Tuesday, March 11, 2025

March 11, 2025

Good morning,

Welcome to the news for independent thinkers

Leading the News . . .

Trump Is Draining the Higher Ed Swamp . . . On Friday, the Trump administration announced that it would pull $400 million in grants from Columbia University on Title IV grounds that the school has failed to protect students from repeated cases of antisemitism. It sounds like this may be just the beginning. Many other schools could soon see hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars evaporate. And some Republicans in Congress are considering doing even more to put the screws to higher education with proposals to tax their gargantuan endowments to pay off student loans. Daily Signal

Harvard Announces Hiring Freeze as Trump Admin Threatens Funding Cuts Over Campus Anti-Semitism . . . Harvard University announced Monday that it is implementing a hiring freeze as the Trump administration threatens to withhold federal funding over the Ivy League school's response to anti-Semitic protests on campus. "Effective immediately, Harvard will implement a temporary pause on staff and faculty hiring across the University," school leaders wrote in an internal message, citing "substantial financial uncertainties driven by rapidly shifting federal policies." Washington Free Beacon

The Ivy League gets schooled. No more forcing Jews to fear for their safety while they are trying to get an education.

Politics

Rubio Cancels 83% of USAID Contracts . . . Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday that 83% of contracts at the U.S. Agency for International Development have been officially canceled. The announcement is the crescendo to several weeks of controversy and drama at the federal foreign aid agency as Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency unveiled a string of foreign spending projects that were difficult to defend. Daily Signal

Ontario Imposes 25% Tariffs on Electricity Exported to United States . . . Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced that a 25 percent surcharge would be applied to electricity exports to the United States, in response to President Donald Trump's planned tariffs on Canada and Mexico. The 25 percent tariffs on electricity exports to the U.S. will begin on Monday, and that roughly "1.5 million homes and businesses" in states such as Minnesota, New York, and Michigan would be affected, Ontario said is a press release. Breitbart

Amid DOGE, Most Say Washington Is Corrupt, Doesn't Listen to Voters Enough, Poll Finds . . . The vast majority of U.S. voters say that the federal government is corrupt, and most say federal bureaucrats don't listen to voters as they should. A whopping 98% of respondents in a recent survey agreed that there is at least some corruption in the federal government. The finding comes amid the work of the fledgling Department of Government Efficiency to expose and root out waste, fraud, and abuse across the federal government. Daily Signal

Biden EPA Officials Spent Time 'De-Gendering' Bathrooms and Policing Pronoun Use . . . Biden-era Environmental Protection Agency employees spent work hours implementing diversity, equity, and inclusion policies throughout the agency—focusing in particular on "de-gendering" bathrooms, hiring more gay and transgender employees, and introducing new gender-neutral honorifics such as "Mx.," according to internal agency documents and communications. Washington Free Beacon

FEMA faces reckoning as more staff fired in anti-Trump 'political bias' scandal . . . The Federal Emergency Management Agency has fired three more supervisors in the wake of an internal probe after a crew of disaster relief workers were directed to "avoid homes advertising Trump" in hurricane-battered Florida. Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Fla., exclusively told Fox News Digital that he is "confident" that the Trump administration will "root out egregious examples of political bias like this at FEMA." Fox News

Culture

DC begins removing 'Black Lives Matter' plaza near the White House . . . Crews started work Monday to remove the large yellow "Black Lives Matter" painted on the street one block from the White House. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser announced the change last week in response to pressure from Republicans in Congress. The work is expected to take about six weeks and the words will be replaced by an unspecified set of city-sponsored murals. Associated Press

The George Floyd era is officially coming to a close. We can now invite the police back into the streets to save lives.

