Republican Congress Looks Like a Democrat Majority on TV News

Townhall 

"Do you think you're going to Hell?" This is apparently considered a highly newsworthy question by the Bari Weiss-led "CBS Evening News."

The theological questioner was radical Democrat Rep. LaMonica McIver (N.J.-10), who wants to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The target was acting ICE Director Todd Lyons. CBS not only aired McIver's sound bite, but anchor Tony Dokoupil quoted it in his introduction to correspondent Nicole Sganga's very one-sided story.

The Republicans hold majorities in the House and the Senate, but if you watch how hearings are covered by the TV networks, they imply the Democrats are the gavel-wielders controlling the proceedings. Sganga loaded up four angry Democrat sound bites to one Republican. Democrat Rep. Daniel Goldman (N.Y.-10) yelled: "If you don't want to be called a fascist regime or secret police, then stop acting like one."

By contrast, Republican Rep. August Pfluger (TX-11) accurately described the Democrats: "It seems like one side of the aisle is in favor of open borders and wants to abolish ICE." Since Republicans praised the Trump deportations, that was somehow not news.

ABC's "World News Tonight" covered the hearing, promoting two Democratic sound bites and two Republican. But one Republican was chewing out ICE, and the other was granted just six words. So that's three to one, at best.

Or consider the House hearing with Attorney General Pam Bondi. The "CBS Evening News" piece on that was three Democrats to two Republicans, if you count Republican Rep. Thomas Massie (KY-04), who demonizes Trump on the Epstein matter. ABC's Rachel Scott featured two sound bites of Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal (WA-7), two from Democratic Rep. Becca Balint, (VT-1), one from Democrat Rep. Deborah Ross (NC-2), and one from Trump-hating Republican Massie.

"NBC Nightly News" and Hallie Jackson brought four sound bites to zero — and one angry Epstein survivor. On NBC's "Today," Ryan Nobles repeated the unanimous tilt, with three Democrats and Massie and two angry Epstein survivors.

The theater in these reports was exactly as the Democrats constructed it, with Jayapal telling the Epstein survivors in the hearing room to rise so Bondi could apologize to them for the Trump Justice Department messing up in its Epstein files release.

At the same time, the networks skip hearings that didn't please the Democrat narrative, like the House Ways & Means Committee hearing on "Foreign Influence In American Non-Profits," specifically leftist non-profits that fund anti-ICE and pro-Hamas protesters. They can't abide any discussion of the notion that the protest organizers they use in their stories are paid to make "news."

These same networks clearly enjoyed the completely one-sided approach of the Pelosi-Picked Panel on the Jan. 6 riot, which only included two House Republicans whom Pelosi appointed. Almost every minute of the hearings was aired live on all these networks, and no one on that committee ever spoke a word against the Democrats. It was perfectly partisan, often presented with carefully edited testimony clips to make all the DNC points.

No Republican could criticize Speaker Nancy Pelosi's failure to protect the Capitol, or change the subject to the race riots of 2020, which caused up to $2 billion in property damage and at least 25 deaths. Those, apparently, were the "good" riots, described as a "rebellion" or a "racial reckoning."

In this Congress, Democrats have not been removed from the hearing rooms, and all their screechy rants are promoted by their supportive media outlets, while Republican arguments that Trump has accomplished something are largely left on the cutting-room floor.

Anyone arguing that hearings are too combative and aren't substantive should consult exactly what the networks choose to broadcast on television, and what kind of behavior they have rewarded with national attention.

Podcast thread for Feb 13

 

Hope your day wasn't filled with any bad luck.

The Morality and Pragmatism of Immigration Laws

American Thinker 

It is undeniable that millions of individuals entered the United States between 2021 and 2025 without following U.S. laws on how to do so. This was not only allowed by the previous administration, it actively facilitated the influx with intricate planning and funding and with no democratic consensus.

