Category: Good and Hard

Justice Department investigates College of William & Mary over alleged ‘race-based’ scholarships.

The College of William & Mary is under federal investigation this week over a series of scholarships and student programs that the U.S. Department of Justice says may be racially discriminatory.

Announced Monday, the investigation focuses, in part, on the Virginia public college’s “W&M Scholars” program, “which grants scholarships covering the ‘full cost of in-state tuition and fees’ to ‘academically distinguished students,’” the Washington Examiner reports.

Students who express an “interest in diverse people and perspectives” receive “top consideration” for the first-year scholarship, according to a department news release.

The department is investigating whether these and other scholarships and programs “include racial criteria that violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.”

>“Providing any educational benefits, including recruitment, scholarships, and support services, based on race violates the civil rights of all Americans,” the department stated in its letter to the college.

Another area of the investigation is the Holmes Scholars program for doctoral students. It offers mentorship, professional development, and career resources to “future education leaders of color,” according to the news release.

The investigation includes several other programs as well, the Examiner reports:

Other programs at the College of William and Mary also raised concerns for the DOJ including the Martha L. Muguira Fellowship which gave “preference” to Latino and Hispanic women, the Lemon Legal Scholars Program which allegedly was “exclusively earmarked for graduates of Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and the “Reaching Back Scholarship” which gave a “preference” to applicants from HBCU schools as well as those “who contribute to the diversity” of W&M Law.

“Awarding scholarships or offering coveted opportunities to students based on the color of their skin is illegal and offends the guarantees of our color-blind Constitution,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon stated in the news release.

The department also stated that although the programs are under investigation, it “has not reached any conclusions about the subject matter of the investigation.”

The college media relations office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The College Fix, asking for its response to the investigation.

 

BLUF
The administrative state spent decades expanding its power through creative interpretations of old laws never meant to address modern policy debates. Trump is finally pushing back, and the establishment can’t stand it.

Trump Just Ended the EPA’s Climate Power Grab, and the Left Is Losing It

President Donald Trump just delivered a knockout punch to Obama-era climate hysteria, and the bureaucrats are having a total meltdown.

On Thursday, the Trump administration finalized rules repealing the EPA’s endangerment finding — that dubious 2009 determination claiming six greenhouse gases threaten human health under the Clean Air Act. “We are officially terminating the so-called endangerment finding,” Trump announced, calling the policy exactly what it was: “disastrous.”

This wasn’t just some regulatory tweak. The endangerment finding was the entire foundation for the EPA’s power grab over climate policy under the Barack Obama regime. It allowed unelected bureaucrats to impose crushing regulations on the oil and gas industry, power plants, and vehicles, all without Congress ever voting to grant them that authority. Essentially, it let EPA staffers reshape the entire American economy based on a single “finding” they issued themselves.

Trump’s repeal also axes those vehicle emission rules, since they all stem from the same flawed finding.

In addition, the Trump administration will finalize a repeal of rules that regulate greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, since they stem from the finding. Under former President Joe Biden, the EPA sought to tighten those standards to prod the auto industry to make more fuel-efficient hybrids and electric vehicles — an effort the industry has since backtracked on.

The full text of EPA’s repeal of the endangerment finding wasn’t made available before the Trump administration announced it, but the justification will likely rely far more on legal arguments that climate pollution cannot be regulated by the landmark Clean Air Act than an outright rejection of climate science, legal experts told CNN.

Good riddance.

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Richard Fernandez

Marco Rubio’s testimony on the Maduro op before the Senate indicates that the Trump administration very carefully awaited the right operational conditions before risking it, a process that Rubio called a “trigger operation”.

This attitude is likely to govern any action against Iran. Despite the media’s characterization of Trump as stupid and impulsive, the record reveals a decisive but exquisitely thorough command system. Given this, what might the US feasibly attempt in Iran with a reasonable prospect of success? Four types of actions are likely.

Operations to:
1. Further degrade Iran’s nuclear and missile programs through limited strikes or sanctions.
2. Disrupt IRGC command, control, and communications (C3) via cyber or targeted strikes.
3. Conduct decapitation strikes on IRGC or regime leadership.
4. Achieve full regime change or complete IRGC dissolution.

