Anthony Fauci Takes the Fifth

 

Rand Paul has long been out to get Dr. Anthony Fauci, and now as a member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, he finally has his chance. President Biden pardoned Fauci, but a pardon doesn’t cover lying to Congress, so Fauci has invoked the Fifth Amendment more than a hundred times because he can’t tell the truth without incriminating himself. The committee has split along predictable lines, with sharp questioning from republicans and something close to sainthood being conferred by democrats. While Ohio’s Bernie Moreno excoriates Fauci, Illinois Senator Dick Durbin posts this:

Remember when post-Covid, yard signs appeared saying “I believe Dr. Fauci”? His word was gospel in democrat-run states, which followed his guidance on social distancing, masking, school closures and lockdowns, sometimes backed by policing so aggressive it made those states look almost authoritarian. Republican-run states were less heavy-handed but still adopted most of what Fauci recommended. Through it all, Fauci was a superstar and he clearly relished the attention. In response to criticism he famously said “I am the science” asserting that the criticisms directed at him are fundamentally “attacks on science.” He consistently said that his recommendations were evidence-based and stated that the scrutiny he faced is not just personal but posed a threat to the integrity of science itself.

At the time, I questioned the saintly Dr. Fauci and was roundly criticized for it. I had been writing a business column for the Knoxville News-Sentinel’s Sunday section for ten years. When Gannett bought the paper, the new editor moved my column to the Opinion page without telling me, then informed me I could quit if I didn’t like it. It was clear they didn’t like how I saw the world. So instead of business, I started writing opinion. My Covid piece took on the local health department’s Fauci-inspired mandates. I argued against school closures, citing research showing children were less susceptible to the disease and unlikely to transmit it. I listed every local mandate, said I could find no scientific basis for any of them, and called for them to be lifted. The paper, firmly in the keep-everyone-scared camp, refused to run it. I quit and posted the piece on my blog instead.

Time proved me right. Evidence later showed the mandates did little good and, in the case of school closures, real harm. Studies found scant difference in the incidence of Covid rates between Democrat-led states that followed Fauci’s guidance to the letter and Republican-led states that took a lighter touch. I never understood the bans and crowd limits on outdoor events, and I was glad my two home states, Georgia and Tennessee, at least declared turkey hunting as an approved outdoor activity. Since I was travelling from Knoxville to Atlanta to visit my mother I actually welcomed the absence of traffic in Atlanta.

What angered me most, though, was the shutdown of churches. When my mother died of natural causes at 101, we weren’t allowed an in-church service. We were limited to twenty people at her graveside. I suppose Covid only spread once a twenty-first person showed up. I will never forgive the city of Atlanta for denying the thousands of people whose lives she touched the chance to honor her passing and tell her goodbye.

Even a casual observer could see that the elderly, the obese, and those with underlying conditions were especially vulnerable to Covid, while the young and healthy were not. But Fauci was unwavering claiming all were equally at risk. Biden went along with it, and we all paid the price. Bad advice from a presidential advisor isn’t a crime. What looks far more serious is that Fauci may have lied about, and helped cover up, the origins of the disease. That brings us to gain-of-function research. Fauci has consistently denied the U.S. funded such research at the lab in Wuhan, yet it now appears the U.S. did fund experiments there. I’ve always found it hard to believe that Covid’s emergence in Wuhan was pure coincidence. Fauci maintained the virus came from an animal market while other scientists argued its molecular structure looked more like something engineered in a lab. 

So the questions remain. Why was the U.S. funding dangerous research in a Chinese lab in the first place? Did the disease originate there? Who is responsible? It’s no surprise Fauci is taking the Fifth. He was adamant in dismissing the lab-origin theory, yet his own diary now reportedly describes the U.S.-funded work in Wuhan as “gain of function.”

Why else would Fauci refuse to testify? As director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, he told the Senate in 2021, in response to questioning from Rand Paul, that the NIH “has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.” Fauci’s own diary and documents later released by the NIH contradict that statement, showing that NIH grants funded controversial gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Fauci clearly lied to the Congress for which he could go to jail (which is what Paul really wants).

I wonder if those yard signs will make a comeback, this time in support of Fauci’s decision to plead the Fifth.

BTW, what happened to Deborah Birx?

