, Harvard credits itself with "releasing a statement clarifying Harvard's values" and "fostering constructive dialogue on campus."
The 51-page complaint names as defendants the various departments participating in the Trump administration's anti-Semitism task force, including Justice, Energy, Health and Human Services, Education, and the General Services Administration. It argues that the task force can only implement a funding freeze as a result of prolonged negotiations. "Before taking punitive action, the law requires that the federal government engage with us about the ways we are fighting and will continue to fight anti-Semitism," Garber's letter states. "Instead, the government's April 11 demands seek to control whom we hire and what we teach."
Aidan Maese-Czeropski, the former Democratic aide best known for being filmed on the receiving end of a backdoor sex romp in a Senate hearing room in 2023, is finally speaking out about the scandal that cost him his job and prompted him to flee the country.
The Washington Free Beacon exclusively reported in February that Maese-Czeropski had moved to Australia to launch a new career as an independent sex worker who posts pornographic photos and videos on the internet. This week the disgraced Democrat, who was a legislative aide to Sen. Ben Cardin (D., Md.) when he was busted for (allegedly) being sodomized in the Hart Senate Office Building, spilled his guts in an interview with Gay Sydney News.
Maese-Czeropski said he was a "catatonic mess" and suffered a "total mental breakdown" in the days after the scandal broke. A therapist reportedly told the accidental porn star he had post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. "Mentally, I spent a little bit in the psych ward after the fact because it was just, it's overwhelming, you know?" Maese-Czeropski said in a video posted on Instagram. "No one would hire me. Everyone in D.C. knew me, and it was kind of gross and horrifying because I’m not someone who likes to be in the public spotlight at all." (Fact check: He films himself having sex for money and regularly posts pornographic content on his public social media accounts.)
X/@TheSenateTwink
After struggling to find a new job in D.C. (for obvious reasons), Maese-Czeropski bought a one-way ticket to Cape Town, South Africa, where met a New Zealand woman who eventually persuaded him to move to Sydney, Australia. "She told me, 'Aiden, you should move to Sydney, you would love it there, you would fit right in, you could get a fresh start,'" he said. "I love it here and I'm glad that I took that jump, took that risk." He plans to stay in Sydney, where the gays aren't "mean" like they are in New York, for the rest of his life, and dreams of one day opening a pigeon sanctuary. "I'm very into birds," he said. "I love pigeons."
Maese-Czeropski revealed that he "didn't write a single word" of the statement posted on his LinkedIn account after the scandal broke in December 2023. He explained that Cardin's communications director had sent him a pre-written statement, which described the "difficult time" he was having while being "attacked for who I love to pursue a political agenda," and insisted he "would never disrespect my workplace." (Fact check: He would.)
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Some have argued that Maese-Czeropski was treated differently because of his homosexuality, but he disagreed. Anything involving "sex in the Senate" was going to "go viral regardless," he said while comparing himself to Monica Lewinsky, the White House intern best known for giving Bill Clinton a blowjob. "I've noticed that when you have sex scandals, the passive partner tends to take more of the blame," he said. "If you look at Bill Clinton [and] Monica Lewinsky, Bill was doing way worse shit than Monica, but Monica seemed to suffer much worse blowback." Maese-Czeropski said he was glad his costar in the backdoor sex tape, a German grad student, did not suffer the same consequences, but lamented the double standard.
Maese-Czeropski said he "got some flack" after creating a profile on OnlyFans, the website for porn influencers, after moving to Australia. He did so in order to earn a living "down under," but that's not the only reason. "It's also about my mental health," he said. "It's also about my family and their mental health. I just needed a lot of time to process the scandal because it was very, very difficult." Sometimes referred to as the "Senate Twink," Maese-Czeropski has come to embrace the moniker in his new career as a sex worker. Urban Dictionary defines "twink" as a "gay or effeminate man ... usually a 'bottom,'" or "the gay answer to the blonde bimbo cheerleader." Urban Dictionary defines "bottom" as the "male who receives the anal penetration in gay sex."
Arizona Democratic Party chairman Robert Branscomb II accused his party's U.S. senators of trying to intimidate and coerce him, prompting sharp rebukes from state and federal officials and pointing to a deep rupture in the state party.
Branscomb alleged in a Saturday morning email to party members that Arizona senators Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego, both Democrats, "threatened" and "intimidated" him after he appointed an executive director who is not their preferred choice. According to Branscomb, one of the senators vowed to "no longer support or participate in state party fundraising," while the other told Branscomb to reverse the decision or "face consequences."
