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Wednesday, May 28, 2025

Pressing Pause: State Department Suspends All Student Visas in Order to Strengthen Vetting Process

Fox News: The State Department is planning to bolster its efforts to vet and screen the social media of those applying for international student and exchange visitor visas to ensure applicants don’t pose a national security threat to the U.S., Fox News Digital has learned. To do this, the State Department is temporarily suspending new student and exchange visitor visa interviews as it evaluates enhanced social media screenings for the application process. The effort is the latest initiative from the Trump administration to crack down on immigration and revoke visas of those attending academic institutions in the U.S. Those who’ve publicly supported Palestine have faced increased scrutiny, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in May that the administration was reviewing the visa status of students who participated in pro-Palestine protests (Fox News). Red State: The more rigorous vetting requirements will be welcome news to many Americans who have been dismayed at the blatantly antisemitic rage-fests that have overtaken many college campuses since October 7. Many leaders of these “protests” have been unmasked as being foreign nationals who were in the U.S. on student visas. Mahmoud Khalil, a citizen of Algeria with ties to Lebanon and Syria, is currently in the custody of federal law enforcement officials for his role in pro-Hamas, anti-Israel rallies and building takeovers on the campus of Columbia University (Red State). Politico: The news was met with frustration in much of the higher education community (Politico).

Cutting Ties With Harvard: Trump Administration to Sever Remaining Contracts With Formerly Elite University

New York Times: The Trump administration is set to cancel the federal government’s remaining federal contracts with Harvard University — worth an estimated $100 million, according to a letter sent to federal agencies on Tuesday. The letter also instructs agencies to “find alternative vendors” for future services. The additional planned cuts, outlined in a draft of the letter obtained by The New York Times, represented what an administration official called a complete severance of the government’s longstanding business relationship with Harvard (New York Times). Free Beacon: The move represents the Trump administration’s latest foray in an ongoing battle against Harvard. It’s already frozen around $3.2 billion in grants and contracts with the university and is aiming to prohibit Harvard from enrolling international students. Tuesday’s GSA letter points to recent examples of racial discrimination and honors awarded to students accused of anti-Semitic attacks as reported by the Free Beacon. In one example, internal Harvard Law Review documents revealed by the Free Beacon exposed a pattern of pervasive race discrimination in its article selection and editor appointment process. In one instance, an editor labeled an author’s race as a “negative” when recommending his article be dropped. And at least seven internal memos showed editors arguing that an author’s minority status counted in favor of publishing their article (Free Beacon) Treasury Secretary Bessent: We’re also looking at taxes on endowments…. Harvard is a gigantic hedge fund, they run a leveraged investment model, so we’ll see where all that goes (X). This comes after Harvard had its certification for Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) revoked: This means Harvard can no longer enroll foreign students and existing foreign students must transfer or lose their legal status. Harvard’s leadership has created an unsafe campus environment by permitting anti-American, pro-terrorist agitators to harass and physically assault individuals, including many Jewish students, and otherwise obstruct its once-venerable learning environment. Many of these agitators are foreign students (DHS). That move is being challenged in court (Washington Post).

Trump Threatens Federal Funds to California if They Insist on Men Competing in Women’s Sports

Telegraph: Donald Trump has threatened to strip California of “large-scale” federal funding after a transgender long jumper took first place in a state competition. The US president accused Gavin Newsom, the California governor, of breaking the law and defying an executive order he issued early in his term barring biological men from participating in women’s sports. He said he would personally intervene to stop the athlete, who won both the long jump and triple jumps at California’s Southern Section contest for under-19s on May 17, from competing in the state finals this weekend. Mr Trump said the trans athlete was “practically unbeatable” in the girl’s category, calling their participation “not fair, and totally demeaning to women and girls” (Telegraph). Gavin is super angry: “This man is unhinged” (Gavin Newsom). California Rep. Kevin Kiley: Gavin Newsom is going to cost California billions in federal funding just so he can let biological males take home the top trophies in girls athletic competitions. This is as twisted as it gets (Kevin Kiley).