Objectives 1 and 2 have a good chance of success.
Objective 3 has a fair prospect of happening.
Objective 4 is probably out of reach in the very short run. But 1 and 2 would lay the foundation for 3 and the first triple would set up the 4th.

While there is no way to predict American action in Iran, it is likely to be cumulative and sequential with opportunistic branches.

Comment O’ The Day
Retracted for inaccuracies in the base data and flaws in the methods of calculations. But, listen to the experts!

 

Retraction Note: The economic commitment of climate change
Maximilian Kotz, Anders Levermann & Leonie Wenz
Nature (2025)

The Original Article was published on 17 April 2024

The authors have retracted this paper for the following reasons: post-publication, the results were found to be sensitive to the removal of one country, Uzbekistan, where inaccuracies were noted in the underlying economic data for the period 1995–1999. Furthermore, spatial auto-correlation was argued to be relevant for the uncertainty ranges.

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Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard. – H. L. Mencken

Zohran Mamdani wins 2025 NYC mayoral election — wastes no time in declaring war on Trump in victory speech.

New Yorkers elected their first socialist mayor Tuesday, handing far-left Democrat Zohran Mamdani an historic victory — as he claimed a mandate for his potentially budget-busting progressive agenda and all but declared war on President Trump.

The Associated Press and NY1 called the race for the 34-year-old Mamdani about 40 minutes after polls closed at 9 p.m., inspiring cheers from his supporters at his campaign’s Brooklyn watch party.

“New York, tonight you have delivered a mandate for change, a mandate for a new kind of politics, a mandate for a city that we can afford and a mandate for a government that delivers exactly that,” he said, taking the stage after 11 p.m.

He then taunted Trump, prompting cheers from his fired-up crowd.

“So Donald Trump, since I know you’re watching I have four words for you: turn the volume up,” Mamdani said.

Mamdani, the Democratic nominee, carried 50.4% of votes to independent candidate Andrew Cuomo’s 42% at 12 a.m., with nearly 98% of precincts reporting, the city Board of Elections said. GOP nominee Curtis Sliwa came in third with a rock-bottom 7.1%.

The Uganda-born Mamdani will be the Big Apple’s first Muslim, first South Asian and first socialist mayor, as well as one of the youngest.

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Gov’t. Grant Money for ‘Gun Violence Prevention’ Withheld from Non-Profits

By Dave Workman

The Guardian is reporting that the Trump administration is this year cutting off government grants for so-called “gun violence prevention” programs to certain non-profit groups which the grants were reportedly built around.

While the news agency didn’t specifically say so, there have been concerns within the Second Amendment community that public funds were being utilized by some groups to push a gun control agenda. Essentially, gun owners—as taxpayers—were helping to fund efforts which ultimately were aimed at eroding their Second Amendment rights. At least, that’s the concern.

According to The Guardian, “The Community Based Violence Intervention and Prevention Initiative (CVIPI), was created in 2022, to support groups working in rural and urban communities struggling to address violence and fund research studying the programs’ efficacy.”

But following Donald Trunmp’s return to the White House, these “community-based organizations” were allowed to apply for grant funds. Now, those monies are limited to city, county and tribal governments, and the new goal of the program is to “support law enforcement efforts to reduce violent crime and improve police-community relations.”

As noted by The Guardian, when Trump returned to office in January, he immediately dismantled Joe Biden’s White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, which was a thinly-veiled “in-house” gun control effort. Instead, Trump nominated Pam Bondi to the office of Attorney General, and she has subsequently led the Justice Department in a full 180-degree shift from gun control to Second Amendment protection. The DOJ, with Harmeet Dhillon as U.S. assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights essentially leading the charge, has gone after the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department for dragging its feet in the issuance of carry permits, holding up the process for up to two years.

Dhillon has also argued against the semi-auto ban in Illinois before the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Earlier this year, the Guardian noted that the Justice Department cut more than $800 million in grants that would have gone to “organizations that prevent and respond to gun violence, sexual assault and hate crimes” and other groups.

