SO YOU’RE SAYING COVID WAS OVERSOLD? Research reveals that more people died from hot or cold weather conditions than COVID-19 in parts of UK.

MONOPOLY: Bing outage shows just how little competition Google search really has.

CHRIS BRUNET: I was interviewed by the Harvard Crimson. “I spoke to them on the phone for half an hour, and I was hesitant because I thought they would twist my words or butcher them. I am pleasantly surprised that it is a relatively competent and unbiased article.”

It’s here: Copy-and-Paste: How Allegations of Plagiarism Became the Culture War’s New Frontier.

As for the spurious claim of racism leveled by Rufo’s critics, if you’re examining the work of DEI officials, and those officials are all black women, that doesn’t make you the racist, though it reflects poorly on the people doing the hiring of the DEI officials. Plus: “They’re not real scholars. It’s a fake profession to begin with. So, when it’s fake and plagiarized, it makes it double funny.”

Yes, they know they have to check to boxes with dissertations, etc., but nobody really expects much from them. The work thus tends to be pro forma, and often bogus. This is exposing that.

THAT’S ODD: Stroke rates rising sharply among people younger than 65.

YES. Steven Hayward: The Growing Menace of the “Non-Profit” Sector. “Beyond the all-too-easy and predictable union of the left’s two main current obsessions is how massive the lavishly funded ‘non-profit sector’ has become to the overall project of the left. It is important to understand the playbook, because the left’s grand strategy goes beyond private philanthropy to radical causes, and now includes direct taxpayer support (in the form of federal grants and legal fee reimbursements) as well as buying off corporate support with tax breaks and subsidies. Universities are always the main hub for these efforts, but the spokes now radiate out deep into the corporate world and the halls of government.”

The non-profit sector — which might be better described as the “non-democratic government sector” — should be sharply reined in. I would limit non-profit status to groups directly providing services to the poor, and would cap their budgets at the level of what it takes to run a hospital or a school. Or perhaps simply abolish their tax exemptions entirely. If it’s worthwhile, people should donate without tax incentives. And if it’s spending its money on delivering services, it’s not earning any profits to tax.

Plus: “Hence what we have seen in recent weeks over the “Palestine” issue is an ominous case study. Observers stunned at the campus-based protest movement on behalf of Hamas have come to learn that this protest movement is far from spontaneous, but has in fact been lavishly financed and developed for years by leading left-wing philanthropies along with Arab states in the Middle East. Park MacDougald reports the architecture of the effort in detail at The Tablet. It includes all of the usual suspects, including George Soros, the Tides Foundation, but also many lesser-known donors and activists.”

HMM: Prescriptions for Ozempic and Similar Drugs Up 600% in Teens and Young Adults.

IT’S COME TO THIS: I’m a Jewish alumna of Christian colleges —where I found a safe home.

Several generations of Jews thought there was safety in secularism, and shunned Christians. That hasn’t worked out as expected.

MORE ON UCLA MEDICAL SCHOOL’S DEI DEBACLE: DEI Can Get You Killed.

PROGRESS: University of North Carolina board repeals DEI mandates for all 17 campuses, DEI jobs on chopping block.

I REMEMBER WHEN HIGHER EDUCATION WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A BEACON OF REASON, TOLERANCE, AND GOOD JUDGMENT: Northwestern president says it would have been too ‘impractical’ to consult with Jewish students amid negotiations with pro-Hamas agitators.

Of course, he shouldn’t have been negotiating at all.

Related: Fire Michael Schill: The Northwestern University president disgraces himself—and his institution—before Congress.

HE TREATS ANTI-SEMITES BETTER THAN HE WOULD TREAT REPUBLICANS: Northwestern President Won’t Commit To Excluding Anti-Semites From Anti-Semitism Task Force.

ICYMI:

SCOOP: Whistleblowers at UCLA medical school say it has dramatically lowered admissions standards for minority applicants.

As a result, they say, 50% of some cohorts now fail basic tests of medical competence.

We've obtained shocking internal data.🧵https://t.co/CVMIXgn6sE pic.twitter.com/3ub10HNPpO

— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) May 23, 2024

CRY, CRY: AOC Frustrated That Her Voters Were Excited to See Trump.

MATTHEW CONTINETTI: Trump’s New New Majority: How to reward the new members of Trump’s coalition.

Related: Trump has a Republican problem: The public wants a winner. FJB and Republican senators are losers.

Plus: How the Republican Party could win the Black vote for a generation. “It has been 70 years this month since Brown v. Board of Education ended official separate but equal schools. Democrats are proud of that achievement. What they won’t tell you is that two-thirds of Black kids still go to flailing segregated schools presided over by Democratic mayors who have no clue how to fix them and unions that see their role as job protectors for teachers more than advocates for children.”

WHO COULD HAVE SEEN THIS COMING? Biden economy marred by high cost of living driving voters back to Trump: Poll.

ROGER KIMBALL: Trump’s bumper Bronx rally is a bad omen for Biden: He promised to return to New York and sort out the anarchy.

Future historians, psephologists, and political analysts, searching for the day and time that Joe Biden’s 2024 campaign imploded beyond recovery, are likely to settle on Thursday May 23, 2024, at approximately 7 p.m. It was then that Trump’s surprising rally in Crotona Park in the South Bronx really got underway. I didn’t hear any actual bells tolling, but if you listened carefully you could discern the mournful obligato that signaled the end of Joe Biden’s hopes in New York — and therefore the country.

