Politics
Opinion: MAGA cynics have decided to destroy diversity efforts to prove we're all equal
Let’s be honest.
Conservatives didn’t come after former Harvard President Claudine Gay because she had plagiarized some of her academic research. They didn’t come after her because she gave Congress a morally indefensible answer to the question of whether calls for genocide of Jews on campus violated speech codes.
They came after her because she represented what her right-wing critics believe are the crimes of the diversity, equity and inclusion movement, and because the very existence of DEI is offensive to those who believe we live in a meritocracy where all start on a level playing field and excellence floats to the top. Basically, they decided she had to go, then reverse-engineered a campaign against her.
Opinion Columnist
Robin Abcarian
“While her resignation is a victory, it is only the beginning,” Christopher Rufo, the conservative activist who led the charge against Gay, wrote in the Wall Street Journal. Rufo also happens to be the architect of the phony panic over critical race theory. “If America is to reform its academic institutions,” he wrote, “the symbolic fight over Harvard’s presidency must evolve into a deeper institutional fight.”
Maybe Gay, despite thinner academic credentials than Harvard presidents past, would have been a superlative president, a phenomenal fundraiser, a visionary university leader. We will never know.
She is now a notch on the belt of the conservative ideologues seeking to undo what they consider to be left-wing ideological excesses pervading American universities.
“TWO DOWN,” trumpeted New York MAGA Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik. Her calculated questions about whether students who called for the genocide of Jews in the aftermath of the gruesome Oct. 7 Hamas attack in Israel violated university speech rules also led to the resignation of University of Pennsylvania President M. Elizabeth Magill.
This is yet another salvo in the conservative war against the “woke” forces of higher education. “The campaign against me was about more than one university and one leader,” Gay wrote last week in a New York Times essay. “For the opportunists driving cynicism about our institutions, no single victory or toppled leader exhausts their zeal.”
She’s absolutely right. Gay’s ouster, according to the Wall Street Journal, “has emboldened Republican lawmakers and their conservative allies, who think they have fresh momentum and a new playbook to reverse what they deem the progressive takeover of American education.”
That effort was already well underway. Nearly half the states have proposed or passed laws outlawing DEI initiatives on public campuses.
Last year, Republican presidential aspirant and MAGA stuntman Gov. Ron DeSantis staged a high-profile takeover of the public New College of Florida, a liberal arts bastion with a large LGBTQ+ population. In: athletics. Out: gender studies. The diversity office was eliminated. (Rufo, not incidentally, is one of the newly appointed members of the school’s board of trustees.)
Bill Ackman, the billionaire investor and Harvard alum who pushed for Gay’s ouster, demanded last week that the members of the Harvard board who hired her should step down and that the university’s DEI office be closed and its staff fired.
“Having a darker skin color, a less common sexual identity, and/or being a woman doesn’t make one necessarily oppressed or even disadvantaged,” wrote Ackman in a 4,000-word statement posted on X.
He makes some good points in his long thread — among them that a climate of fear on campuses has led to self-censorship, that “microaggressions are treated like hate speech” and that “campus speakers and faculty with unapproved views are shouted down, shunned, and canceled.”
But Ackman’s statement also illustrates the particular cluelessness of privileged people who refuse to acknowledge that history did not begin last week, or last year, or that individuals are subject to social and political systems well out of their control.
And yes, while the color of your skin, your gender or sexual orientation won’t automatically condemn you to a life of oppression and poverty — that argument is a straw man — people possessing those traits have in fact been oppressed and disadvantaged and, in many cases, still are. Acknowledging that doesn’t make you some wide-eyed wokie. It means you’ve paid attention to American history.
I’ve spent plenty of time on college campuses in the last decade, and it’s clear to me that one of the most precious aspects of diversity — viewpoint diversity — has taken a back seat to political correctness, which is tragic. A few years ago, I had conversations with students at UC Berkeley, the cradle of the Free Speech Movement, who argued that speakers like then-popular conservative contrarian Milos Yiannopoulos should not be banned.
In the Washington Post last month, Harvard professor Danielle Allen, a contemporary of Gay’s, who teaches political philosophy, ethics and public policy, wrote about her experiences trying to balance competing values on campus. A proponent of DEI, she also — quite reasonably — believes it needs to be reformed.
“We have been focused so much on academic freedom and free speech,” she wrote, “that we have neglected to set standards for a culture of mutual respect.”
This might seem like a counterintuitive take from a liberal scholar who was a co-chair of Harvard’s Presidential Task Force on Inclusion and Belonging, which produced an 82-page blueprint focused on ways to promote inclusion and mutual respect among vastly different constituencies. But on further examination, it isn’t at all.
Allen is a realist: “Across the country, DEI bureaucracies have been responsible for numerous assaults on common sense” — certain mandatory diversity training initiatives come to mind — ”but the values of lowercase-i inclusion and lowercase-d diversity remain foundational to healthy democracy.”