Polls show most Americans strongly agree that our immigration laws are good and should be enforced. And yet when they are, it evokes ritualistic indignation all the way up to big city mayors, governors, and U.S. senators, all of the same political party that created this mess.

The Pavlovian Left has predictably responded as riotous street mobs that actively interfere with law enforcement. Their focus is upon ICE agents doing the heavy lifting of deportation, while the legacy media stokes their anger.

There is no prologue here, no acknowledgement, much less debate, about what led up to this. And still no official explanation from that same party as to why this influx was orchestrated.

You might think there would be indignation that airplanes were clandestinely flown in in the middle of the night to pick up persons to enter the U.S. illegally, who were then given free housing all on the taxpayer’s dime.

And where is the indignation that hostile countries emptied their prisons and mental institutions into the U.S.? Who could possibly think that would be benign?

The mass overrunning of our borders warrants a Watergate-style investigation. Meanwhile, the Left’s performative indignition can be countered by both moral principle and by pragmatic reason.

Put simply, if someone sneaks into a ballgame, theme park, or concert and gets caught, he gets put out. There is no “Due Process,” and the “sneaker” does not expect any. He expects to get shown out.

Likewise, U.S. immigration law enforcement does not result in imprisonment but rather deportation. That simply means getting sent back preferably to the country from which they came and where they can apply for citizenship per the proper procedure.

Deportation is tough on all involved and can get rough physically (thus optically) when resisted, but it is not cruel or unusual. All countries do this; previous Democrat administrations have routinely done this, and they did not need to hide behind the apologetic spin “we’re only focusing on child rapists and terrorists.”

Clinton and Obama deported millions by enforcing the law and its simple principle, “You sneak in, you get caught, you get put out.” No one prattled about “neighbors being kidnapped ,” and ICE agents did not feel the need to be masked.

Deportation isn’t cruel and unusual and it’s not even “punishment” per se. It is not intended as such, it is following the law. Isn’t "The Law" the central element of Justice?

In fact, we might label ICE’s task “Restorative Justice” as it seeks to cure a malady deliberately brought upon us. Justice typically results in law, but when law does not (and cannot) cover everything, then we must sense there is unfairness, something unjust afoot that should be rectified in our pursuit of justice.

So, it is undeniable that waves of folks sneaking across our borders is not fairto those who have already gone through the procedures properly, nor is it fair to those waiting to be naturalized by the book.

And most importantly, it is not fair to our own citizenry, who must bear the consequences of overrun borders. Think costs and crime and competition and culture. Each one of those things is immensely important in its own right, but all this has been blissfully ignored by a myopic mainstream media.

ICE’s Restorative Justice can rightly pound both the law and the facts while their critics can only pound their chests and still not win the moral side of the argument.

The pragmatism of immigration law is just as clear. We all understand that there are persons who sincerely want to be U.S. citizens and who could be good citizens, but we cannot take all who wish to come.

This is not complicated: For every one American citizen, there are also twenty-four other human beings on the planet. An open borders policy could allow any and every one of them to enter the U.S.

That ratio should give pause and sobering perspective. We cannot have even one-tenth of those people sneaking into our country, nor can we afford to give the world medical care when our government with its deep deficit struggles to provide care for our own citizenry.

Certainly, no one should be coming in unvetted. Vetting should be the real “due process.” And for “asylum” to be granted there should be confirmation and consensus, not just “claims.”

And finally, some analogy to bear this out: If the mantra of “open borders” is taken to its logical conclusion then it should also follow that anyone who wishes to attend an Ivy League school can just go plop themselves down in a seat in any classroom. You can skip the admissions department. And forget tuition, Education is a good thing and should be a right.

Other students should cheer you on as a fellow classmate, one who should not be kidnapped out of the classroom by the Gestapo campus security.

And ditto for hospitals. If you are not feeling well then just go crawl up in a hospital bed. You don’t need no stinkin’ admissions department. After all, healthcare is a right, right?

Or should there be laws and procedural admission rules? What happens if those laws are not enforced?