FBI Opening Inquiry Into Leak of Supreme Court’s Dobbs Decision

The draft of the abortion decision overturning 1973’s Roe v. Wade. Washington Post: The FBI is funneling more resources into investigating high-profile matters that drew intense public attention in recent years, including the 2022 leak of the draft of the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade, the bureau’s No. 2 official said Monday. FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino wrote in a post on social media that he and FBI Director Kash Patel had “evaluated a number of cases of potential public corruption that, understandably, have garnered public interest” and decided to give them more investigative attention (Washington Post). The leak was corrosive to the integrity of the court—and put at risk the lives of the justices: Five weeks after the Dobbs leak, a man flew from California to D.C. with the intention of going on a killing spree. His target: Supreme Court justices. Nicholas Roske went to Kavanaugh’s house first, in Montgomery County, Maryland. He was armed with a pistol and equipped with gear to break into the justice’s house undetected. Roske confirmed that he intended to kill at least three justices and specifically cited the leaked Dobbs opinion as his inspiration. Notably, the Chief Justice had been courting Kavanaugh as a potential ally in defecting from the majority and joining him in his own opinion, which would have effectively split the Supreme Court and preserved Roe and Casey. Thanks to the increased presence of U.S. Marshals deputies providing security for Kavanaugh and the other justices, Roske turned himself in to police. He is slated to be sentenced in October of this year. Immediately following the leak, Roberts ordered Supreme Court Marshal Gail Curley to conduct an investigation determining who leaked the draft opinion and how. Nearly nine months later, in late January of 2023, Curley and the Supreme Court admitted that the investigation had been unsuccessful (Washington Stand).

SCOTUS Lets Stand a Decision That Prohibits Christian Charter School

So: the only group/s that are prohibited from establishing a charter school in Oklahoma are religious groups. SCOTUS Blog: The Supreme Court on Thursday morning left in place a ruling by the Oklahoma Supreme Court rejecting an effort by a Catholic virtual charter school to become the country’s first religious charter school. In an unsigned one-sentence order, the justices indicated that, with Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused from the case, they had divided 4-4. The order did not indicate how any of the justices voted. That tie means the state supreme court’s opinion remains good law, although it is binding only in Oklahoma and does not have nationwide effect. Barrett did not state why she did not participate in the case. But the charter school was represented at the Supreme Court by the religious liberty clinic at Notre Dame’s law school, where Barrett taught for 15 years before becoming a federal judge and later a justice. And Nicole Stelle Garnett, who is a law professor at Notre Dame and a leading advocate for allowing the use of public funds at religious schools, is a close friend of Barrett’s. Barrett is godmother to one of Garnett’s children (SCOTUS Blog). New York Sun: In baseball a tie may go to the runner, but when the Supreme Court is deadlocked, it is the American people who lose. That’s our takeaway from the high court emerging with a 4-4 non-decision on the creation of America’s first religious charter school. It is an astonishing abdication of the first duty of any court — to render a judgment. The tie preserves the Oklahoma supreme court’s decision that such a school is crosswise with the Constitution. The recusal of Justice Amy Coney Barrett is the pachyderm in the courtroom. In electing not to hear the case, she reduced the court’s number to eight and enabled a deadlock. With no majority in the case, there was no opinion or precedent, and no disclosure of how individual justices voted. Back of the brief math suggests that one of the court’s conservatives likely sided with the liberal justices. That opacity is another baleful effect of Justice Barrett’s recusal (New York Sun).

Big and Beautiful: The Defunding of Planned Parenthood

The legislation that passed narrowly in the House now in front of the Senate defunds the nation’s leading abortion provider. Can the Senate GOP hold the line and stop funding big abortion? Washington Examiner: The House moved one step closer to a goal on Thursday that has eluded abortion-rights opponents for years. It passed language in President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” that blocks Medicaid funding from providers that offer abortions. The anti-abortion movement has been here before, with both chambers considering and then stripping the language to defund from their marquee pieces of legislation. But House centrists accepted the 10-year ban with mild public pushback, giving activists hope they can similarly get the provision through the Senate. Anti-abortion groups say they will target Republican senators who are wavering on cutting the funding once lawmakers return to Washington from the Memorial Day break. Although federal law bars most taxpayer money from being used for abortions, organizations such as Planned Parenthood have received hundreds of millions of dollars for health services, including screenings for sexually transmitted diseases and cancer (Washington Examiner). Planned Parenthood is threatened. CEO Alexis McGill: Despite protest, polling, and public outcry, Republican members of the House Energy and Commerce committee voted to advance a harmful provision in the reconciliation bill that would ‘defund’ Planned Parenthood. Lawmakers are making it plain: This provision is about punishing Planned Parenthood health centers for providing abortion care… (Planned Parenthood).