Five Takes on Bombing Iran
From the department of Earth-shattering kabooms

Bomb Iran - Wikipedia

People have been singing about it since 1980, but yesterday’s bombing raids on Iranian nuclear facilities were the first bombing attack since the 1979 hostage seizure.

Despite numerous calls for action against the Islamic Republic, Operation Midnight Hammer was the first U.S. military action against important Iranian assets on Iranian territory. The bombs fell less than 24 hours ago, but here are a few preliminary takes.

Competence. The most striking thing about the attacks was the extreme competence displayed by the Air Force, the Defense Department under Secretary Pete Hegseth, the various intelligence assets involved, the State Department, and the entire administration. There were no leaks. (How did they avoid leaks? Basically, they didn’t tell any Democrats what was coming. Take note.)

Not only were there no leaks, but President Trump and the diplomatic apparatus kept the Iranians in the dark, giving the impression of waffling in the White House even as things were being lined up. They received unintentional help in this from Sen. Charles Schumer, who had been for some time pushing the “TACO” acronym — Trump Always Chickens Out — in the service of a storyline that Trump was all bluster and no follow-through. The Iranians, apparently dumb enough to believe Democrats and the mainstream news media (but I repeat myself) were snookered.

New Diplomacy: In dealing with the Iranians in the 1980s, Donald Regan told President Reagan that America had been repeatedly “snookered” by a bunch of “rug merchants.” The Iranians were in fact very good at leading Americans down the garden path, invoking (often imaginary) splits between “hard-line” and “moderate” Islamists in their government as excuses for delay and backtracking.

In truth, as Henry Kissinger once said, “An Iranian moderate is one who has run out of ammunition.” After these raids, and the many Israeli attacks that led up to them, all of Iran is out of ammunition.

We’ll see if moderation follows. (I doubt it, as I think the “irrational regime hypothesis” applies heavily to Iran. See below.) But one thing that follows is that threats and deadlines from the Trump administration, unlike those from the Obama and Biden administrations, will be taken seriously in the future. Obama’s “red line” was bluster; Trump’s was not. He gave the Iranians a deadline and when they failed to comply, he destroyed their nuclear capability.

For a couple of decades after World War II, U.S. diplomacy was backed by the belief that words would be backed by force. After a while, our foreign policy elite began to see diplomacy as a substitute for force, not an adjunct to it. As soon as that happened, diplomacy lost most of its power. “Jaw jaw” as Churchill said, may be better than “war war,” but the jawing mostly works because war is the alternative. If the alternative is just more jawing, not so much.

Unsurprisingly the author of “The Art of the Deal” knew this.

The Humiliation of the Foreign Policy Establishment

We’ve had “Middle East experts” for years. Their track record, as the above suggests, has been poor. Our universities have departments of “Middle East Studies,” who have mostly pumped out poorly informed activists, and horrible takes by risible faculty members. Their existence has revolved around the Arab-Israeli conflict, which is in the process of disappearing as the Arab nations have all reached accommodations with Israel, and as the Palestinians suffer humiliating defeat, and the loss of their last major patron, Iran, which will be in no position to help them financially or militarily any time soon, if ever.

Well, an establishment that is organized around a problem is unlikely to go about actually solving that problem: What will its high-paid people, in prestigious jobs, do if that happens?

As it turns out, the solutions were always pretty simple, it just took someone from outside the field to find them. Trump brought Arabs and Israelis together under the Abraham Accords in his first term; now he’s bringing Iran to heel in his second. In both cases it took a willingness to be hard-nosed, and to say and do things that were anathema before because they would have interfered with big donations from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, etc.