Within hours, Arizona's Democratic officials—in a statement sent by party vice chair Aaron Marquez—fired back. The senators—along with Governor Katie Hobbs, Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, and Attorney General Kris Mayes—said that "the Chair has lost our trust" and slammed Branscomb's accusation as "the kind of bad-faith response we've come to expect from leadership," according to Arizona's 12News.
The public spat comes as Arizona Democrats struggle to regroup ahead of the 2026 elections. In 2024, the party lost ground in both chambers of the State Legislature, while President Donald Trump flipped Arizona, winning the battleground state by 5.5 percentage points.
Branscomb, who accused a Kelly aide of making a racially charged remark about his election, wrote in his email that "no state party chair should be threatened or intimidated by any elected official for making a decision in the best interest of our party."
"The idea that both Arizona Senators would withdraw support because I did not choose their preferred candidate is not only troubling—it's a threat to the integrity and independence of our party," Branscomb continued. "I will not be coerced, and I will not be silenced."
Branscomb became chairman in January after defeating incumbent Yolanda Bejarano, who was backed by the governor and both senators. Removing Branscomb would require a two-thirds vote of the Democratic State Committee.
Cornell's slippery Slope Day: At the end of each school year, thousands of Cornell undergraduates flock to Ho Plaza to enjoy a concert that has featured A-list headliners.
This year’s featured entertainment, the singer Kehlani, isn’t bringing the fun. Pro-Israel students and parents are outraged over the selection of the R&B artist, who has called for "intifada" and said, "It's f— Israel, it's f— Zionism, and it's also f— a lot of y'all too," and posted statements to Instagram like, "DISMANTLE ISRAEL. ERADICATE ZIONISM," "Long live resistance in all of its forms," and "No one should feel comfortable or safe until Zionism is extinguished."
Cornell president Michael Kotlikoff acknowledged concerns from the student group Cornellians for Israel—but said it's too late to make a change. The university was not aware of Kehlani's statements when it first began negotiations for the performance in October, he said, and there's no longer time to secure an "acceptable or appropriate" headliner. Oh well.
"The concert is funded by Cornell's Student Activities Fee, which is mandatory for all undergraduates. It sat at $384 per student for the 2024-25 school year and will rise to $424 next year," our Jessica Schwalb reports. "Undergraduates cannot opt out of paying it. … Last year, about half of the $715,000 budget—$350,000—was allocated to talent."
Facing the music: Raphael Warnock's housing situation, which has him living rent-free in a lavish $1 million Atlanta home thanks to the Ebenezer Baptist Church, as the Free Beacon reported, is a great deal for the senator. But it may violate Senate ethics rules, according to a new watchdog complaint obtained by our Andrew Kerr.
Those rules "limit how much lawmakers can accept from outside employment," writes Kerr. In other words, Warnock's free housing deal is only kosher "if it's customary for Ebenezer Baptist Church to provide free luxury homes to its part-time pastors and if it's something that the church provided to Warnock independently from his position as a senator."
"Those requirements 'have not been met,'" according to the ethics complaint from the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust, which notes "that the value of Warnock's housing benefits appears to far exceed the part-time nature of his work with the church."
More than a few bad apples: In its push to spur change at top institutions of higher education, the Trump administration has targeted by name certain programs and schools, like Columbia's Center for Palestine Studies and Harvard's François-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Center for Health and Human Rights.
The Free Beacon's Jessica Costescu takes a look inside the latter. The center, which is housed within the School of Public Health and is the driving force behind Harvard's historic partnership with terror-tied Birzeit University in the West Bank, hosts "a half-dozen faculty members and affiliates who have defended Hamas's Oct. 7 attack and accused Israel of 'genocide' and 'terrorism.'" Among them is the center's director, former New York health commissioner Mary T. Bassett, who "sent a message to the center's students and faculty just one week after Oct. 7 accusing Israel of 'potential genocide'" and penned an article for Qatar’s Al Jazeera in February arguing that Israel aims to kill 'all Palestinians in Gaza’ and calling on the Jewish state to pay 'reparations.'"
Bassett and the cast of FXB fellows who work underneath her "reflect the persistent nature of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic activism at Harvard," writes Costescu. "Visiting scientists and fellows like Abdulrahim and Muhareb are not considered full-time faculty members and typically serve in temporary roles. But as director, Bassett, a former Columbia professor who has held the position since 2018, plays a leading role in filling those fellowships and driving the center's direction."
The Trump administration has demanded Harvard turn to an external body to review the center, and it’s not backing down. Its anti-Semitism task force plans to pull an additional $1 billion in federal funds to Harvard over that demand and others, the Wall Street Journal reported, which would bring the total amount of frozen funds above $3 billion.