Just A Little More “Honest” Graft from Our Ethically Challenged President

During the president’s first term in office, his net worth actually fell. I guess he said “never again!” because this time around his fortune has grown by $3 billion in just his first year back in office. Forbes now puts his net worth at $7.3 billion, up from $4.3 billion in 2024. That $3 billion gain vaulted him 118 spots on the Forbes 400, where he now ranks No. 201. No president in American history has used the office to enrich himself as dramatically as this one has — and that figure doesn’t even count the parallel windfalls enjoyed by his sons, Jared Kushner and associates like Howard Lutnick.

So how do voters feel about all this? Predictably, the reaction is mixed. Some are outraged; others simply shrug. It’s no surprise that viewers interviewed on Morning Joe, a program on MS NOW, reacted with anger — and they did. But NPR found a different mood among Pennsylvania voters: about half said the president’s financial gains bothered them, while the other half didn’t seem to care much at all. One voter put it this way: “When it comes to ethics, moral and financial, I think that just about every politician is corrupt. So, the fact that he’s a known huckster — I mean, we’ve known that for years about him.” Another said, “This is the kind of thing that rich people do. They use money to make more money. All politicians do this kind of thing. They’re all corrupt.” A third added, “I am not saying it’s OK. I’m just not troubled by it because I just think it’s typical for politicians to increase their wealth while in office.” Others felt differently. One voter argued, “It is not the businessman Donald Trump who’s interacting. It is the president, Donald Trump, who’s using his powers in manipulative ways to draw something that is of his personal interest. And that to me is morally wrong, and that itself should be a problem — and is a problem to me.”  https://www.npr.org/2026/07/16/nx-s1-5895103/these-swing-voters-shrug-at-trump-earning-billions-last-year

I wonder how these same voters would react to the latest development that the president’s social media company, Truth Social, is now planning to sell faster access to his posts. Many dismiss the president’s posts as little more than frustrated rants, but some of them genuinely move markets — and speed matters to the investors and traders who watch them closely. A Wall Street Journal review of trading data found that in the single minute after two of the president’s posts about Iran last month, investors traded more than 2 million shares, triggering swings of over 2 percent in nearly two dozen energy and industrial stocks.

Trump Media has announced a new data feed, called Truth API, that will give institutional customers millisecond-level access to the president’s posts starting August 1. In its own words, the company says: “Markets already move on Truth Social posts. Truth API delivers a direct, licensed, real-time feed of the platform’s most market-moving Truths while advancing our strategy to monetize proprietary assets through a high-margin, recurring revenue stream.”

The price tag: $100,000 a month. In practice, this means Wall Street will be able to react to the president’s words in a fraction of a second — swinging energy and industrial stocks before ordinary investors even have a chance to refresh their news feed.

Large investment firms already run automated systems that monitor Truth Social, scan for market-moving keywords, and execute trades — often within a fraction of a second — initiating or unwinding positions accordingly. Trump Media’s new Truth API simply lets firms pay for a faster version of that same readout. Five firms have already signed up.

So how might those same voters feel about the president monetizing his own posts for personal profit? We already know how democrats feel. Senator Mark Warner of Virginia called the arrangement a form of self-dealing that would “create a two-tiered system for access to government information and threaten the credibility of U.S. capital markets.” Frankly, I find that response surprisingly restrained — I expected renewed calls for impeachment. As for republicans, there has been no reported reaction so far.

Financially, this is the most ethically challenged presidential administration in American history. Move over Teapot Dome! Yes, Presidents Clinton, Obama, and Biden all saw their personal wealth grow while in office. But those gains were largely indirect and out of public view. This president’s financial gains are happening in your face in plain sight — at least the portion we can actually see. And that raises the question: if this much is visible, how much more is hidden beneath the surface?

A Rare Smart Move by the Gutless DNC

I’ve called the DNC “gutless” for refusing to bar Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) members from its primaries, letting DSA radicals run against traditional democrats even though the DSA holds traditional Democrats in contempt. The party hasn’t had the will to exclude them outright. But it has now taken a modest step toward blocking another Bernie Sanders-style insurgency: naming South Carolina, rather than New Hampshire or Nevada, as the first primary state for the 2028 presidential race.

