Author name: moderat ereport

A cartoon by Pedro Molina. Related | Get ready for Trump to whine about the judge in his dumb Epstein lawsuit

On Wednesday, the Department of Education announced it is investigating five universities over their scholarship programs for receipts of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a program that allows people illegally brought into the U.S. as children to remain without fear of deportation. According to the Education Department, scholarships for Dreamers violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 because they discriminate on the basis of national origin.  The logic here is that if scholarships are reserved for individuals not born in the U.S., it discriminates against people who are born in the U.S.. It’s a new front in the Education Department’s war on higher education, one that also manages to attack immigrants in the process.  The universities in the administration’s crosshairs are the University of Louisville, the University of Nebraska Omaha, the University of Miami, the University of Michigan, and Western Michigan University. That’s thanks to the Legal Insurrection Foundation’s Equal Protection Project, which teed up this round of harassment by complaining to the Education Department. Legal Insurrection has a very narrow view of “equal protection,” one that protects primarily white people, despite pretending the group is a warrior against discrimination. Warriors for discrimination, maybe.  Education Secretary Linda McMahon, shown in April. Unfortunately, the Department of Justice has already successfully pursued this theory. In a sham lawsuit clearly done in concert with Texas, the DOJ sued that state over its law allowing undocumented students to get in-state tuition rates. The idea was that giving any benefit to undocumented students discriminates against good old American-born students. The case’s swift settlement led to Texas declaring its own law unconstitutional and wiping it off the books.  The investigations announced on Wednesday are predicated on the same nativist nonsense.  The Department of Education has plenty of time to harass schools because it has stopped doing any other work. Earlier this month, the Supreme Court gave President Donald Trump the go-ahead to fire nearly 1,400 employees. The civil rights branch has been decimated by firings, and investigations into civil rights complaints have slowed to a pathetic crawl.  In June, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon bragged to Congress about how great they were doing, with the standard Trumpy language that is now required of all Cabinet secretaries: “Not only are we reducing the backlog, but we are keeping up with the current amount with a reduced staff because we are doing it efficiently.” This is flatly false. An investigation by the Associated Press found that the department has resolved only 65 complaints thus far, which is significantly behind the pace of prior years. The database shows that eight of those 65 were resolved before Trump took office on Jan. 20, as well. Plus, complaints have increased by 9%, and the department is currently facing a backlog of 25,000 complaints. The administration has also abolished multiple civil rights offices. Instead of protecting the rights of students, the department is devoting itself to attacking schools. The department has threatened universities with loss of accreditation based on their ostensible concerns over the treatment of Jewish students. McMahon has launched over 50 “investigations” into universities to eradicate every last shred of diversity, inclusion, and equity.  Of course, the Department of Education can’t destroy education alone. It takes a village.  In May, the Department of Homeland Security got in on the action, attempting to block Harvard University from admitting international students. That move would also have required current international students to transfer or lose their legal immigration status. A federal judge quickly ruled against the administration, but that won’t stop them from continuing to target Harvard and international students.  People walk on the campus of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, this past December. On Wednesday, the State Department announced it would be investigating Harvard’s compliance with the J-1 visa program, which lets international students do exchange programs here. It’s just another way to try to block Harvard from enrolling international students.  The Department of Energy, oddly, is leading the charge to ban transgender girls from playing sports. Why? Who knows!  While the departments of Homeland Security, State, Energy, and Education are indeed helpful for attacking schools, nothing beats the fervor of the DOJ. The DOJ keeps “investigating” schools for allegedly discriminating against white students. They’re attacking the entire University of California system, alleging race- and sex-based discrimination in a vague notice that doesn’t explain what, exactly, they are investigating. They’re going after the University of Chicago over international students. And so on.  It isn’t yet clear what will happen to the five universities targeted on Wednesday. However, it’s exceedingly clear that the Trump administration will never stop attacking schools or immigrants. Here, it’s so convenient for the administration that it gets to do both at the same time. There’s some government efficiency for you.

