Possibly the third time would be the allure.
Columbia College clearly subscribes to the assumption that Friday night time is the most effective time to place out unhealthy information.
How else to clarify the truth that, at 8 p.m. Friday, it introduced that its interim president had give up?
If members of the Board of Trustees hoped no person would discover, they’re extra delusional than marketed.
The resignation of Dr. Katrina Armstrong is one more bombshell improvement within the Trump administration’s crackdown on universities violating the civil rights of Jewish college students, with Columbia a serial offender and prime check case.
The announcement gave no purpose why Armstrong is returning to the medical faculty or why she is being changed by Claire Shipman, co-chair of the trustees.
Shipman, a former tv journalist, shall be Columbia’s third president in a yr.
The primary, Nemat Shafik, was overwhelmed by campus chaos after the Hamas terrorist invasion of Israel and the Jewish state’s response, and fled to London.
Then once more, no clarification for the most recent change was wanted.
Quite a few experiences present Columbia mired in inner turmoil over the White Home plan to strip it of at the very least $400 million in federal grants and contracts except it makes modifications that may topic disruptive college students to arrest and supply accountable oversight to 2 departments which can be hotbeds of antisemitism.
Armstrong’s sin was that she tried to play for 2 groups on the identical time.
She initially promised the White Home that Columbia would forbid demonstrators from carrying masks, then stated the alternative to school members.
She later reassured the White Home she would preserve her preliminary promise, however her credibility was ruined.
So now she’s gone, and Shipman is left to wash up the mess.
If she fails to implement the affordable calls for, she’s going to plunge Columbia right into a authorized struggle it could possibly’t win and will price it billions of {dollars} in misplaced federal help over a number of years.
That may demolish its standing for a technology and set the stage for different faculties to endure related penalties.
The Friday night time drama at Columbia ended one more consequential week in Donald Trump’s dynamic second time period.
It marks the ninth week since he took the oath, but when your scorecard relies on mainstream media information protection, you in all probability imagine it was an utter catastrophe.
Don’t be fooled.
There was necessary progress on key areas of Trump’s agenda, together with Secretary of State Marco Rubio saying the US has revoked greater than 300 scholar visas, largely for supporting Hamas.
Anti-Trump resistance
The media, in fact, celebrates every time a federal choose blocks Trump from performing, particularly when it entails his deportation of unlawful felony aliens.
The precise method to see most of these choices is that berobed activists are abusing their authority to affix the resistance and tie Trump’s arms.
Many of the circumstances will find yourself within the appeals courts or the Supreme Court docket, that are typically much less political.
For many media, the highest story was the continued bleeding from the White Home’s self-inflicted wound of Sign-gate.
The administration’s incapacity to place the story to relaxation is giving leftist retailers a uncommon jolt of pleasure.
They’re pumped with the adrenaline of being on loss of life watch, with their hope being that a number of of the contributors within the botched communication over the assault on the Houthis shall be proven the door.
Their prime goal is Secretary of Protection Pete Hegseth, who despatched the detailed texts that, if not technically “struggle plans,” are shut sufficient to set off alarms.
The runner-up goal is Mike Waltz, the nationwide safety adviser whose workplace one way or the other included Jeffrey Goldberg, the virulent anti-Trumper from The Atlantic journal, within the listing of chat contributors.
“Michael Waltz has discovered a lesson, and he’s an excellent man,” Trump stated earlier final week.
Vice President JD Vance, sensing the media fervor for a scalp, took Waltz to Greenland with him Friday and advised reporters they might be dissatisfied.
“In the event you assume you’re going to drive the president of the USA to fireplace anyone you’ve bought one other assume coming!” Vance stated.
“We’re standing behind our complete nationwide safety group.”
He and Trump perceive that giving the media beasts one scalp will solely whet their urge for food for extra.
First main fumble
Though official questions in regards to the leak stay, together with whether or not contributors had been utilizing personal or authorities units, the true purpose Dems and the media are so scorching for the story is that the incident marks the administration’s first main fumble.
That it got here in late March illustrates how comparatively profitable Trump’s begin has been.
With so little to grab on, Dems and their media shills are determined for a soapbox and this one will do till a greater one comes alongside.
In the meantime, a good evaluation of different occasions final week turns an sincere scorecard way more constructive than damaging.
One large improvement was the lengthy interview on Fox Information with Elon Musk and 7 prime folks from his DOGE group.
Bret Baier wished them to handle prices that they don’t know what they’re doing and are chopping prices with out regard to the influence on extraordinary Individuals.
Musk set the stage by noting an important numbers: The federal authorities is spending $7 trillion this yr, and almost $2 trillion of that’s borrowed cash.
That’s outrageous and a system for critical bother, which is why he goals to chop the borrowing in half, to $1 trillion.
That would cut back total spending by about 15%, which Musk referred to as “fairly affordable” and stated it may very well be accomplished “with out affecting important packages.”
Proving waste & fraud
One after the other, his group cited examples of monumental waste and fraud, a standard one being that federal operations are hobbled by pc techniques which can be usually outdated and incompatible.
One company alone has 27 chief data officers.
The retirement system is maddeningly sluggish as a result of paperwork have been saved for almost 70 years in an previous limestone mine in Pennsylvania.
The informative interview lifted the veil on DOGE, and put names and faces on the historic effort.
One other necessary story that large media ran from was the congressional testimony of the heads of PBS and NPR.
Trump has focused their public funding as a part of the general retrenchment and in addition as a result of they largely echo the leftist views of the legacy media.
Dems, in fact, defended the association, however Republicans did a superb job of exposing the bias.
NPR boss Katherine Maher particularly got here throughout as deceitful in denying any partisan slant regardless of a slew of her personal posts in 2018 the place she referred to as Trump a “fascist” and “a deranged sociopath.”
And he or she claimed to not know that 87 staffers in Washington had been registered Dems, whereas there are zero registered Republicans.
The upshot was that the listening to made a strong case that funding of greater than $500 million needs to be lower.
Depend that as low-hanging fruit for the DOGE group!