That choice matters. A DSA-aligned candidate — AOC, say — is unlikely to win a state that, in 2024, propelled Joe Biden past Sanders to the nomination. In South Carolina, as in much of the Deep South, the democratic electorate is dominated by black voters and college-educated white elites. With roughly sixty percent of South Carolina democrats Black, Jim Clyburn remains a kingmaker firmly in the establishment camp. His endorsement of Biden over Sanders saved Biden’s campaign. Any future nominee will effectively need Clyburn’s blessing — which leaves little room for a socialist candidate.

I wonder if anyone has pondered that black democrats are in the main, the ones with traditional democrat values. Yes, there are a few black DSA-aligned politicians — Cori Bush and Brandon Johnson among them — but black voters as a bloc are rarely socialist, even though a meaningful minority receives public assistance. Polling consistently shows black voters oppose emptying prisons or defunding the police, want better-funded schools and support school choice, and have resisted having undocumented immigrants placed in their neighborhoods. And with the possible exception of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, most blacks do know what a woman is. It is hard to find an item on the DSA platform that most black voters would actually endorse.

Working-class white voters in South Carolina, meanwhile, are solidly republican. Some on the left argue that’s simply because the GOP became a refuge for Southern voters who were once democrats. But the more accurate story is that the democratic party abandoned the working class — across racial lines — and became, in practice, a party of white elites. Both the party writ large and the DSA in particular present themselves as champions of working people, but figures like Graham Platner are the bourgeois professionals posing as proletarians and fooling no one.

By putting South Carolina first, the democratic Party has all but guaranteed that no left-wing, progressive, or DSA-aligned candidate can win the opening primary and ride that momentum into the rest of the primary calendar. The party still hasn’t the guts to formally expel its socialist wing, but at least they are taking steps to make certain that the socialists do not get a jump start on winning the nomination for president.

Dumocrats versus the invasion of the DSA

Trump often calls the democrats “dumocrats.” And indeed, in this case it fits. They let Bernie Sanders – not a democrat – run in its presidential primaries. They have allowed his fellow Democratic Socialists of America to run in its primaries defeating establishment democrats. They have supported radical members of the DSA in a senate campaign in Maine in hopes of defeating an incumbent republican. They will undoubtedly back DSA candidates in Michigan and Wisconsin for the senate and governor as well if they are in the general election. They may justify that support in hopes of adding more seats in the democrat column. But how do they justify letting the DSA run in democrat primaries against other democrats?

James Carville says that they should get their own party. But as of yet, it seems that he hasn’t convinced the party leaders. Perhaps that is because both the minority leaders in the House and the Senate are from New York where the DSA has had its most notable victories. But there are rumblings from the ranks to do something about the DSA invasion of the democrat party. Texas’ Henry Cuellar – no friend of the progressives – has warned that the DSA is using the democrat party to launch the radical agenda issued in its “workers” manifesto that I have discussed before. Cuellar says “They are trying to use the safe Democratic seats to run in. And they also know that the Democratic party is inadequate, but they’re using us or trying to use the Democratic Party as a vehicle so later they can set up their own platform.” Cuellar goes on to say “As a Democrat I reject what the DSA is doing. I read their platform and it is radical. They want to … get rid of the Senate. So constitutional changes there. They want to get rid of ICE. I reject that. They want to defund police. I reject that, reject also the constitutional items. They want to have open borders also. I reject that. They want to get rid of prisons. I reject them completely.”

Not surprisingly, the DSA and the Justice Democrats primaried Cuellar, spending over $20 million in two past primaries. They lost. So he knows of what he speaks. Now he should work to get the Texas democrat party to deny the DSA candidates from running in the democrat Texas primaries.

New Jersey democrat representative Josh Gottheimer has said he does not consider New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani a Democrat, arguing the democratic socialist –and others like him – are attempting to “hijack” the party and pull it away from its traditional values. “He’s not a Democrat, he’s socialist, and we know that the whole socialist movement is attempting to hijack the Democratic Party and many of their values are not our values. We know that he’s against police and came out strong against law enforcement and has come out strongly against prisons in the United States and they want to eliminate the US Senate. They are very anti-American, anti-Democratic, anti-capitalist.” Okay, Mr. Gottheimer, now get your leadership to stop them from replacing your fellow democrats, please.