House Speaker Mike Johnson seems rather anxious in defending his decision to block any votes related to the Epstein files scandal before the chamber departs for its summer break. On Wednesday, Johnson quickly cut off NOTUS reporter Reese Gorman, who suggested that he abruptly ended the House session on Tuesday for “fear of Epstein votes.” ”—No, we don’t have any fear. No, no. Hold on. No Reese. No. There’s no fear here. No, there’s no fear. There’s no fear,” Johnson said, before accusing Democrats of “political gamesmanship,” and dismissing the long-promised release of the files as a “political cudgel.” YouTube Video The scandal continues to plague the Trump administration, and GOP lawmakers like Johnson have struggled mightily in their attempts to downplay the public’s growing concern. Meanwhile, Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee were far more direct in their response to Johnson’s spin. “Mike Johnson: Getting justice for the victims of Jeffrey Epstein = political gamesmanship. Trumpworld is ALL OVER those files,” the committee Democrats wrote on their official X account. The speaker doth protest too much, methinks.

President Donald Trump was reportedly told in May that his name appears multiple times in the trove of documents the Department of Justice possesses about accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein—a bombshell revelation that sheds light into why Trump is so desperate to keep the files under wraps. According to the Wall Street Journal’s report on Wednesday, Attorney General Pam Bondi personally told Trump at a meeting that his name is among the files. From the report:  [Bondi and her deputy] told the president at the meeting that the files contained what officials felt was unverified hearsay about many people, including Trump, who had socialized with Epstein in the past, some of the officials said. One of the officials familiar with the documents said they contain hundreds of other names. The WSJ report shows Trump lied just a few days ago, when reporters asked him point blank if he was told that his name appears in the documents. “No, no,” Trump said when asked if Bondi told him his name was in the files.  Trump added, “I would say that these files were made up by [former FBI Director James] Comey, they were made up by [former President Barack] Obama, they were made up by the Biden …,” before trailing off. YouTube Video It’s not just Bondi who has reportedly acknowledged that Trump’s name is in the files. According to the WSJ: FBI Director Kash Patel has privately told other government officials that Trump’s name appeared in the files, according to people close to the administration. Trump, for his part, has been going berserk in the weeks since his administration announced that there are no more major Epstein files to be released.  That announcement has roiled the MAGA base, which has been told for years that the government was in possession of information that implicated powerful people in crimes involving the underage girls Epstein was accused of trafficking. An enraged Trump even called his own supporters, who are demanding the government make all of the files public, “weaklings” whose support he no longer wants. Polling shows the scandal is taking a toll on Trump, with large majorities of Americans believing the government is hiding information about Epstein. Because of that, Trump is desperately trying to change the subject, dangling red meat to his base—including a baseless allegation that Obama committed “treason.” On July 17, an activist in London puts up a poster showing President Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein. But even Trump’s biggest supporters say that’s not enough, and that the files must be released. “Dangling bits of red meat no longer satisfies,” Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia wrote in a post Monday on X. “They want the whole steak dinner and will accept nothing else.” However, congressional GOP leadership has taken Trump’s side in the matter, refusing to pass legislation that compels the administration to release its files on Epstein.  In fact, House Speaker Mike Johnson is sending the House home unexpectedly early, to avoid being forced to vote on legislation that forces the files into public. But Johnson’s efforts have not quelled dissent in the GOP ranks. The House Oversight Committee on Wednesday issued a subpoena for convicted Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell to testify before the committee.  Ultimately, the WSJ report makes clear that leadership is trying to protect Trump from being implicated. You won’t catch us saying this much, but turns out, Elon Musk seems to have been right.

To make sure that you can read every word of every post, and support our work, please subscribe to PoliticusUSA. Subscribe now The Wall Street Journal demonstrated how to respond to a frivolous Trump lawsuit that is intended to intimidate the press. Instead of backing down and entering into settlement negotiations, The Wall Street Journal has responded to Trump’s lawsuit by publishing a devastating story that the president has known that he is in the Epstein files since May. The Wall Street Journal reported: When Justice Department officials reviewed what Attorney General Pam Bondi called a “truckload” of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein earlier this year, they discovered that Donald Trump’s name appeared multiple times, according to senior administration officials. In May, Bondi and her deputy informed the president at a meeting in the White House that his name was in the Epstein files, the officials said. Many other high-profile figures were also named, Trump was told. Being mentioned in the records isn’t a sign of wrongdoing. … They told the president at the meeting that the files contained what officials felt was unverified hearsay about many people, including Trump, who had socialized with Epstein in the past, some of the officials said. One of the officials familiar with the documents said they contain hundreds of other names. As The Journal pointed out, being mentioned in the files isn’t the same as committing a crime. However, it is definitely not a good thing that Trump is mentioned numerous times in the Epstein files, and with this report, we now have our answer as to why Trump is trying to bury the release of more information. Read more