No Republican has taken New York since Ronald Reagan’s great landslide in 1984. Why then would Trump waste time coming to the South Bronx? Because, to adapt Bob Dylan, “The Times They Are A Changin’.” Joe Biden won New York in 2020 by twenty-three points. A recent poll had Donald Trump trailing by only nine points. After the Bronx rally, who knows what the polls will say? As Trump himself put it, “You live in a blue city, but it is going red very, very quickly.”

I haven’t seen definitive numbers yet, but Trump’s rally was was planned to accommodate up to 3,500 people. As the event got underway, many outlets were reporting that the crowd numbered 25,000 or more.

Whatever the tally, the love was palpable. One brilliant moment occurred when Trump called former City Councilman Ruben Diaz Sr., a black Puerto Rican Democrat, up to the stage. In broken but heartfelt English, Diaz enthusiastically endorsed Trump for president. I didn’t note the exact time, but I’d wager that was the moment that Trump sealed the deal for New York for 2024.

It was a masterly speech. Trump hit all the sore spots: the migrant crime wave, the transsexual insanity, Biden’s economic chaos, the insecurity of American elections. In what is sure to be a major new slogan, Trump reminded the crowd that his victory in 2024 must be “too big to rig.”

“Too big to rig.” Nice.

STATE SPONSORED CENSORSHIP AND INTIMIDATION: The Overlooked Twitter Files Scandal: How the Intelligence Community Wore Down the Platform.

PURGE THE QUISLINGS: Fire Michael Schill: The Northwestern University president disgraces himself—and his institution—before Congress.

LOUISVILLE-BRANDEIS LAW CHOSE . . . POORLY: Activism Over Education? Law School Embraced Drag Shows And Social Justice Amid Rankings Free Fall.

Students at the University of Louisville Louis D. Brandeis School of Law were shocked in February to learn their school was hosting a “Drag Story Hour,” in which one of their professors dressed as a woman and told a story about a gay rabbit with a member of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.

The event was part of the university’s “Drag Me to Class” fundraiser to raise money for students to attend the LGBT-focused Lavender Law Conference in the nation’s capital. But while the school leaned into drag, students were fuming over projections that the law school could be taking a massive dive in the US News & World Report’s upcoming law school rankings.

Those fears were confirmed on April 9, when the rankings saw Brandeis drop from 99 to 136 in the rankings. The 37 spot drop was the largest of any school on the list, and has left both faculty and students pointing fingers. School administrators blamed the drop in rankings on leadership changes, a lagging job market due to the COVID pandemic, and a new methodological ranking system by US News & World Report.

Current students aren’t buying it, and told The Daily Wire that the drop came as they witnessed the school pivot towards activism, and away from academics. The school’s total first-time bar passage rates have been in a free fall since 2020, when the rate sat at 89%, to just 75% last year. And the pass rate was just 65% in 2022, according to the most recent data available on the school’s website.

Instapundit has been covering Louisville’s decline since 2016 and before.

Flashback: “Apparently the University of Louisville law school has decided to meet declining enrollments and dwindling funds not by upping their game, but by ‘branding’ itself as a ‘progressive’ institution committed to ‘social justice.'” Plus: “Ultimately, of course, this is why U of L’s branding effort will fail miserably.” Called it!

LOL: Dems Release Damning Photo of Alito Reading the Constitution.

I love the — non-parody — recasting of the 1775 Pine Tree Flag into a symbol of “white supremacy,” including assiduous Wikipedia-editing in support of that absurdity.

Related: Democrats’ Alito ramblings are about delegitimizing the Supreme Court.

TRUE: Hamas Has Exposed a Sickness in Western Society. “Indeed, there is something very dark bubbling up to the surface of society these days. The people who latched on to semantics in the video translation look absolutely insane. Not strange, not silly, not eccentric, not unpleasant. Actually insane. The fact that some of these people teach in universities is a dirty trick committed against humanity itself. . . . At some point, we in the West are going to have to grapple seriously with the fact that, yes, the protesters and their faculty supporters are pro-Hamas, just as they say they are.”

Related: The thousand deaths of today’s feckless academic cowards: Faculty and administrators are rarely, anymore, profiles in courage. Well, you reap what you sow. Well, some are cowards, others are actively on the other side. Plus: “In decades, there wasn’t a week that went by without someone—faculty, administrators, even a dean and a president—approaching me to write about something under my byline that concerned them. This despite the fact that the same newspaper would have been more than happy to run a column from them. There were never any takers because columns require a byline with an attached name. That’s a bridge too far for people who are more accustomed to stabbing Caesar than being Caesar.”

YEAH:

This doesn't read the way you think it reads. https://t.co/nynQ9m1bc5

— Omri Ceren (@omriceren) May 22, 2024

GOOD: J.D. Vance Makes Pro-Israel Speech at Isolationist Event. “Vance used his speech to differentiate his opposition to Ukraine aid from his steadfast commitment to Israel. ‘I’m supportive of Israel and their war against Hamas. I certainly admire the Ukrainians who are fighting against Russia, but I do not think that it is in America’s interest to continue to fund an effectively never-ending war in Ukraine,’ Vance said. ‘It’s sort of weird that this town assumes that Israel and Ukraine are exactly the same. They’re not, of course, and I think it’s important to analyze them in separate buckets.'”

More at the link, which sounds sensible to me.

OPEN THREAD: This is for you.

DEFENDING THE INDEFENSIBLE: NASA defends Artemis cost and schedule amid planning of possible changes.