MINNESOTA NICE: University of Minnesota rejects anti-Israel divestment proposal after extensive debate, activists respond by saying ‘we don’t want to make the regents’ lives comfortable.’

The University of Minnesota Board of Regents rejected a proposal to divest from companies that have connections to Israel after demands by campus anti-Israel groups.

The decision was announced on Tuesday following a Board of Regents meeting. In a press release, the university announced that a “position of neutrality” will be applied to investments in its Consolidated Endowment Fund.

”After careful consideration of all this input, we believe today’s action honors our fiduciary duty and the long-term needs of the University,” said UMN’s Board of Regents Chair Janie Mayeron. . . .

Anti-Israel students at the university held a news conference after the Board of Regents announced its decision not to divest from companies connected to Israel, saying that they would continue to protest in support of their cause, according to CBS News.

“[We’ll] continue to do a lot of the same disruptive actions that we had over the past year,” said UMN student Faye Hodges. “And I think that, again, we don’t want to make the regents’ lives comfortable and our university functioning as usual while our tuition dollars are being spent on something that over 70% of the student body voted against.”

Campus Reform reported in July about UMN Interim President Jeff Ettinger’s admission that he signed a document that contained a reference to “Hamas’ foundational mission to exterminate Jews in Israel.”

“That was a mistake by our administration. The way things transpired that day, we ended up finalizing that document at 5 a.m.,” Ettinger explained at the time. “Those topics were characterized by the students as their demands. We looked at them as topics, but clearly, I didn’t even know what that word meant.”

If the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy set out to destroy the position of higher education in American society, it couldn’t do a better job than the left is doing on its own.

ACT TEST MAKES SCIENCE SECTION OPTIONAL. What’s going on? I thought we were obliged to Trust the Science!

PRIVACY: Cops’ favorite face image search engine fined $33M for privacy violation.

A controversial facial recognition tech company behind a vast face image search engine widely used by cops has been fined approximately $33 million in the Netherlands for serious data privacy violations.

According to the Dutch Data Protection Authority (DPA), Clearview AI “built an illegal database with billions of photos of faces” by crawling the web and without gaining consent, including from people in the Netherlands.

Clearview AI’s technology—which has been banned in some US cities over concerns that it gives law enforcement unlimited power to track people in their daily lives—works by pulling in more than 40 billion face images from the web without setting “any limitations in terms of geographical location or nationality,” the Dutch DPA found. Perhaps most concerning, the Dutch DPA said, Clearview AI also provides “facial recognition software for identifying children,” therefore indiscriminately processing personal data of minors.

Add another zero or two to that fine.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: More Awful ‘Migrant’ Madness for Trump to Bury Harris With in Debate. “Trump will no doubt use the border like a cudgel to attempt to score a knockout over Kamala Harris in their debate. The ABC Dem water-carriers moderating the debate may not let him, however. At least they’ll do their level best to run interference for Madame Veep.”

LIMITED TIME DEAL: EF ECOFLOW Portable Power Station DELTA 2. #CommissionEarned

AUDIENCES LOVE THE REAGAN MOVIE, CRITICS NOT SO MUCH:

Is anyone surprised at this gap?

CHANGE: Cable TV’s collapse deepens: ‘It is becoming increasingly clear that there is no longer any floor.’

Those 1.6 million subscribers lost in the second quarter account for 6.9% of the industry’s base, and there’s no reason to think the slide is going to slow down at all, analysts Craig Moffett and Michael Nathanson write: “It is becoming increasingly clear that there is no longer any floor.”

As we’ve discussed here before, a few years ago there was a thought that digital pay-TV distributors like YouTube TV and Hulu Live would replace losses at conventional distributors, but that’s no longer true.

And those digital distributors are increasingly seeing “seasonality” in their business — consumers sign up for them in the fall to watch the NFL, and churn them out at the beginning of the year. That’s why YouTube TV lost subscribers for the first time in Q1, and only added 50,000 subscribers in Q2. The service added 300,000 subscribers in the same quarter last year.

When the content was free, people watched. When the content is worth paying for, people pay for it. But expecting people to pay for content that isn’t worth it is a stretch, particularly with so many competing options from videogames to Twitter/X.