New York Rep. Tom Suozzi also rejects the DSA and says “We urgently need to redefine mainstream Democratic principles: we are capitalist, not socialist; mainstream, not extreme; for safety, not lawlessness; for reform, not the status quo; proud, not ashamed of our country.” “Support secure borders, safe neighborhoods and the rule of law, guided by economic interests and moral principles, not masked agents creating chaos.”

In New York City, the Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, reflecting on recent primary victories that displaced traditional democrats with radical socialists accused Mamdani and his democrat socialists of white supremacy. Letitia James also commented on the radicals being voted in by white college educated new residents of gentrified city communities. She said Mamdani and

the radicals he supported were ignorant of the racial and social history of the neighborhoods they would be representing. Successful congressional candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier opposes interracial marriage and calls white women as “ugly colonizers.” Yet these “ugly colonizers” with college degrees voted for her.

Richards has also long advocated for expanded black and Latino ownership of private homes as a means of creating intergenerational wealth. Mamdani and his far left housing aide Cea Weaver consider home ownership as a vehicle of white supremacy and want public ownership of all housing. Weaver She celebrated the government’s “sacred right to seize private property,” called homeownership “racist” and said it is “a weapon of white supremacy masquerading as ‘wealth building’ public policy.” Richards notes that the DSA is mostly white and is part of a growing resentment among black and Latinos about the DSA’s current success.

When Mamdani threatened to raise all city property taxes by nearly 10% the outcry was especially sharp from the minority communities. One person said: “You screamed affordability. You ran on it. You said affordability, affordability, affordability . . . And the first thing, not even three months into your administration, into your term. You want to hit us with a 9.5% property tax increase? Not happening.”

Then there is the reaction of Van Jones who posted on X:

If we can’t tell right from wrong, good from bad, smart from loony tunes — Team Blue will go down the same road that turned the Republican Party into a shell of itself.

We can’t let that happen to the Democratic Party.

Here is a tweet from another lifelong democrat:

So why do the democrats keep supporting this madness? Consider that Mamdani, himself, has blasted the democrat party has become “run by well-paid consultants and big money interests.” He was retorting a statement made by former chair of the democrat national committee, Jamie Harrison (who ran and lost to Lindsey Graham) “I say this with no ill will or animosity: if you hate the Democratic Party, then please don’t run for our nomination. Don’t use our resources. Don’t rely on our volunteers. Don’t use our infrastructure. Don’t ask Democrats to invest their time, money, and energy in your campaign. Focus on building the party you actually support.”

Mamdani said “And it’s representative of the fact that, in this country, there is just one majority and that’s of the working class. And that’s not just true in this city. It’s not just true in another city. It’s true across the entirety of our nation. And people want to see a party that understands that and fights for that.” Mamdani had earlier “lost its focus on working people” and pushed for more efforts to be done to combat high prices.

Of course, this is BS because the DSA has very little support among the working class and is using that label as a shield to hide its own agenda – which is now out in the open.

So if the democrat party is finally waking up to the rot within and the leader of the rot says that the party is the handmaiden of “well-paid consultants and big money interests” isn’t it time to purge them from democrat primaries and from the party itself? If the democrats do not do this they are indeed dumocrats.

Are Kushner and Witkoff Profiting Off the Iran Negotiations?

Say it isn’t so

Negotiations with Iran have a long history of falling apart, so it’s hardly shocking that the latest round — led by two men with no diplomatic background — has collapsed too. Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff built their careers closing real estate deals, not brokering peace between nations. Yet Trump keeps turning to them, having already tapped the pair to handle talks with Russia over Ukraine.

Their track record is not encouraging. Politico has reported that Ukrainian and European officials point to Witkoff’s go-it-alone approach as part of the problem, noting that he has resisted input from experts and allies and has, at times, approached the war as though it were a real estate negotiation rather than a geopolitical conflict.

Compounding the problem, the administration’s downsizing of the State Department has left both the Russia and Iran negotiating teams thin on career diplomats and regional experts. Adding the inexperienced Kushner to the Iran talks only deepens that gap. The administration’s defense is that a small, nimble team beats a large phalanx of diplomats — essentially applying a dealmaker’s mindset to statecraft. But as one official put it, a business mentality only works if you actually understand who you’re dealing with; commercial instincts are no substitute for grasping the region, Islam, and the actual interests of Iran and its allies.