If a private theatre or theme park allowed folks to sneak in, it would soon go out of business. A hospital might hang on via government subsidies as could a university via even more begging for private donations, but their institutional quality i.e. functionality would dramatically decline.

Likewise, countries that fail to enforce immigration laws might survive at best but with a marked deterioration in quality of life, and no outside entities will be there to bail them out. Take them over, yes, bail them out, no.

Solving the Just About Unsolvable Russo-Ukrainian War

Townhall 

According to media reports, President Trump has made clear that he wants Russia and Ukraine to bring their devastating four‑year conflict to an end by June 2026. Achieving such a breakthrough is an ambitious and worthy goal. Yet anyone familiar with the region understands that crafting a durable ceasefire — or even a preliminary framework for peace — is extraordinarily difficult. What Americans casually call “Eastern Europe” has long been a geopolitical arena where raw power, historical grievances, and competing identities shape events far more than Western diplomatic assumptions.

For the United States to help steer this conflict toward stability, Washington must begin with a sober recognition of how leaders in the region think. Neither Vladimir Putin nor Volodymyr Zelenskyy operates according to Western notions of time, morality, or political logic. Their worldviews are shaped by centuries of conflict, religious and ethnic divisions, and the collapse of empires. These forces predate Ukraine’s independence in 1991 and the Russian Federation’s post‑Soviet turmoil. Understanding this mindset is essential for any American administration seeking to influence the outcome.

For decades, U.S. diplomacy has overestimated the binding power of written agreements while underestimating the weight of historical memory in this part of the world. Today, both Putin and Zelenskyy frame victory or defeat not in terms of negotiated compromise but in terms of national survival. This is why every attempt at diplomacy — from Minsk I and II, to French‑German shuttle efforts, to the early 2022 talks in Belarus and Istanbul — collapsed. Negotiations were used tactically, not strategically, as each side pursued maximalist aims rooted in identity, sovereignty, and competing visions of the post‑Cold War order.

Trust, the foundation of Western diplomacy, is almost nonexistent in this region. Borders have shifted repeatedly, ethnic groups have been displaced, and entire nations have vanished from the map. Under such conditions, peace will not emerge from shared values or mutual confidence. It will come only through coercion, exhaustion, or a major strategic shift — none of which has fully materialized.

This is the environment President Trump is attempting to navigate. His desire to end the war swiftly reflects a broader American interest: preventing further regional destabilization and avoiding a prolonged conflict that drains Western resources. But the path to peace requires a realistic assessment of what is achievable now.

At present, the most attainable outcome is not a comprehensive peace treaty but a phased ceasefire with clearly monitored lines that function as a de facto boundary. Such an arrangement would require a buffer zone or demilitarized area, international supervision, prisoner exchanges, and guaranteed humanitarian access. Verification mechanisms would be essential, as would an “interim status” for contested territories until a long‑term settlement becomes possible.

Meanwhile, the United States and its allies should focus on strengthening Ukraine’s air defenses. This is not only a military necessity but an economic one: protecting infrastructure reduces blackouts, increases industrial output, and restores investor confidence. To sustain this effort, Western support must shift from short‑term donations to multi‑year investment commitments. Frozen Russian assets should be used aggressively to rebuild Ukraine’s industrial base, enabling the country to become a producer rather than a perpetual recipient of aid.

Above all, strategic patience is essential. In this region, rushing into a poorly structured ceasefire or prematurely declaring “peace” has historically rewarded aggression and invited future instability. The Kremlin has never responded well to wishful thinking. A durable settlement requires changing the underlying conditions that fuel the conflict, not simply freezing them in place.

The stakes are enormous. If the United States and its allies miscalculate, the 21st century could witness the unraveling of what remains of Europe’s stability. But with clear‑eyed strategy, disciplined diplomacy, and a firm commitment to American interests, Washington can help shape an outcome that prevents further Russian expansionism and lays the groundwork for a more secure region.