Keep It Simple, Stupid. And that’s a bigger lesson regarding the Trump approach. Our establishment at some level wants things to be complicated and intractable. Solving problems makes them go away, which is unfortunate. We were told before that addressing illegal immigration across the borders required legislation from Congress that would be complicated and require the greasing of lots of interests. Instead Trump just enforced the law, and illegal border crossing basically stopped. We were told that government spending was impossible to control and DOGE showed us otherwise. Obama told us we couldn’t drill our way out of oil shortages. Turned out Sarah Palin was right and “drill baby, drill” did just that — not so coincidentally also strengthening our hand in bringing about the Abraham Accords, etc. Iran’s nuclear program, we were told, was just something we’d have to live with, only it turned out it was something the Iranians could die with.

Our Political Class is Full of Traitors, Liars, and Fools. Okay, this isn’t really news. I’ve been pointing out for over two decades that the “anti-war” movement isn’t so much antiwar as just on the other side. But the speed with which mobs waving Hamas flags turned into mobs waving Mexican flags and then into mobs waving Iranian flags — al with support from pretty much the same gang of pundits and politicians — has been truly striking. Ed Morrissey points out Democrats’ “breathtaking hypocrisy” on War Powers, and of course, it would be more breathtaking if it were any sort of surprise.

Democrats thought it was fine when Obama did it because Lightbringer.

Whatever, Chardonnay Lady. Anyway, no need to take these people seriously on this, and nobody does. Even Ilhan Omar is being corrected by an Imam:

Behave yourself, indeed. Well, I’m not naive enough to expect that will happen. But I do think the Democrats attacking this action are once again on the 20% end of an 80/20 issue.Iran, as I mentioned above, seems to be an example of the “irrational regime hypothesis,” in which the actions needed to achieve internal power in a regime are at odds with the actions needed to succeed in the outside world. (World War II Japan is a classic example.) But it looks as if the Democratic Party today is another such irrational regime, in which the actions needed to move up the ladder with internal activists and donors are counterproductive in the larger world.It generally takes a big shock to overcome this dynamic once it’s in place. Hiroshima and Nagasaki did it for the Japanese. The Israeli/American air campaign may do it for Iran. I have no idea what might turn around the Democratic Party.

It’s going to take more than losing another election, though.

Trump admin reverses Biden’s gas stove ban, take aim at climate-inspired start-stop car tech

The Trump administration has slashed regulations concerning standards over the width of shower heads, bans on a swath of gas stoves, as well as other regulations for standards ruling over other household appliances that were imposed by the Department of Energy. This also comes as EPA head Lee Zeldin is taking aim at start-stop technology in cars, or the system that automatically turns off a car when it is stopped at a light to save gas.

According to the Washington Free Beacon, the Energy Department took sweeping actions on Monday to slash dozens of regulations for household appliances from dishwashers to dryers that were issued under former President Joe Biden. The regulations included restricted sales on certain types of gas stoves, faucets, shower heads, and microwaves.

“It should not be the government’s place to decide what kind of appliances you or your restaurants or your businesses can buy,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright commented about the regulations. “Everybody wants clean air and wants to lower their energy costs and run their factories good as they can. The big hand of government doesn’t actually help that process at all.”

“We will look for every way we can to protect freedom of the American worker and pursue President Trump’s agenda, get rid of the nonsense, bring back common sense, make life more affordable, and opportunities greater,” Wright added.

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New Ohio law bans DEI, outlaws faculty strikes, requires U.S. civic literacy course.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine on Friday signed a sweeping higher education bill that forbids diversity, equity and inclusion programs and trainings, bans faculty strikes, and requires students pass a course on American civic literacy to earn a degree.

The new law also requires public institutions maintain institutional neutrality, and not weigh in on controversial political or social issues not relevant to their primary mission. It also enacts tenure review, which will allow administrators to fire poor-performing professors. And it bans DEI statements for admissions, hiring and promotion decisions.

What’s more, it requires classes to “demonstrate intellectual diversity” for approval, as well as to be included in universities’ general education requirements.

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Sam Corcos and the IRS Mess

I’ve been writing about the government’s data processing troubles for quite awhile now, and particularly since DOGE started to find where the bodies — well, I was going to say “bodies were buried” but that’s wrong. The government’s data processing corpses aren’t buried. They’re stinking shambling zombie bodies shuffling through the corridors seeking brains.