Kushner’s presence on the team raises additional concerns given his family’s long, close relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. More troubling still are allegations that details from the talks have been leaked to Israel, and that Kushner has used his position for personal financial gain. According to Common Dreams, Kushner has simultaneously been courting Middle Eastern governments to invest billions in his private equity firm, Affinity Partners.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/jared-kushner-iran-private-equity

The New York Times has reported that Kushner discussed a potential $5 billion investment from Middle Eastern backers into that fund — notable given that he said in December 2024 the firm wouldn’t need to raise capital for four years, specifically to sidestep conflict-of-interest concerns. I guess he forgot.

Elizabeth Warren has criticized the arrangement, arguing that while American troops face danger in the Middle East, Trump’s envoy is out fundraising for his own firm. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has claimed a fair deal between the US and Iran was within reach before hostilities escalated — though any statement from Iranian officials deserves real skepticism. But Kushner’s firm does do substantial business with foreign partners who have direct stakes in the very conflicts he’s supposed to be neutrally negotiating.

The clearest conflict of interest involves oil. Any settlement with Iran would likely include lifting sanctions on Iranian crude — and Kushner’s clients, including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar, are themselves major oil producers. Since Iran sits outside OPEC, easing those sanctions would boost global supply and could push prices down, cutting against the interests of the very governments Kushner represents commercially. Simultaneously negotiating US foreign policy while collecting substantial fees from foreign governments raises serious legal questions, and at minimum, a clear ethical problem.

Drop Site News has reported an even more explosive claim: that an Iranian official told Vice President Vance – which of course he denies – that Kushner and Witkoff are more focused on using inside knowledge of the talks to profit in financial markets than on reaching an actual agreement. The outlet also cited concerns from Iranian negotiators about Kushner relaying details directly to Netanyahu and an Axios report that Witkoff and Kushner speak with Netanyahu and Israel’s Mossad chief nearly daily. Iran reportedly presented documentation to mediators alleging that people close to Trump were exploiting the war and the diplomatic process to move financial markets.

https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/iran-jd-vance-kushner-witkoff-exploiting-negotiations

In fact, Iran calculated profits that from such alleged manipulation had reached $9 billion and formally requested, in writing, that Iran should share in the proceeds. “We have conveyed through intermediaries that $4.5 billion of this sum should also be allocated to the Iranian side,” the Iranian official said. 

Drop Site also quoted an Iranian official describing Witkoff as having no real grasp of diplomacy, claiming he misrepresented Iran’s positions — including on the fate of its enriched uranium stockpile — and that his mistaken read of the talks was passed straight on to Trump. Iran is reportedly pushing for larger negotiating delegations that include actual technical and country experts, noting that during earlier talks in Oman and Switzerland, Witkoff and Kushner arrived without nuclear or subject-matter specialists and seemed unfamiliar with the technical substance of the issue. Iranian negotiators say they laid out their enriched uranium stockpile in detail and viewed their own flexibility as the basis for what Araghchi called, on February 25, a possible “historic opportunity” for an unprecedented deal — an offer Witkoff apparently mischaracterized afterward as a threat to build multiple weapons.

I’d encourage anyone interested to read the full report. Statements from Iranian officials should be taken with real skepticism, but the allegations here are serious regardless: that Kushner and Witkoff used the negotiations for personal profit, that details were funneled directly to Netanyahu and Mossad, and that Iran’s actual positions were misrepresented to the president. Whatever the truth of those specific claims, the broader question stands — why rely on Kushner and Witkoff at all, rather than seasoned diplomats backed by real technical and regional expertise? More troubling is that if all of this is true, it is being done with the president’s knowledge and blessing.

The Coming Open Market Committee Meeting

On July 16^th I posted that “Warsh gets a reprieve — for now.” The memorandum of understanding with Iran had just been signed and Trump declared the Strait of Hormuz open. Oil prices plummeted and the CPI came in below 4 percent. Pressure had been building on the Fed to raise its Fed Funds target rate and for the moment that pressure was off.

Well, all of that has changed. The Iranians have declared the strait closed again, hostilities have ramped back up, and Brent crude, the global benchmark, has hit $100 a barrel. In the US, oil is at $92 a barrel, diesel has climbed over $5 a gallon, and unleaded is back above $4 — though here in East Tennessee we have, luckily, yet to see $4 unleaded at the pump. 