Here we go again: The Omani foreign ministry says the next phase of talks between Iran and the United States aims to seal "a fair, enduring and binding deal which will ensure Iran [is] completely free of nuclear weapons and sanctions, and maintaining its ability to develop peaceful nuclear energy." Where have we heard that before?
One week after self-described "knucklehead" Tim Walz mocked Tesla's plummeting stock price, a fiscal policy analyst for Walz's state government in Minnesota was busted "for allegedly causing approximately $20,000 in damage while vandalizing Teslas," according to the New York Post.
Environmentalists make the best villains: The Washington Post wants you to drink"pea milk," which it says "emits a fraction of the planet-warming gases of cow's milk production." No thanks.
When it comes to the lavish $1 million Atlanta home where Sen. Raphael Warnock has lived rent-free since 2023, the Georgia Democrat can’t expect to have his cake and eat it too, an ethics watchdog alleged in a complaint filed Monday.
Warnock’s lavish DeKalb County home came equipped with a plethora of luxury accommodations, including a 100-bottle wine fridge, a bluetooth-enabled cooking range, and remote-controlled privacy curtains. The senator hasn’t paid a penny out of his own pocket to live there because the church where he serves as a part-time pastor is footing the bill, the Washington Free Beaconreported. It’s a great deal for Warnock, but it may violate Senate ethics rules that limit how much lawmakers can accept from outside employment, the ethics watchdog Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT) alleged in a complaint to the Senate Ethics Committee.
"This is a matter of plain common sense," FACT executive director Kendra Arnold said in the complaint. "It is difficult to fathom [how] any citizen could look at this situation (a U.S. Senator being a part-time employee of an organization that happens to buy him a million-dollar house to live in for free after he was elected to Congress, and after which he sells his own house) and not think something potentially very wrong is afoot."
In her complaint, Arnold said Warnock’s free luxury housing arrangement likely violates the Ethics in Government Act, which could carry a range of sanctions for the Georgia Democrat including public reprimand, fines, or censure. She said Senate ethics rules only allow for Warnock’s free housing deal if it’s customary for Ebenezer Baptist Church to provide free luxury homes to its part-time pastors and if it’s something the church provided to Warnock independently from his position as a senator.
Those requirements "have not been met," Arnold said in her complaint, noting that the value of Warnock’s housing benefit appears to far exceed the part-time nature of his work with the church.
"Especially given the limited amount of time Senator Warnock has for outside employment and the $31,815.12 annual salary he receives from the church in addition to the housing, it appears clear that the housing is excessive and unreasonable for the services he is actually performing," Arnold wrote.
Arnold’s belief that Warnock’s housing benefit is excessive is shared by Dr. Albert Paul Brinson, a former associate of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who was ordained at Ebenezer Baptist Church by the civil rights icon in 1965. Brinson said during an interview with a local activist in March that King "would have never endorsed" church funds being used to facilitate luxury living for its pastor. Brinson said Ebenezer Baptist Church’s housing allowance was designed to provide modest accommodations for its pastors.
Warnock’s financial entanglements with Ebenezer Baptist Church have been a consistent political headache for the Georgia Democrat. During his 2022 reelection campaign, Warnock came under fire for accepting a $7,417-per-month tax-free housing allowance from the church to cover his Atlanta living expenses, an arrangement that enabled him to exceed the Senate’s outside income limitations. At the same time the church underwrote Warnock’s living expenses, however, it also owned a low-income Atlanta apartment building that tried to evict residents during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic for as little as $28.55 in past-due rent, the Free Beaconreported.
The circumstances of the church’s purchase of Warnock’s luxury DeKalb County home in October 2022 are also suspect, Arnold said. Ebenezer Baptist Church purchased the luxury home just a few months before Warnock secured his reelection bid that year and before he purchased his own $1.15 million townhome in Washington, D.C., in January 2023. Warnock then sold his personal Atlanta home shortly after moving into the church’s luxury house. The timing, Arnold said, "suggests his position as a Senator was a consideration in providing this specific housing," the watchdog said.
Even if the Senate Ethics Committee clears Warnock of any wrongdoing for accepting free housing from his church in lieu of the $7,417-per-month he received during his first Senate term, Arnold said he would run into another problem: The Georgia Democrat didn’t disclose the value of his free luxury housing in his 2023 financial disclosure in what she said is a violation of the Ethics in Government Act. "There is simply no contrary argument that it is not disclosable," Arnold said.
"One must ask, if the laws written do not prohibit this particular situation or, at the bare minimum, at least merit a mere investigation, then what were they even written for?" Arnold said. "It is inarguable that the known facts do not appear to comply with the Senate Ethics rules, whether the Senate Ethics Committee will act upon it, enforce the law, and maintain the public’s confidence is another question."
Warnock’s office did not return a request for comment.
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