President Trump’s instinct to push for an end to the war is sound. Achieving that goal will require a strategy rooted in realism, strength, and patience — qualities that have long defined successful American statecraft.

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Slate's 'Leftists Are Buying Guns Now' Piece Unintentionally Hilarious

Townhall 

I say that because, well, Slate had the cajones to put this up on X. 

Conservatives are terrified that people like me are buying guns now. Maybe they should be. https://t.co/Q2rLLvvaJx

— Slate (@Slate) February 11, 2026

Of course, literally no one is terrified of any leftist buying guns.

In fact, I've said repeatedly that if they really thought Trump was a Nazi, why would they want him to be the guy in control of most of the guns? That's absolutely asinine thinking, if you can even call it thinking.

But another reason no one is terrified is that people like the author's actions aren't worthy of fear.

In January 2024, my wife and I agreed to host a birthday party for our friends’ 2-year-old in our child-free home. The scene was chaotic and joyful, with several young kids running around and scattering croissant crumbs on our sofa while their parents attempted adult conversation over mimosas.

Inevitably, the moment arrived when a child knocked over a drink on our coffee table. It was an old West Elm design with a panel on top and a storage area underneath. The spilled beverage was dripping into the seams, so a crowd of parents rushed to open the table and mop up the liquid pooling within. The first thing they saw when they lifted the panel was a padlocked gun case, helpfully identified by the Smith & Wesson user pamphlet sitting on top, which was now soaked in seltzer.

To be perfectly honest, I’d forgotten I had the gun. Ever since my wife and I moved into a place with more closet space, we rarely used the storage capacity of the coffee table. I was reminded of the firearm in my living room only when someone brought up the topic of recreational gun use—which, in our queer, left-leaning urban social circles, was next to never.

But there I was, facing a crowd of these wide-eyed friends, who were politely dabbing the seltzer off my gun. They were clearly shocked. I choked out some nervous laughter and assured them that the case was locked, the gun inside had another padlock, both keys were hidden, and I had no ammunition in the house. I then explained why I owned the gun, which I will also share with you shortly, and everyone made a few jokes at my expense. They finished cleaning up the mess and got back to watching their kids ruin my house.

So the author, Christina Cauterucci, had a gun she hadn't touched in so long she forgot about it, doesn't have any ammo for, and she thinks we're somehow concerned that she bought a gun, however long ago?

Uh...what?

Or that we're somehow concerned about her leftist LGBTQIAWTFBBQPDQLMNOP buddies are also buying guns?

Honestly, I'm not. I'm not bothered in the least.

If anyone had nefarious intent, and they followed Cauterucci's lead, they wouldn't be able to use the gun anyway. After all, it's under stuff, double locked, unloaded, with no ammunition anywhere in the house.

Congratulations, you now have an inefficient club. No, I'm not bothered that people like this are buying guns.

I'm more bothered that some of these same people are bragging about how they want to shoot ICE agents who are trying to arrest illegal immigrants and deport their butts back to their home countries, but the fact that they have the guns in and of itself? Not a problem to me or literally anyone else I've spoken with.

Ever since Alex Pretti got shot, whether it's a good shoot or not, there have been tons of leftist articles about the Second Amendment. It seems that the Left suddenly discovered gun rights and is now acting like they've been the champions of it all along.

The reality is that we've already been saying this for years, and while the Trump administration didn't exactly say the right things in the aftermath of Pretti's shooting, it hasn't been our side tripping over itself to restrict that right all these decades.

Leftists have never had an issue with guns, though. They've always had an issue with people like you and me having guns.

Nothing has changed, and as soon as there's a Democrat in power again, they'll want the same controls they've always wanted, because they don't figure it'll ever apply to them.

Media Actively Cover Up Obama Lawyer’s Chummy Ties to Epstein

https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/2026/02/13/nolte-media-actively-cover-up-obama-lawyers-chummy-ties-to-epstein/

 

In today’s episode of Democrats Sure Got It Good, meet Kathryn Ruemmler, whose looming and seedy presence in the Epstein Files might help explain why the Biden Administration refused to release them.

