THAT’S BECAUSE IT WAS NEVER ABOUT IMPROVING EDUCATION. It was literally just Jimmy Carter repaying the teachers’ union for support.
Massive increase in spending after the Department of Education was created with no actual improvement in education! https://t.co/J72BUVqGsl
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 5, 2025
JAMES PIERESON: Is this the end of the DEI regime?
The “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” regime originated and expanded mostly through executive and judicial power, not by legislative action or electoral mandate. It was never popular: on the few occasions in which voters had a say, the preference regime always lost, which is why advocates typically dialed things back whenever elections were near. There is an irony in the fact that President Trump is attacking the regime by the same means used to institute it: by using his control over the federal bureaucracy and federal spending to stamp it out. Live by the sword, die by the sword.
If Trump can keep the pressure on for four years, or especially if his successors can do so for another four or eight years, then advocates will find it difficult to recreate the regime if and when they regain power. After all, it took them decades to build it up, but it took Trump but a few days to bulldoze it to the ground. By that time, perhaps four or eight years hence, advocates will be out of their jobs and scattered to the four winds, their groups dormant or out of money, and their consulting companies and interest groups bankrupt and drained of funds. When the try to reconstruct the regime at some point in the future, they will have to reckon with the reality that the next Republican administration will once again knock it down with Trump-like executive orders. At that point, everyone may conclude that, after six decades, the old regime is dead once and for all.
It is a good question why opinions about the DEI regime changed so radically in recent years, when up to now corporate leaders and Republican presidents were willing to go along with it, up to a point, while ignoring conservative writers who had built a strong case against it. Republican presidents prior to Trump never made serious efforts to eliminate the diversity regime. Many point out that it originated in the first place under the Nixon administration in the early 1970s. There is little question now that Trump and his advisors view the DEI regime as hostile to their domestic agenda, perhaps as one of the pillars of the administrative state, and as an expensive operation to boot.
In the wake of the George Floyd episode in 2020 and the hysteria it induced around the country regarding race and diversity, advocates went too far in pushing the movement in an increasingly radical direction. They scrapped the concept of diversity in favor of “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” an ideological construct that took the movement far beyond ideals of equal opportunity and fair-hiring practices. They imposed ridiculous pronoun rules on employees under their supervision (rules now banned in the federal government by a new executive order). The regime’s transgender advocates insisted that men “transitioning” to women should be allowed to play on female athletic teams. Advocates embraced a new ideological doctrine of DEI from The New York Times’s 1619 Project, which declared that the United States was founded on the basis of racism and slavery, with those original sins embedded in its founding institutions.
Joel Kotkin adds: Trump’s assault on DEI will bring us closer to a post-racial America.
Indeed — which is why the army of grifters such policies enable will not go quietly into the night: Smashing the ‘rice bowls’ — how elites are lashing out at Trump and Musk’s reforms.
FLASHBACK:
More Green New Scam vote-buying: Harris-Biden pour another $133 million of Inflation Reduction Act money into battleground states:
– Pennsylvania get $87 million
– Michigan gets $33.2 millionThis is on top of the $64 billion that previously went to five battleground states.… pic.twitter.com/ZCUdQlP10T
— Steve Milloy (@JunkScience) October 22, 2024
Steve Milloy reposted this, adding, “Musk should check this out: Biden directed almost half of the Inflation Reduction Act climate money spent last year to five battleground states. Who received that money and what did they do with it?”
Congress needs to repeal Biden’s Green New Deal (Not So) Lite.
PINKS SLIPS FLYING IN USAID: The Washington Stand’s Ben Johnson lays it out in detail as President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the DOGE SWAT team move to shutter a rogue bureaucracy that for decades has been the subject of waste and fraud exposes.
FASTER, PLEASE: 20,000 federal workers take ‘buyout’ so far, official says.
MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Crazy Talk, Vol. 1: Trump’s Radical Plan to Force Putin to Talk Peace. “It’s been a busy month for the Trump 47 administration these first few days in February, so I hope you’ll forgive me if I missed one of the potentially biggest developments until a full 36 hours after it happened on Monday. It was Tuesday evening — a good three weeks after lunch on Monday in Trump 47 Standard Time — that I read about another one of those crazy-stupid Trump ideas that just might work.”
TYLER O’NEIL: Trump Deals a Huge Blow to the Left’s Funding Empire.
By pausing foreign funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development, President Donald Trump has dealt a major blow to the ecosystem of nonprofits that promote woke ideology against America’s interests.
It is no accident that USAID’s funding has dovetailed with the grantmaking of leftist billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Foundations—and the foreign funding pause will undermine his efforts.
Trump placed a 90-day freeze on foreign assistance on his first day in office. This weekend, agents of the Department of Government Efficiency entered the USAID facility and the USAID website shut down. On Sunday, Trump named Secretary of State Marco Rubio acting head of the agency.
Full details at the link. It isn’t just USAID, either, that’s going to feel the sting. I missed this WSJ piece on Sunday but the headline tells a brutal truth: Democratic States Are Wards of Washington.