They surely do, and despite the efforts of folks like Rufo and DeSantis, they always will.
Politics
Dem fundraising giant in the hot seat as GOP lawmakers demand answers over dodged subpoena
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House Republicans are demanding ActBlue, a top Democratic campaign fundraising apparatus, turn over international communications, probing whether the organization knowingly misled lawmakers and dodged subpoenas to hide weaknesses in its screening process to weed out illegal, overseas donations.
House Administration Committee Chairman Bryan Steil, R-Wis., House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., collectively laid out their demands in a letter published on Tuesday.
“For more than a year, the Committees have conducted oversight regarding ActBlue’s ‘fundamentally unserious approach to fraud prevention,’” the letter reads.
“Recent reporting … strongly suggests that ActBlue deliberately obstructed the Committees’ investigation, including through misleading statements and noncompliance with our subpoenas.”
BREAKING THE FOURTH WALL: LEFT-WING GROUPS DEFIANT AS GOP SHEDS LIGHT ON GROUPS TIED TO CHINA
Rep. Jim Jordan leaves a House Republican Conference meeting at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 10, 2024. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc)
The letter is addressed to Regina Wallace-Jones, the CEO and president of ActBlue, and is the most recent entry in investigations that began in 2023 when Republicans originally raised concerns about foreign donations possibly influencing American elections.
It also follows New York Times reporting on a memo from Covington & Burling, a law firm, warning that gaps in its screening armor could present “a substantial risk for ActBlue.”
The memo, on its own, does not implicate wrongdoing or indicate that ActBlue accepted international donations. Even so, the reporting caught the eye of Republicans in Congress.
Steil, Jordan and Comer are collectively asking ActBlue to produce two internal documents to examine the internal understanding ActBlue may have had about its own weaknesses.
The first is a resignation letter from General Counsel Aaron Ting — a document Republicans contend centers on liabilities created by ActBlue’s donation security.
Republicans believe the second, a message from ActBlue’s former legal counsel Zain Ahmad, relates to an ignored whistleblower complaint about those practices.
HOUSE HEARING RAISES RED FLAGS OVER FORMER TECH MOGUL’S ‘CCP NETWORK’ ALLEGEDLY FUNDING OF FAR-LEFT GROUPS
House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer (R-KY) speaks to the media on his Committee’s investigation into former President Joe Biden’s cognitive state, in the Rayburn House Office Building on July 24, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Republicans have already requested those documents before, but haven’t received them.
“There is considerable reason to believe that ActBlue may have deliberately withheld this responsive material to impede our investigation,” the letter states.
For its own part, ActBlue has claimed it makes every effort to ensure its fundraising complies with legal requirements.
In ActBlue’s own letter published in Nov. 2023, Wallace-Jones, the CEO, affirmed that the organization maintained the highest standards for scrutiny of its fundraising.
“Our approach is multilayered, with checks and confirmations occurring throughout the donation process to verify donors and donor information,” Wallace-Jones wrote.
“These measures, which include compliance measures, technological tools, and manual reviews, help to ensure the identity of donors, root out potential foreign contributions, and protect donors from financial fraud.”
OVERSIGHT DEMANDS DOJ ANSWERS ON FOREIGN FUNDING OF AGITATOR GROUPS AS IRAN, ANTI-ICE PROTESTS CONTINUE
Regina Wallace-Jones of Palo Alto soaks up the first evening of the DNC Convention at the United Center in Chicago, IL on Monday, August 19, 2024. (Photo by Yalonda M. James/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)
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Republican lawmakers have given ActBlue two weeks to produce the requested documentation, setting a deadline for April 28, 2026.
“Absent these steps, the Committees are prepared to use available mechanisms to enforce our subpoenas,” the letter reads.
Politics
Swalwell scandal sparks fears of deeper rot on Capitol Hill
WASHINGTON — Eric Swalwell’s downfall has raised the possibility of a broader reckoning on Capitol Hill as congressional staffers, reporters and opposition researchers race to verify long-standing rumors of a sordid underground culture among the city’s most powerful.
Former lawmakers across the political spectrum have warned for years of a hushed congressional bacchanal marked by inappropriate revelry and sexual misconduct. But a sense of growing momentum gripped Congress on Tuesday, as Democrats grappled with Swalwell’s resignation and Republicans called for other lawmakers to face scrutiny.
The 72-hour collapse of Swalwell’s political career has shifted attention not only to his closest associates in Congress, but also to a larger set of sitting lawmakers from both parties suspected of lurid sexual activity. Several members have claimed that Swalwell’s alleged behavior was an open secret amid a cacophony of rumors on social media of other potential offenders.
“I think that many people knew about this for a while,” Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, a Florida Republican, said in an interview with The Times.