BYRON YORK: What Kamala Harris means by ‘freedom.’ “A shorter version of that might be that ‘freedom’ tested well.”

It’s what people want, not what she plans to deliver.

WELL, BUT THE DOJ HAS BEEN THOROUGHLY CORRUPTED: Here’s Where FBI Officials Realized What Could Be the DOJ’s Goal in Raiding Mar-a-Lago.

What would the government do about the classified materials still stored at Mar-a-Lago? It’s a meeting that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice didn’t want to have, but they were mulling options over how to obtain the rest of the files. NBC News penned a lengthy article about this heated meeting, where the FBI was concerned about the optics of raiding a former president’s home while top DOJ officials couldn’t care less. The bureau was also concerned about the political donations made by Jay Bratt, a top DOJ prosecutor, who supposedly was apolitical to his core, a consummate professional who harbored no anti-Trump bias: He just donated to the political rival party. Bratt wasn’t giving money like the late Sheldon Adelson, but it’s the principle of the matter—the officials in this room, at this rank, shouldn’t be making such contributions.

Steven D’Antuono, now retired, was then chief of the Washington bureau office for the FBI, and he wanted a conciliatory and less-than-hostile approach to repossessing the files at Mar-a-Lago. The funny part about this meeting was that the main narrative used by the DOJ to storm Trump’s Florida residence was over national security concerns. The house was guarded by the Secret Service. The files were in a secure location.

In D’Antuono’s mind, there was no need to execute a storm-the-Bastille-like operation. Everyone at this meeting knew their careers were on the line, along with the severe political ramifications if things went sideways. It’s also where the FBI stumbled upon the DOJ’s main aim against the former president regarding the files, the raid, and how to catalog the legal documentation for a judge to sign off on the search. Trump would need to be accused of committing a crime, one that could bar him from political office.

Whenever they tell you somebody’s an apolitical straight-shooter, an institutionalist, they always turn out to be the worst of political hacks. See, e.g., Merrick Garland.

CUNY FIRES EMPLOYEE FOR BEING A CHRISTIAN: The last shred of doubt that America’s elite campuses are bastions of Far Left intolerance and hate was erased when City University of New York (CUNY) fired a highly touted program coordinator after she became a follower of Jesus Christ, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s Katelynn Richardson.

“Teona Pagan, who worked at CUNY’s Research Foundation as the Fellowships and Public Service Program Coordinator, alleges she was denied a religious accommodation for an aspect of her job that required her to recruit students for a fellowship focused on the promotion of LGBT ‘rights and causes,’ according to the complaint filed Aug. 28.

“When Pagan converted to Christianity in April 2022 — months after beginning her job in November 2021 — she suddenly found her duties related to the fellowship in conflict with her sincerely held religious beliefs.

“’After my hire, I was told that the committee was particularly drawn to me because of my youthful maturity and willingness to stand boldly for issues plaguing our generation,’ Pagan told the Daily Caller News Foundation. ‘Ironically, when I decided to finally stand for the Truth, who is Jesus Christ, they chose to terminate my employment.’”

One wonders how many CUNY staffers are professing Muslims, Hindus or Buddhists and if they receive religious accommodations?

YOU CAN’T DO THAT ON CNN! Kevin O’Leary Explains Why Blue States Are ‘Uninvestable.’

THE ENEMY WITHIN: Chaos at Columbia: Pro-Hamas Students Block Entry To Campus, Vandalize Statue on First Day of Classes: New ‘actionist’ group, Unity of Fields, vows to bring violence to America.

Related: China Paid Pro-CCP Agitators To Clash With Dissenters During Xi’s Visit to San Francisco: Report.

This wouldn’t happen if the United States had a functioning government.

But not all is gloomy: Flagstock 2024: UNC Frat Bros Get the Rager They Deserve: Journalists try, fail to ruin fun party.

UM, OK: Maduro decrees Christmas will start in October as Venezuela cracks down on dissent.

“September smells like Christmas!” Maduro said in his weekly television show on Monday, to the apparent delight of his audience.