Democratic states and their economies depend much more on Washington largesse than Republican states do. This year, New York received roughly $4,900 per capita from the feds and California $4,300—two to three times as much as Florida ($1,700) and Texas ($1,500). That’s because Democratic states provide more generous social welfare, which is increasingly funded by Washington thanks to regulatory changes by the Biden administration.
Democratic states also received a disproportionate share of the more than $1 trillion that Congress sent to state and local governments in 2020 and 2021 as pandemic relief. Between 2018 and 2022, federal dollars flowing to state and local governments increased by about $515 billion, more than the rise in Social Security and Medicare combined.
Most Covid funds are running out, though the Biden Federal Emergency Management Agency planned to hand out disaster-relief funds to states and cities for pandemic “emergency” spending through August 2026. This year’s Los Angeles city budget includes $208.2 million in FEMA Covid funds, including for housing vagrants in hotels. New York state’s budget this year includes nearly $3.5 billion in FEMA dollars for Covid “emergency protective measures” such as home test kits.
DOGE is derailing the gravy train at USAID and State but taxpayer subsidies to tax & spend blue states ought to be next.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Trump 47 —Come for the Freedom, Stay for the Democrats’ Exploding Heads. “That new noise that you may be hearing in any part of this great land is the weeping and gnashing of teeth in the United States Department of Justice. The Swamp rot is critically deep there, and they know that the new sheriff in town will not take kindly to what they’ve been doing these last four years. The Department of Justice will once again be focused on — surprisingly — justice.”
YES:
— Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 (@pmarca) February 5, 2025
WHAT’S A BROWN MEDICAL DEGREE CURRENTLY WORTH?
SCOOP: Brown University Medical School now gives "diversity, equity, and inclusion" more weight than "excellent clinical skills" in its promotion criteria for faculty."
The criteria say DEI is a "major criterion." Clinical skills, by contrast, are only a "minor criterion."🧵 pic.twitter.com/5vOYSZZ3H0
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) February 4, 2025
Not as much as it used to be.
The cost, however, is still dear.
More at the X thread.
KNOW THE TRUTH AND THE TRUTH WILL MAKE YOU FREE: Court Orders Justice Department to Provide Information on Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Communication with DA Fani Willis.
Popcorn.
ONE OF THE WAYS YOU KNOW THAT ACADEMIA HAS TOO MANY ADMINISTRATORS IS THAT THEY HAVE A TIME FOR STUFF LIKE THIS: FIRE Blasts University Of Hawaii For Censoring Law Prof’s PowerPoint Presentation.
RAYMOND IBRAHIM: Muhammad’s ‘Evil Genius’ Was to Make Islam Tribal.
I’m really enjoying Raymond’s video podcasts.
IT WOULD TAKE A HEART OF STONE NOT TO LAUGH: Obama’s $800M Presidential Center Slapped With DEI Lawsuit.
READER FAVORITE: Klipsch The One Plus Premium Bluetooth Speaker System. #CommissionEarned
CHANGE: GOP Reaps Rewards of Party Switchers.
Regardless of personal motivations, we are watching the long, slow death of the Florida Democrats. Recent party switches are just another nail in the coffin. The policy consequences could be huge—how will future Democratic administrations approach Cuba, for example? The electoral calculus changes too. With Florida out of reach, will Democrats double-down on the Midwest? Try to claw their way back in Texas? Expanding the playing field will be crucial to the party’s long-term prospects.
Southern party switching in the Obama years made sense: conservative legislators joined the conservative party. Recent party switchers have been more transparently opportunistic—akin to swapping jerseys in the 9th inning with your team down five runs. Democrats have every right to be upset.
But we shouldn’t miss the forest for the trees. Valdes and Cassel are symptoms of a larger problem: Democrats have collapsed in places they used to carry comfortably.
Florida is in the bag. Meanwhile, Scott Presler continues working to do in New Jersey what he did in Pennsylvania:
We purchased the voter rolls for all of New Jersey’s 21 counties
& are running the data through AI software to detect fraudulent voter registrations.
Each of the counties & the @NJStateDept will be receiving a letter from us.
We demand clean & accurate voter rolls.
— ThePersistence (@ScottPresler) February 4, 2025
Want to clean up Colorado next, Scott?
FUCK THESE FASCISTS:
At an anti-@elonmusk protest in D.C., Democrat politicians and their supporters call for Musk to immediately be imprisoned to stop the President’s efforts to end waste and fraud of American taxpayer funds. pic.twitter.com/PhVbMi5bXX
— Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) February 4, 2025
Audit, prosecute, convict.
MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: Smashing the ‘rice bowls’ — Why elites are lashing out at Trump and Musk’s reforms.
WELL, YES.
Ilhan Omar: USAID is the reason I’m here and not in Mogadishu.
Literally everyone: That’s why we want to get rid of it.
— Bad Hombre (@joma_gc) February 4, 2025
HE’S CHANGING THE INCENTIVES, BIGLY: Trump ‘Welcomes’ New ‘Members’ to Club GITMO.
ALL THE GOOD STUFF: Writerly Sound Bites, Number 19: Chivalry, Honor – What Does It Even Mean?
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