Ruemmler joined the Obama White House right from the start, in January of 2009, as the Justice Department’s associate deputy attorney general. Ruemmler was promoted to Principal Deputy White House Counsel in January 2010. In June of 2011, she replaced Bob Bauer as Counsel to the President, a position she remained at until 2014.

Ruemmler also had a post-White House friendship with Jeffrey Epstein that was so chummy that she was just forced to resign as a top lawyer for Goldman Sachs.

But if you’re dumb enough to read only the corporate media’s headlines, you would have no idea that Ruemmler was a chief aide in the Obama Administration for six years.

More than a chief aide, she was basically Barry Obama’s lawyer for three years. Here’s a photo of Obama and Ruemmler embracing:

Nevertheless, here are the headlines, all of which refuse to use the word “OBAMA”:

• The AP: “Goldman Sachs’ top lawyer Kathy Ruemmler to resign after emails show close ties to Jeffrey Epstein”
• The Unreformed CBS News: “Kathryn Ruemmler resigning as Goldman Sachs’ general counsel after her appearances in the Epstein files”
• Politico: “Top Goldman Sachs lawyer resigns over ties to Epstein”
• Reuters: “Top Goldman Sachs lawyer Ruemmler resigns after Epstein disclosures”
• Axios: “Top Goldman Sachs lawyer resigns after Epstein files release”
• New York Times: “Goldman’s Top Lawyer Departs Amid Revelations About Her Ties to Epstein”
• Bloomberg: “Goldman Sachs Lawyer Ruemmler to Leave Over Jeffrey Epstein Ties”
• CNNLOL: “Epstein emails show close relationship with top Goldman Sachs lawyer”

Need I even point out what these headlines would look like if Epstein’s gal-pal spent five years in Donald Trump’s White House, or if she had been Trump’s legal counsel, or even if her association with Trump were something as fleeting as she was once his Uber driver?

And then we move on to the political scandal…

Former Counsel to President Barry, top lawyer at a top financial firm… Why, a reporter worth anything more than a bucket of jackal urine would now begin to ask questions in the vein of: Other than the fact that the Epstein Files exonerate Donald Trump, did the Biden Administration refuse to release the Epstein Files in order to hide this relationship between a top Obama White House aide and Jeffrey?

But, as you can plainly see from those headlines, the corporate media are still actively participating in covering up this relationship.

Why?

Because Democrats got it good.

White Liberals Think Black Voters and Married Women Are Too Stupid To Get Voter ID

‘It’s infuriating. It’s like they think a whole demographic of our country can’t figure out how to get an ID,’ said Wisconsin’s Will Martin.

The Federalist

Elite white liberals think black voters are helpless, incompetent, and stupid. They don’t think too highly of married women and rural Americans, either. Or poor people and Native Americans and the disabled for that matter. 

That condescension was on full display again this week as all but one House Democrat voted against a bill that would require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote and a photo ID at the polls. The measure passed on a party-line vote.

Why would the “Party of the People” be so vehemently opposed to a proposal overwhelmingly supported by the people — black people, brown people, white people, male and female people, even people who identify as Democrats? 

Because the SAVE America Act, as the bill is dubbed (and its antecedent, the SAVE Act) is a modern-day “Jim Crow” bill, according to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.   

“While the specific policies may have changed since the days of the Jim Crow South, the goal of the SAVE Act is the same: disenfranchising American citizens and making it harder for eligible people to vote, particularly low income Americans and people of color,” the New York Democrat said this week on the Senate floor. Think about that. legislation requiring voter ID is tantamount to the “separate but equal,” segregated South, according to representatives from the party that brought America the Jim Crow era.

Democrat allies like the group Reproductive Freedom For All, the abortion industry lobby formerly known as NARAL Pro-Choice America, echoed the party’s race-baiting talking points.  