“This year and to honor you all, to thank you all, I am going to decree the beginning of Christmas on October 1. Christmas arrived for everyone, in peace, joy and security!” he said.

Maduro’s decree – not the first of its kind, but the earliest – comes as Venezuela grapples with the fallout from July’s presidential election, which saw Maduro claim a third term despite global skepticism and outcry from the country’s opposition movement.

Also by decree, underwear will be changed every half hour and worn on the outside so he can check.

DON SURBER: Making It Too Big To Rig. “This time around, Democrats cannot bogeyman Trump because we already know how he did as president. More celebrities are coming out of the closet for Trump. A few have even flipped sides. . . . The communists in Red China approved Walz to visit 30 times. They don’t do that for any patriotic American. His reaction to Tiananmen Square was to go to Red China and work at one of its schools for one year. Finally, Trump has the party behind him. Lara Trump’s running the RNC. I doubt she will joyride in limos. Also, Scott Pressler is signing up voters in Pennsylvania and inspiring others to follow his lead. A new generation is going to Make America Great Again. So let the campaign begin. The third time is the charm.”

BIDENOMICS IS WORKING [VIP]: Tighten That Belt Even More Because Here Comes the Dreaded S-Word.

OF COURSE NOT, THEY’RE ON THE SAME SIDE: Will Harris-Biden act to counter Iranian agents behind anti-Israel campus protests?

As colleges begin the new school year, “pro-Palestine” protesters need to start asking who’s really calling the shots: It may be agents of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The Post’s Isabel Vincent reported exclusively Friday that Iran is funding anti-Israel, pro-Hamas groups and campus protests via a network of activist groups whose names bear no sign of Tehran’s ties.

For instance, members of the Texas-based Rise Against Oppression (which downplays its links to Iran) “reclaimed” a student center at Houston University in April.

Many pro-Palestinian groups also get funding (directly, or via the radical Tides Foundation) from the Maximum Difference Foundation, the US family charity of an extended clan whose members back in Iran are tight with the family of Iran’s former President Akbar Rafsanjani and have worked with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.

“Following the October 7th attacks … Tehran has poured money and logistical support into anti-Israel and pro-terror rallies, encampments and civil disorder,” said Sam Westrop, director of Middle East Forum’s Islamist Watch project.

Westrop added that the Iranian regime “appears to operate mosques, activist and student groups that are deeply involved in pro-terror demonstrations, alongside Beijing-backed and Hamas-aligned groups.”

Hey, it’s not like they’re criticizing school boards.

I’LL BE JUDGE, I’LL BE JURY, SAID CUNNING OLD FURY, I’LL TRY THE WHOLE THING AND ACQUIT ME MYSELF*:  BBC judges itself over climate change bias. Guess the verdict!

*With apologies to Lewis Carroll.

IT LEAVES PROGRESSIVES ENVIOUS:  Starmer’s war on free speech leaves Uncle Sam aghast.

THERE’S ONLY ONE TEST: WERE HIS LIPS MOVING?  Did Tim Walz Lie About Getting Turned Away From a George W. Bush Rally?

SHE PICKED THE ONE WHO WOULDN’T MAKE PEOPLE WONDER WHY SHE WAS THE LEAD CANDIDATE:  Based on This Minnesota Poll, Did Kamala Choose the Wrong Horse for a Running Mate?

THEY WILL CONTINUE CHEATING UNTIL STOPPED: Pennsylvania Court Says Improperly Dated Mail Ballots Must Be Counted, In ‘Untethered And Unprecedented’ Ruling.

ANY ARE TOO MANY:  NYC Cops Estimate What Percentage of Crimes Were Committed by Illegal Immigrants.

THE WESTERN WORLD IS STARTING TO FIGHT FOR THEIR FREEDOM AGAINST THEIR GOVERNMENTS:  Is the Western World Still Free?

THIS:  If You Think Trump Is The Abortion Extremist, You’ve Bought Democrat Propaganda.

THERE ARE ADULTS IN GOVERNMENT, JUST NOT IN AMERICAN GOVERNMENT RIGHT NOW:  Netanyahu responds to Biden.