All of this portends higher inflation. In anticipation, the ten-year Treasury jumped to 4.7 percent, its highest yield of Trump’s second term, while the Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P 500 all sold off. Mortgage rates rose to 6.58 percent and as one analyst put it, the recent move in the ten-year Treasury alone suggests mortgage rates are headed toward 7 percent within weeks.

The White House has said “As the U.S. military degrades the terrorist Iranian regime’s ability to attack commercial vessels and disrupt the free flow of energy through the Strait of Hormuz, oil and gas prices will plummet back to preconflict levels.” Maybe. But when? The Iranians have shown remarkable resilience to absorb punishment from over 20,000 air strikes. Aerial footage has shown them rebuilding even in the face of continued bombing and it seems they have an unlimited supply of missiles and drones. They have continued the attack on US bases and on their neighbors. The president is said to be incensed over the actions of the Iranians. Now what will Trump do? Will he be forced to do a limited invasion of Iran, targeting the islands in the strait? What impact will that have on public opinion and on oil prices?

The president is, of course, pointing fingers at everyone but himself for the runup in prices. He has threatened the oil companies. He has threatened retailers. And all the while, he has kept raising tariffs. The initial round of tariffs pushed consumer prices up and that increase is now baked into the inflation base — meaning if prices rose one percent because of tariffs and then held there, it would take a fresh round of tariffs to move inflation, which measures the rate of price increases from month to month. And that is exactly what is happening with new tariffs on Brazil, then Canada, and soon the rest of the world. Seemingly, he will never learn that US consumers, not the exporting countries, pay his tariffs.

Two weeks ago, the pressure was off Warsh to raise rates. Now it’s back on. Everyone expects the CPI and other inflation gauges to climb again. At the last FOMC meeting, members and the nonvoting Fed presidents were split on whether rates would rise this year. I’d wager that sentiment has now shifted to near-unanimous support for a rate hike — which will only add to the president’s fury. First Iran, now the Fed, led by a chairman he handpicked himself.

The Fed funds futures market has moved the odds of a rate increase to one in three, up from one in ten just last week. Even so, my bet is that the FOMC will vote to hold, though probably with a few dissents. The reasoning: the strait’s closure may again prove short-lived, so a wait-and-see approach is the safer strategy. Things are pretty volatile right now and waiting this time will not have an overall impact on the economy one way or another given the lag in monetary policy effectiveness.

Will Bernie be raising his arms in middle America?

Bernie loves to raise his arms. Hope he has a good deodorant. Now that the midterms are approaching I wonder if democrats outside the small cadre of fellow socialists will be raising their arms with Bernie? No doubt the DSA manifesto with all its weirdness will be plastered on to those democrats who are running in the general election in districts not littered by the downwardly mobile college educated whites who populate the socialist’s camp. 

The republicans will now label every democrat as “DSA” while those democrats will try to ignore the label and run against Trump who certainly has given them enough ammunition – inflation, Iran, ICE, tariffs, cronyism and corruption. My guess is that the DSA will prove to be an albatross around the necks of democrats running to unseat republicans in non-DSA districts. Those democrats in olden years would normally be elected in competitive districts in an off-year election during the reign of an unpopular president. The republicans have tried to minimize their losses through gerrymandering. And now the DSA may have helped them out by electing a few high profile anti-American candidates who want to open our borders, empty prisons, defund the police, abolish the Senate, and other actions that occupy the lunatic fringe. If all this media hype about the surge of socialism in America were true then we should expect to see Bernie in middle America raising the arms of democrats running against republicans. I bet a dollar that won’t happen. Stay tuned.

Our colleges’ woeful woke curriculum

One would hold that our academic institutions would be academic and would enforce academic rigor. Not is always the case. Years ago, when our business school building was under renovation, our classes were temporarily relocated across campus. Mine ended up in the liberal arts building. Walking in, I couldn’t resist telling the class, “This will be the first time truth has been uttered between these walls.” The students laughed — but stepping into that building felt like a journey back in time. Tie-dyed shirts, multicolored hair, tattoos, piercings: the business students stood out and could be easily spotted.