National Security

Judge blocks deportation of pro-Palestinian Columbia graduate . . . A judge has stepped in to temporarily block the deportation of a pro-Palestine activist who led student protests at Columbia University. President Donald Trump boasted about the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, warning likeminded activists it was 'the first of many to come' as he embarks on his mass deportation policy. Khalil was detained by ICE officers on Saturday night - who said they'd been given an order to revoke his green card - in front of his pregnant wife. Daily Mail

Columbia anti-Israel agitator was probed as national security threat . . . Columbia University protest ringleader Mahmoud Khalil was being investigated as a potential national security threat, a source said Monday — as President Trump warned the anti-Israel agitator's bust will be the "first arrest of many." Secretary of State Marco Rubio was "presented with intelligence" that determined Khalil — a Syrian-born Palestinian who received his graduate degree from the elite school in December — was a threat to national security, a White House source said. New York Post

Fighter Jets Intercept Another Aircraft Near Trump's Mar-a-Lago Estate After 'Excessive' Violations . . . Fighter jets intercepted another aircraft flying near President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, on Sunday, after "excessive" violations of North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD)'s temporary flight restrictions. Sunday's incident makes for the second time in one weekend that NORAD had to intercept an aircraft in the skies above President Trump's Florida home, where the airspace is currently restricted. Breitbart

International

Ukraine-US talks on ending war with Russia start in Saudi Arabia as Kyiv launches huge drone attack . . . High-stakes talks between senior delegations from Ukraine and the United States on how to end Kyiv's three-year war with Moscow opened in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, hours after Russian air defenses shot down 337 Ukrainian drones over Russia. Two people were killed and 18 were injured, including three children, in the massive drone attack that spanned 10 Russian regions, officials said. No large-scale damage was reported. Associated Press

Zelensky Sent Trump A Letter Apologizing For Oval Office Blowup

Greenland's opposition party pushes closer US ties as Trump plays big in election . . . Greenlanders will head to the polls to vote in their country's parliamentary election on Tuesday, in what will likely prove to be a historic vote not because of any seismic shifts within the nation but because of the geopolitical message it will send. Independence from Denmark is not on the ballot itself, but who is elected to Greenland's parliament will signal how the country could move forward in not only divorcing itself from Copenhagen, but in handling what some critics have perceived as threats issued by President Donald Trump. Fox News

Doctors give Pope Francis good news that he's no longer in imminent danger from pneumonia

Money

Facebook was 'hand in glove' with China . . . A former senior Facebook executive has told the BBC how the social media giant worked "hand in glove" with the Chinese government on potential ways of allowing Beijing to censor and control content in China. Sarah Wynn-Williams - a former global public policy director - says in return for gaining access to the Chinese market of hundreds of millions of users, Facebook's founder, Mark Zuckerberg, considered agreeing to hiding posts that were going viral, until they could be checked by the Chinese authorities. BBC

Trump promises to buy 'brand new Tesla' in support of Elon Musk's 'baby' after stock plunges 45 percent . . . Donald Trump has a shopping trip planned for Tuesday morning after promising to buy a 'brand new Tesla' in support of First Buddy Elon Musk's 'baby.' Trump previewed his next purchase during a vehement defense of his most famous Cabinet member in a Truth Social post Monday night. 'To Republicans, Conservatives, and all great Americans, Elon Musk is "putting it on the line" in order to help our Nation, and he is doing a FANTASTIC JOB!' Trump wrote. Daily Mail

You should also know

X Rocked By Major Outages, Elon Musk Says 'Massive Cyberattack' To Blame . . . Outage-tracking website DownDetector.com tracked outages beginning just before 5 a.m. ET and lasting until past noon. At 5 a.m. ET, the total number of outage reports was more than 20,000. Another spike in reports occurred around 9 a.m. ET, and reached nearly 40,000. A third prolonged spike in outage reports took place just over an hour later, peaking at just under 30,000 reports and sustaining that number for nearly two hours. Daily Wire

CDC plans study into vaccines and autism . . . The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is planning a large study into potential connections between vaccines and autism, despite extensive scientific research that has disproven or failed to find evidence of such links. The CDC's move comes amid one of the largest measles outbreaks the U.S. has seen in the past decade, with more than 200 cases and two deaths in Texas and New Mexico. The outbreak has been fueled by declining vaccination rates in parts of the United States where parents have been falsely persuaded that such shots do more harm than good. Reuters

Guilty Pleasures

Bright pink poodle flees from N.J. police, swims the Passaic River . . . Police and firefighters in New Jersey came to the rescue of a pink runaway poodle who jumped into the Passaic River and made her way to an island. Police said Molly was easily identifiable by her fur, which had been dyed pink. A police officer told WABC-TV that pursuing Molly was like "chasing cotton candy." Officers engaged Molly in an hourlong chase through the area that ended when the dog jumped into the Passaic River and started swimming toward Clifton, N.J. UPI

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