“This legislation targets Americans who have long faced systemic barriers to the ballot box, including communities of color, people with disabilities, young people, Indigenous voters, and voters in rural and low-income neighborhoods,” the abortion-on-demand champions declared in a press release. 

And what are the systemic barriers? Liberals claim — without ever being challenged by a complicit corporate media — that tens of millions of Americans “don’t have proof of citizenship readily available” and don’t know how to or can’t acquire identification. Of course these same “disenfranchised” Americans are daily using IDs to drive, buy booze and cigarettes, apply for government benefits, board an airplane … 

‘That’s Just Stupidity’

A lot of black Americans find the Democrats’ anti-voter ID arguments insulting. 

Will Martin, who is black and a GOP candidate for lieutenant governor of Wisconsin, has a name for the racially-tainted protective hand of white liberals: Social paternalism. It’s a kind of leftist white privilege, so to speak, in the vein of the soft bigotry of low expectations. 

“It’s infuriating. It’s like they think a whole demographic of our country can’t figure out how to get an ID,” Martin told The Federalist Wednesday evening in a phone interview hours after the House’s SAVE America Act vote. “There are elites who think they know better than the individuals they claim to represent on how they should live.” 

In an eye-opening video on “How white liberals really view black voters,” Ami Horowitz collects the paternalistic thoughts of some denizens of leftist enclave Berkeley, California, on voter ID laws.

“These type of people don’t live in areas with easy access to DMVs or other places where they can get identification,” one white guy told Horowitz when the documentarian asked whether voter ID suppresses the black vote. 

“I feel like they don’t have the knowledge of how it works,” a young white woman said. “For most of the communities, they don’t know what is out there because they’re not aware, or, like, they’re not informed.”

That was news to some black residents of New York City’s East Harlem neighborhood. 

“Why would they think we don’t have ID?” one woman incredulously asked after watching the interviews with the privileged Berkeleyites. 

Another woman said she didn’t know any black adults who did not carry ID, and that the question itself is “weird.” A black man pulled out his photo ID and asked if he was on “some sort of trick Candid Camera.” 

A young man summed up the assertions that poor black voters don’t have access to the internet, another barrier to obtaining an ID to vote, according to leftist “voter rights” groups.  

“That’s just stupidity, honestly,” he said. “Even little kids can figure out how to work the internet.”

Those interviewed said they found the assertions Schumer — their own senator — and his fellow congressional Democrats hammered on during the voter ID debate are “ignorant,” prejudiced and “a little racist.” They all said they have no problem showing ID to vote.

‘That’s the Maddening Part’

In fact, congressional Democrats are on the wrong side of the issue. By a lot. Even with fellow Democrats. A Pew Research Center poll last summer found 83 percent of U.S. adults support requiring all voters to show government-issued photo identification to vote. The poll also found 71 percent of Dems and 76 percent of black voters favor voter ID in elections. 

“You see all of these surveys time and time again with people from all backgrounds in large majorities supporting voter ID,” Martin said. “That’s the maddening part.” 

Martin has served on the front lines of the election-integrity battle. As Wisconsin State Director of Americans for Citizen Voting, he helped lead a successful referendum campaign in which 70 percent of Badger State voters backed a constitutional amendment that bars noncitizens from voting in Wisconsin elections. Last April, Wisconsin voters approved an amendment enshrining voter ID in the state constitution. That ballot issue garnered 67 percent support. 

Martin said anyone concerned about the SAVE America Act should look to Wisconsin, which has successfully employed voter ID in elections for nearly 15 years. 

70 Million? Really?

Married women, too, would be helpless under the power of the election integrity measures, according to some of the bossiest girl bosses in politics. 

Squad leader Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez jumped on X Wednesday to warn her followers that House Republicans had passed a bill that “would disenfranchise 70 million married American women.”

“Under the SAVE Act, women who took their spouse’s last name and don’t have an updated passport or birth certificate would be turned away at the polls,” she said.

Wow! Seventy million. That’s a lot. A lot of hyperbole. 