Not long before, our business school had voted to add more liberal arts requirements to broaden our students’ education. The prevailing attitude was so what if they take a few classes over there — we’ll straighten them out once they’re back with us. And largely, that held true. I never saw a surge of radicalism among our students, nor a sudden fondness for multicolored hair.

But I was concerned about the students who stayed on the liberal arts side. What were they being taught and was it feeding the radicalism spreading across campus? Thomas Sowell’s needling question to liberal arts professors who preached diversity and inclusion always stuck with me: “How many Republicans are in your department?” That concern deepened when protests over Hamas erupted on campus, stirring antisemitism. Nearly every student and professor interviewed came from the liberal arts. Not one from the business school. Not one, it seemed, from engineering.

The point came into sharper focus when my niece was installed as president of Harvey Mudd College — arguably the nation’s premier STEM school. At her investiture, protesters blocked the auditorium entrance, lying down with sheets draped over their bodies which for me evoked the Ku Klux Klan. The ceremony was delayed. Here in the South, police would have carted them off. in California, they were left in place. The podium party and family were quietly rerouted to a rear entrance while everyone else watched the ceremony on closed-circuit TVs. I was furious. My niece and her husband, an engineering professor, took it in stride. California cool, I suppose. But her husband made a telling observation: “those are not our students out there. They come from our liberal arts colleges. Our students are too busy to be engaged in such nonsense.”

Those memories resurfaced when I read that Florida was dropping sociology as a required course in its state colleges, charging that it had become less an academic discipline than a vehicle for “woke” advocacy. This is detailed in “Suicide on Sociology Row,” which recounts how the course was stripped from the general education curriculum as part of broader reforms.

https://jamesgmartin.center/2026/07/suicide-on-sociology-row

Florida’s sociology faculty boasted openly about defying the state’s new restrictions on how gender and race could be taught in their classrooms. The chancellor of the state university system put it bluntly: sociology, as currently practiced, had become political advocacy dressed in academic regalia. In the aftermath, sociology enrollment collapsed across nearly every campus in the state — the University of Central Florida being the lone exception. The details are worth reading in full.

I wondered what about all the other majors in the colleges that are “social and political advocacy dressed in the regalia of the academy.” What about Women’s Studies. Gender Studies. Black Studies. Indigenous Peoples Studies and the rest? I bet you a dollar that there isn’t a conservative professor to be found in any of them, nor a single class with a kind word for America or capitalism. 

Mind you, I do not oppose the teaching of ethnic/racial studies. But I do oppose how it is likely taught with bias and prejudice. For example, when I was a student at the University of Georgia in the early and mid-1960s my history classes were horribly biased toward the “southern cause.” I questioned the professors because I had been taught a different history at my all black high school. It was remarkable that I made A’s. I wonder if today’s liberal arts professors would be as tolerant. Today’s history is likely to be the distorted view as exemplified by the 1619 Project that blames slavery for every American ill. Bob Woodson countered with his 1776 Unites (I am a contributor). Both are offered to schools as part of their curriculum. I bet that the 1619 project has found more favor that 1776 Unites which is pro-American and pro-capitalism.

Recall that during Covid parents were appalled when they found out what their children were being taught? Well the state of Florida was apparently appalled with what sociologists were teaching as well. Isn’t it time for all of us to be appalled too at what our kids are being taught at our universities?

No to Todd Blanche (Part 2)

On June 16^th I wrote that Todd Blanche was a “losing bet” to be attorney general. In a classic case of what goes around, the White House is begging two of the senators it targeted for defeat to help get the attorney general nominee confirmed. Both John Cornyn and Thom Tillis sit on the Judiciary committee and Trump needs their vote. All the democrats are going to vote against Blanche and Trump needs all the republicans to vote for him in order to get it out of committee. A single nay vote from a republican will kill the nomination. And I hope both Cornyn and Tillis will tell the president to go pound sand. Blanche should not be attorney general. Like so many of the “Justice” Department appointees, Blanche (like Pam Bondi) was one of Trumps personal lawyers. I do not begrudge him for fiercely defending his client when Trump was a private citizen. 