Of course, as wild wastes of money are uncovered, everyone and their aforementioned brothers, brothers-in-law, and politically connected people outside government have been screaming, while we regular old taxpayers are saying “God oh God, how did we get in this mess?”

So, Sam Corcos, CEO of Levels, a health startup, and Scott Bessent, secretary of the Treasury, were on Laura Ingraham’s show on March 20, talking about data processing at the IRS in particular.

The IRS has come up before — for example, when Musk and the DOGE boys discovered there were people up to almost 400 years old still active in the Social Security records, which are closely tied to the IRS records ever since the IRS declared that line on the Social Security Card about “not to be used for identification” was no longer operative.

Corcos was brought in to work for the Treasury to look at the IRS modernization program and its operations and maintenance budget. Now, the modernization program is new development — they’re attempting to build a more modern system and infrastructure to handle what the Social Security Administration does, while maintenance and operations is the budget that pays for just keeping the existing system running.

Corcos is running a successful startup — have a look at its website. So he has some expertise in software development. He started looking at the IRS systems.

It was interesting, if by interesting you mean “enraging” and “obscene.” The IRS has had this ongoing modernization program in operation since 1990 — that after a previous modernization program called Tax Systems Modernization (TSM), which started in 1986 and was finally declared a failure in 1997. Then there was the Customer Account Data Engine (CADE), which was launched in 2001 and terminated as a failure in 2009, having delivered about 15 percent of its planned function.

The existing system, as I’ve written about before, is based on IBM mainframes and written in COBOL and Assembler — that is, directly as machine instructions.

The current modernization program, according to Corcos, is currently 30 years behind schedule and $15 billion over budget. It’s been 35 years in development, and is now “five years away” from completion. And has been since 1996.

According to Secretary Bessent, the hangup is “entrenched interests” like consultants and contractors. Eighty percent of the IRS’s $3.5 billion budget goes to outsiders. Bessent says, “That’s not efficiency — that’s a racket.”

Corcos says the top priority is to turn this around. “The IRS spends way more than any private company would on a program like this. We’ve cut about $1.5 billion from the modernization budget. … It’s about asking tough questions and trimming the fat.”

It’s easy to blame the government developers, but Corcos says the developers are excellent — it’s management that’s the issue. “You see contracts — $10 million, $20 million, $50 million — and ask ‘Why are we doing this?’ Everyone shrugs. … You cancel it and nothing breaks. Inertia’s running the show — it just takes someone who cares to start asking questions.”

Gun maker closes up shop in N.J., taking 146 jobs with it to the Midwest

Gun manufacturer Henry Repeating Arms says it is making a strategic move to relocate its operations out of New Jersey and into the Midwest, according to a statement released by the company.

The manufacturer will close its Bayonne operations and move jobs to its newly expanded headquarters in Rice Lake, Wisconsin. It will also move jobs to two additional facilities in nearby Ladysmith, Wisconsin.

The closure affects 146 workers at the Bayonne operation according to WARN notices filed March 13.  Henry employs more than 800 people, according to its website.

According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives, Henry’s New Jersey facility manufactured 35,069 firearms in 2022. This included 25,012 rifles, 1,433 shotguns, and 8,624 handguns.

The company said in the statement that the move out of New Jersey accommodates the need for increased production capacity and better supports the company’s future growth driven by innovative firearms design.

“We are putting all of our eggs in one basket, the Wisconsin basket, because it makes us more efficient, more productive, and allows for more collaboration amongst our design and engineering teams, all while sustaining and enhancing Henry’s solid reputation for quality,” said Anthony Imperato, Founder and CEO of Henry Repeating Arms.

“With about 400,000 square feet of cutting-edge manufacturing operations in four facilities within minutes of each other, Henry Repeating Arms is well positioned for its next chapter.”
Andrew Wickstrom, president of Henry Repeating Arms, said the new phase will help the company grow.

“This transition allows us to double down on what we do best — making world-class rifles, shotguns, and revolvers right here in the heart of America,” said Wickstrom. “Our Wisconsin operations have been essential to our success for a long time, and now it is the cornerstone of our bright future.”