Rep. Chip Roy, co-author of the legislation, has said the SAVE Act includes provisions to ensure the “small fraction” of women who have not updated their documentation to note a name change can register to vote despite a name discrepancy. 

“The SAVE Act specifically left this to the states because name-change procedures are governed by state law, and the specific requirements, forms, fees, and processes can vary from state to state,” Roy wrote last year in an op-ed published in The Federalist. 

A Little Help From Their Friends?

We’ve been down this road before. After Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed a package of election reforms in 2021, the Peach State’s race-baiting MVP, Sen. Raphael Warnock, described the changes as “Jim Crow in new clothes,” a “voter suppression law designed to build new barriers between Georgians and the polls.”

Warnock’s assessment didn’t age well. Georgia shattered voter turnout and participation records in 2022’s midterm. Early voter turnout hit new records in 2024, and topped an unprecedented 5.29 million voters total in the hotly contested presidential election, according to the League of Women Voters. 

But never fear soft-bigotry leftists. Congressional Democrats, who in truth hate the possibility of blocking noncitizens and other ineligible voters from voting in federal elections, could get a huge assist from some Republicans in the Senate. The SAVE Act has been languishing there for some 300 days, and sources say some Republicans won’t vote for either bill, if actually forced to take action. 

DEI Activism Could Be Pushing Donors Away

DEI Activism Could Be Pushing Donors Away

Diversity, equity, and inclusion priorities have transformed nonprofit governance into ideological enforcement.

By: James Piereson, Naomi Schaefer Riley for City Journal

Diversity, equity, and inclusion priorities have transformed nonprofit governance into ideological enforcement.

Nearly 20 years ago, California’s legislature considered a bill that would require private foundations with more than $250 million in assets to report the racial, gender, and sexual orientation of their board members, staffs, and grantees. The bill’s sponsors eventually dropped the legislation in large part because those foundations agreed to contribute millions of dollars to causes favored by legislators and activist groups. Thus began a campaign to “diversify” philanthropy, which has now succeeded beyond those activists’ wildest dreams.

For a good example of the activists’ successful capture of nonprofits, look to a recent story in the Chronicle of Philanthropy about the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. With $13 billion in assets, it’s one of the nation’s largest philanthropies. Like many large foundations, it promotes various progressive causes, such as expansion of Medicaid, racial equity, and, of course, “diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

In 2017, the foundation’s CEO, in keeping with this mission, launched a program to prioritize diversity on its board of trustees. Today, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy, the organization is “a case study of how one mega-foundation aims to make its leadership look more like America.” Trustees from nine years ago are now gone, and “the board is significantly younger and more racially diverse . . . . Eleven of its 15 trustees are people of color; another is an Iranian-born immigrant.”

Since the 2024 election of its first black chairman—pastor and civil rights activist Starsky Wilson—the foundation’s board has proved much more willing to criticize the second Trump administration than it was the first. “We’ve got board members who are raising families, and they’re impacted by the [Trump administration efforts to] shut down the Department of Education,” Wilson explained. “We’ve got two board members who are working in health care, and they are impacted by the decimation of the public health care infrastructure in America, personally and professionally.”

In that sense, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is more activist and ideological in its approach than it was a decade ago, when its board members were more likely to be white men with degrees from elite schools and contacts in prominent law firms, businesses, and investment banks. That shift may explain the foundation’s pivot from improving health care (Robert Wood Johnson himself was one of the founders of Johnson & Johnson) to addressing racial equity and eliminating poverty, because (in the current trustees’ judgment) these are the real barriers to fixing health care. The advantage of a rainbow coalition of board members, it seems, is that the trustees have the same political or ideological points of view.

Just as in higher education, journalism, and Hollywood, the field of philanthropy has undergone a radical shift to diversity, equity, and inclusion in the past decade. Jacob Savage’s essay in Compact describes how organizations in these and many other fields have simply stopped hiring white men, regardless of their qualifications.