Luna, who planned to lead the charge to expel Swalwell before he resigned, alleged that young staffers would talk among one another about Swalwell’s conduct. Lawmakers should have done more to approach him about the rumors, she said.
Multiple current and former female staffers who spoke with The Times described a broader culture of warning one another about lawmakers with reputations for inappropriate conduct.
But the warnings, passed privately among junior aides, have focused on “sleazy” activity and boundary-crossing behavior, said one former legislative aide, who asked to remain anonymous. Whispers about sleazy behavior generally do not meet the coverage threshold for traditional newsrooms, which are bound by strict ethical standards.
Another former aide said that quiet guidance shared among female staffers focused on behavior that is legal, but nevertheless viewed as unprofessional and unbecoming of members of Congress — a line that has prevented many from speaking out publicly.
Now, a race is on for leverage between two political parties facing comparable strategic risks — each with members facing growing questions over their alleged conduct — and for scoops among news outlets, seeking to break the story first.
The Monday resignations of Swalwell and Texas Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales, who faced his own sex scandal, was also forcing lawmakers to address the issue publicly. Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) — one of Swalwell’s closest friends in Congress — answered questions from reporters at length Tuesday, telling them he should have confronted Swalwell when he heard rumors about his behavior.
“You let your guard down. I let him into my circle. … I deeply regret it,” Gallego said.
He denied knowing about Swalwell’s alleged misconduct when asked about the behavior.
“Look, we socialized. We went out. But I never saw him engage in any of the predatory behavior, harassment, sexual assault,” Gallego said.
Notably quiet was President Trump, who has faced sexual assault accusations of his own and frequently parried with Swalwell throughout his presidency. Although Trump posted an article reporting Swalwell’s resignation on social media, he has not commented on the matter in his own words.
The unraveling scandal comes at a time when lawmakers have come together across party lines to push for transparency in the case of Jeffrey Epstein, the late sex offender and alleged sex trafficker whose network of powerful associates included Democrats and Republicans alike.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Meanwhile, details of the Swalwell scandal continued to unfold Tuesday, as a Beverly Hills woman accused him of drugging and raping her in 2018. The Times could not immediately reach his attorney; he previously denied allegations of rape and sexual misconduct made by multiple women in published accounts last week.
Sex scandals are not a new phenomenon on Capitol Hill, which has seen over a dozen members embroiled in controversy over the last decade, including Katie Hill of California, Cory Mills and Matt Gaetz of Florida, and Blake Farenthold of Texas, among others.
But several prominent former members — including former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy — have warned of a more widespread cultural problem.
“Every member in Congress knows not to let any young staffer get around Swalwell or Matt Gaetz. It’s not a secret there,” McCarthy said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”
Luna had pressed lawmakers to address alleged sexual misconduct on Capitol Hill. In February, she called on the “predatory freaks” in Congress to leave office as she complained about the process to get ethical complaints handled.
“It pisses me off because while some of us are actually working and busting our asses, these clowns are sexually harassing their own staff, doing illegal crap, insider trading etc,” Luna wrote at the time.
Luna said Monday that she was encouraged to see bipartisan support for expelling Swalwell and Gonzales.
A longtime staffer who spoke on condition of anonymity said Tuesday that allegations against Swalwell have sparked conversations about how to do more to help staffers report sexual misconduct, such as reforming procedural rules that would allow staffers to report any of their concerns directly to ethics panels, and about the need for ethics investigations to move more quickly.
“Congress has a short-term memory, that is the difficulty here,” the staffer said. “After these guys leave their seats, there needs to be a concerted and consistent effort for reforms to be established and be made permanent.”
Politics
Video: Vance Says Pope Should Stay Out of U.S. Affairs
new video loaded: Vance Says Pope Should Stay Out of U.S. Affairs
transcript
transcript
Vance Says Pope Should Stay Out of U.S. Affairs
Vice President JD Vance weighed in on the tension between President Trump and Pope Leo XIV as Catholics expressed dismay about Mr. Trump’s attacks.
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“I certainly think that in some cases, it would be best for the Vatican to stick to matters of morality, to stick to matters of, you know, what’s going on in the Catholic Church and let the president of the United States stick to dictating American public policy.” “I don’t think that the message of the Gospel is meant to be abused in the way that some people are doing. And I will continue to speak out loudly against war, looking to promote peace.” “Pope Leo said things that are wrong. There’s nothing to apologize for. He’s wrong.” “I’m not a big fan of Pope Leo. He’s a very liberal person. I don’t think he’s doing a very good job.” “I did post it, and I thought it was me as a doctor, and it had to do with the Red Cross. There’s a Red Cross worker there, which we support.” “It’s terrible. It’s gross. It’s blasphemous.” “I stand with the pope. I mean, the pope speaks the Gospel. He speaks for peace.”
By Shawn Paik
April 14, 2026
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