Trump fired Pam (Blondie) Bondi for not pursuing his multitude of enemies aggressively enough. Blanche has gotten the hint and has zealously attempted to prosecute – or is it persecute – those that Trump wants targeted. Blanche also was involved in the scandalous settlement of Trump’s suit against the IRS which resulted in a $1.776 fund to pay those “weaponized” by the Biden Administration and a shielding of Trump and his family from any IRS audits. Both Cornyn and Tillis strongly oppose the settlement. Although Blanche says that the settlement is dead – it isn’t. Absent a written change to the underlying settlement, it could be revived through a breach of contract lawsuit brought in the future by Trump. Both Cornyn and Tillis insist that the fund needs to be nullified in order to consider voting for Blanche.

So Blanche is still acting as the president’s personal lawyer even though he is interim attorney general. That should be disqualifying. Yes I know that Eric Holder said that he was Obama’s “wing man” – I thought that was disqualifying too. I think that Tillis will vote for Blanche and that Cornyn will not – or at least I hope that will be the outcome because Todd Blanche should not be confirmed as attorney general.

Trump continues down his neo-socialist path by trying to muzzle and intimidate the media. 

Exhibit one. 

His Department of “Justice” has issued subpoenas to New York Times reporters and relatives over the new Air Force One reporting.  I presume this stemmed from the report that Trump was forced to change planes and had to use the old Air Force One due to security fears. Recall that the new Air Force One was gifted to him by Qatar. The president was flying from the NATO meeting in Turkey and changed planes in England to the old Air Force One. The president said he did so because he wanted to leave the plane in England so that the troops could see it. Trump posted: “To honor our brave men and women of the military, we are sending the brand new, and truly spectacular, Air Force One to Mildenhall air force base, in the United Kingdom, to give them a chance to tour the aircraft.”

But the New York Times reported that the change in planes occurred because of security concerns regarding the new plane. The old Air Force One is equipped with a system that can blind incoming anti-aircraft missiles, along with “chaff” defenses that could be deployed to mislead a missile. Apparently, the new place has some security deficiencies. Of course, the White House denied this. Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, told The New York Times: “The new Air Force One is a state-of-the-art aircraft that has been fitted with high-level security protocols that ensure the safety of the president and his staff.

Well if all this is the case, then why did the president sic his Department of “Justice” on the New York Times reporters. Again, this is another example of “how do you tell the president is lying?” The “Justice” Department said it was investigating illegal leaks, adding: “Reporters are not the targets, those leaking classified information are.” Naturally, the Times will yell that this is a lie and is trying to put a chilling effect on reporting. So David McCraw, the Times’s lawyer, called the summons a “brazen act” and “nothing more than an attempt to prevent the public from knowing what is happening in their country by intimidating journalists from doing their jobs”. “Our journalists report the facts and advance the American public’s right to know how their government is operating and their taxpayer dollars are being used.”

In this instance, the Times is correct and Trump is taking a page out of repressive regimes around the world in an attempt to muzzle the press. When I saw the story of changing planes, I did not think it was a big deal. Just go put the security measures on the new plane and be done with it. But the president obviously thought differently. Someone needs to remind him that this is the United States, not Russia or China.

Exhibit two.

Trump’s FCC chairman, Brendan Carr has threatened to pull the broadcast licenses of ABC and NBC because they did not air the president’s speech on election security. Frankly this is outrageous and smacks of another attempt to intimidate the media into bending to the president’s will. Carr said “Broadcasters must operate in the public interest and they will lose their licenses if they do not.” Trump had said earlier that the failure to broadcast the speech “should mean a revocation of their licenses.” So Carr is dutifully just following his boss’s orders – he likes his job. Carr had also earlier threatened ABC over Jimmy Kimmel’s show (it was taken off the air) and has now questioned the status of the View. CBS canceled Stephen Colbert’s show just days after he had criticized the network’s settlement of a lawsuit filed by Trump over its editing of a “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris.

As one observer said “What we’re seeing is an unprecedented attempt to silence disfavored speech by the government.” Trump’s approach to the media has drawn comparisons to former Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, who made hostility toward the press central to his political brand, borrowing Trump’s phrase “fake news” to describe critical outlets. 

Seriously, there is no way that the FCC will revoke the licenses of ABC and NBC. Actually, I think ABC and NBC did the public a service by providing alternative programming to the president’s speech. Nonetheless, this president has established a record of intimidating the media and seeking to bend them to his will. Where is the outrage? Can you imagine the hue and cry from the right if Biden or some democrat threatened to muzzle Fox News?