It’s not enough for philanthropic board members (and staff) to embrace the ideology of DEI; they must also share the racial and sexual identities of the people whom they are meant to serve. Just as white men ideally should not teach university courses in women’s or black studies, they also should not administer programs meant to serve minorities. Clients will not trust a white man, the thinking goes, unless he shares some important credential of membership in an oppressed group.

The history of philanthropy disproves this line of thinking. Progressive nonprofits frequently receive funds from foundations that don’t have diverse boards (or from wealthy white men). The philanthropists who founded nonprofits appointed trustees in part to keep their organizations from veering off into political directions that would generate public criticism or backlash. Today they are increasingly failing at that task.

Savage asks whether organizations that have engaged in purges of straight white men are more trusted now than they were a decade ago: “Have these institutions become stronger since they systematically excluded an entire cohort—or did abandoning meritocracy accelerate their decline?”

We should ask the same question of philanthropy and the organizations it supports. A little more than half of Americans say that they trust nonprofits, but fewer than 20 percent think the sector is going in the right direction, and the number of donors has been steadily shrinking since the early 2000s. Maybe embracing DEI and fighting the Trump administration are not the prescription for philanthropy’s success.

Photo: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation chairman Starsky Wilson (Photo by Jemal Countess/Getty Images for People's Rally to Cancel Student Debt)

Democrats Want To Stop Illegal Alien Deportations By Shutting Down DHS. It’s That Simple

The Federalist 

Just like the last time Democrats threw the government into a shutdown, they have no leverage but are now withholding votes to fund the Department of Homeland Security while making ridiculous demands that the Trump administration is entertaining.

If Congress doesn’t push more money to DHS by Saturday, funding to TSA and FEMA will be cut off this weekend. Democrat leaders say they won’t agree to any deal that doesn’t reform Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is to say, make it effectively impossible to deport illegal aliens.

But everyone in Washington knows Democrats are in no position to force concessions, given that even without more money for DHS, ICE remains funded with billions in cash by way of the “One Big Beautiful Bill” law passed last year. In short, the hand Democrats are playing is: Neuter immigration law enforcement or they’re going to clog up air travel and federal emergency response assistance.

This would be like needing a last-minute babysitter and telling the only person available that if she can’t watch your kids, you’re not only going to stay home, but you’ll also send them to bed without any dinner.

Alright?

A DHS shutdown isn’t going to stop deportations, and it won’t force any changes to ICE. It’s going to screw up the public’s travel plans and put lives at risk should there be a major disaster somewhere.

This is all acknowledged even by the dying news media, which otherwise never admits when a shutdown is politically stupid for Democrats. From The Washington Post on Thursday:

This shutdown would affect only DHS — but it would not shutter Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Customs and Border Protection, because Republicans sent those agencies tens of billions of dollars in additional funding last year that would allow them to continue to operate.

Instead, the brunt of a shutdown would fall on the Transportation Security Administration, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Coast Guard and other agencies within DHS. It would affect about 13 percent of the federal civilian workforce, most of whom would be forced to work without pay, according to data from DHS and the Office of Personnel Management.“

This is, per usual, a fight Democrats don’t have to pick but have chosen to anyway because their irrational, anti-American voter base will accept nothing less than constant conflict. Democrat leaders in Congress issued a list of demands last week that they said would be needed in order to secure their support for more DHS funding. Even with the White House in agreement on some of them — mandatory ICE agent body cameras, for example — Democrat Senate Leader Charles Schumer said Wednesday that Republicans “have not gotten serious about negotiating a solution.”

Of course. Because this isn’t about reforming ICE. It’s about halting the removal of illegal aliens, that is, the Democrat Party’s most prized constituency. Only when every foreigner who wants to stay in this country is permitted taxpayer-funded lawyers and endless appeals of their removal will Democrats be satisfied.

Much like last time, Democrats are negotiating with nothing. They’re the ones who haven’t gotten serious. And they never will.