MAGA’s Machiavelli: The Man at the Table Representing Trump in Negotiations With Iran

Eli Lake’s profile of Michael Anton: Over the weekend, Iranian envoys met with their U.S. counterparts at the Omani Embassy in Rome. At the table was Michael Anton, a senior State Department official with a penchant for charcoal-brown suits, Italian neckwear, and fine wine. Earlier this month, Anton was in Istanbul. He was sent by the Trump administration to keep tabs on the first face-to-face talks between Ukrainian and Russian representatives after three years of war. It seems that wherever Trump’s highest stakes diplomacy is taking place, one will find Anton…. With a mix of provocative broadsides in the media and unglamorous behind-the-scenes work in government, Anton has charted an improbable path, from the heart of the neoconservative establishment to the core of the new MAGA foreign policy establishment. Over a decade in which the American right has been defined by bad-tempered, friendship-ending fights, Anton, a Machiavelli scholar, hasn’t just survived the America First revolution, he has helped to shape it…. In a 2019 piece for Foreign Policy magazine, Anton defined the Trump doctrine as a foreign policy rooted in the idea that nations should pursue their national interests instead of sublimating them to idealistic distractions, such as building democracies abroad or opening borders to endless immigration. “In declining to act in their interests, Western and democratic countries create opportunities for unfriendly powers, unashamed to act in their interests, to exploit what they see as Western naivete,” he wrote. Another way to state this, Anton wrote, was as Trump himself has said: “Don’t be a chump” (Free Press).

How are the Mullahs in Iran Responding to “Maximum Pressure, Round Two”?

Reuel Marc Gerecht: Fear of foreign enemies fades quickly in the Muslim Middle East, where internal and external politics revolve around hard power. Aggressive men keep probing. Five months into Mr. Trump’s second term, the mullahs are no longer afraid of the unpredictable American president who killed Qasem Soleimani in 2020. “In matters such as the purchase of Gaza and Greenland, the imposition of new tariffs, and even negotiations related to the Ukraine War, Trump first applied maximum pressure, but ultimately left room for retreat,” is the assessment of Nournews, the mouthpiece for Iran’s national security council. The Trump administration has convinced many in Tehran that the president doesn’t want another conflict in the region. His threats of fire and fury are becoming more recognizably Middle Eastern—words substitute for actions. Given all the advanced centrifuges and the ever-deeper bomb-proof underground enrichment sites, the military option is becoming less credible. For Israel, it’s now or never. The U.S. has patience with threats that are existential only to its allies. Mr. Khamenei will consider all this as he contemplates the most serious decision of his tenure: whether finally to cross the nuclear threshold. How scary does he think America is under Mr. Trump? Everything hinges on the answer to that question. (Wall Street Journal).

German Elites Subverting Democracy to “Save” Democracy

Sound familiar? Heather MacDonald: Germany’s self-proclaimed democracy defenders are at it again: blocking a law-abiding party from exercising its rights—all in the name of protecting democracy. The Alternative for Deutschland (AfD), a pro-free market, anti-EU, anti-mass migration party, placed second in Germany’s recent parliamentary elections, earning nearly 21 percent of the vote to the top vote-getter’s, the Christian Democratic Union’s, 28 percent. The AfD placed well ahead of the once-dominant Social Democratic Party (16 percent) and the Greens (11 percent)…. In any case, the “right extremist” designation was a mere pretext for shutting the AfD out of power…. By longstanding tradition, the AfD should have been allotted committee chairmanships and vice chairmanships based on its February vote share. Doing so would have meant that the powerful budget, interior, and finance committees, along with three other committees, would have been under AfD direction, giving it the possibility of shaping legislation. But in a reversal of what is normally an automatic affirmation, on Wednesday, May 21, the other parties in Parliament voted down the AfD chairmanships and put those six committees in the control of other, often less popular, parties. The far-left Die Linke (the Left) party, which had garnered just 9 percent of the parliamentary vote, was awarded two chairs (City-Journal).

10.

Joe Rogan Has Been Going to Church

Kayla Bailey: According to Christian apologist Wesley Huff, who appeared on “The Joe Rogan Experience” in January, the world-famous podcast host has been attending church “consistently” since their on-air deep-dive into Christianity and the Bible. Joe Rogan and I have had on and off communication since then. I can tell you for a fact that he is attending a church, and that has been a consistent thing. And so, things are happening.” The public speaker serves as the Central Canada director for Apologetics Canada and made the claim during a recent appearance on the “Living Waters” podcast (Fox News). Daily Mail: The revelation that the world-famous influencer and host may have found religion comes just weeks after Rogan said the resurrection of Jesus Christ seems more believable than the logic of the Big Bang theory. The podcaster criticized how people doubt Jesus’ resurrection while accepting the Big Bang as scientific truth. ‘I’m sticking with Jesus. Jesus makes more sense. People have come back to life,’ he said during the May 7 podcast with TikTok personality Cody Tucker. Rogan has flip-flopped between being a believer and non-believer, something he attributes to a difficult childhood. He has previously said growing up he was ‘pretty atheist’ but became spiritual after the death of his grandfather (Daily Mail).

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