A new report claims that state taxpayers and undergraduate students are being forced to subsidize diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) course mandates at public universities across the nation, costing nearly $2 billion.
The Goldwater Institute report stated students and state taxpayers are paying for DEI general education course mandates of $1.8 billion in tuition and state appropriations over each four-year period.
The report goes on to say that the undergraduate student population at public universities spent at least 40 million student hours satisfying DEI general education course requirements.
Many proponents of DEI argue that the effort corrects historical injustices and systemic inequities.
00:00
03:40
However, conservatives say that it promotes division instead, and DEI initiatives have been under intense scrutiny over the past year and scaled back by several major companies.
Diversity, equity and inclusion training courses are costing colleges and universities $2 billion a year.AP
Furthermore, the report cites examples of courses offered at universities that promote DEI or explore intersectionality and racial, gender, and sexual identity.
Per the Goldwater Institute, “With faculty governing bodies having abdicated their responsibility to promote intellectual inquiry free of ideological coercion—and university regents opting to ignore this development—state lawmakers now have an obligation to their taxpayers and students to intervene.”
University of Louisville students, faculty and staff chant as they march to Grawemeyer Hall during their rally to protect diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) on their campus on March 18, 2024.Clare Grant/Courier Journal / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images Fox News Digital previously reported on DEI being curbed at the University of Michigan after officials reviewed its impact on the campus community. The University of Michigan Board of Regents, which has a 6-2 Democratic majority, has also had discussions about the future of the bureaucracy associated with DEI initiatives at the university.
Several other public universities last year rolled back their DEI initiatives and requirements.
Four of Canada's biggest lenders said on Friday they were withdrawing from a global banking sector climate coalition, joining six major U.S. banks.
The departures from the Net-Zero Banking Alliance began with Goldman Sachs' announcement on Dec. 6 and come ahead of Donald Trump's return to the White House next week. Trump has been critical of efforts by governments to prescribe climate-change policies.
The four Canadian banks are TD Bank, Bank of Montreal, National Bank of Canada and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC).
The other big U.S. banks that have withdrawn are Wells Fargo, Citi, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan.
The Net-Zero Banking Alliance, a UN-sponsored initiative set up by former Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney, was launched in 2021 to encourage financial institutions to limit the effects of climate change and push toward achieving net-zero emissions.
The Canadian banks said in separate statements that they were equipped to work outside the alliance and develop their climate strategies.
"The NZBA was formed at a time when the global industry was scaling up efforts to take action on climate, and served a valuable role in galvanizing these efforts and establishing momentum," CIBC said in a statement.
"As this space has evolved and matured, and having made significant progress alongside our clients in these areas, we are now well-positioned to further this work outside of the formal structure of the NZBA," it said.
Canadian banks have faced mounting pressure to address climate-related risks arising from their funding activities in the past few years. The country's banking regulator has also introduced guidelines for financial institutions to manage their climate-related risks.
Separately, the U.S. Federal Reserve announced it had withdrawn from a global body of central banks and regulators devoted to exploring ways to police climate risk in the financial system.
Thousands of Angelenos who lost their homes in some of the most destructive wildfires in California history find themselves in fierce competition with one another for an affordable place to live in Los Angeles' post-disaster housing market.
The fires have killed at least 27 people as of Friday and destroyed more than 10,000 structures in the residential enclaves of Pacific Palisades and Altadena. In the wake of the fires, rents have surged and uncertainty over insurance settlements has left some of the displaced in limbo.
In interviews this week, Angelenos described the anguish of exile from beloved neighborhoods and the daunting task of figuring out what comes next for themselves and their families. Here are some of their stories:
John Adolph, a 48-year-old video producer, and his wife, two small children and two dogs have been staying with friends since they fled their Altadena home a week ago. Their ranch-style home of six years near the Angeles National Forest was totally destroyed in the Eaton Fire.
"We thank God we're safe, but we don't know what's next," he said. "We both are lucky, our jobs are still here. I know people who have lost their livelihoods and have to start totally over. We're still employed."
Adolph and his wife, Christine, are lifelong Angelenos, and have no plans to move from the area permanently "unless it's done kicking and screaming," he said.
For now, the family was content to stay with friends, but knows it's a lot to ask long term. They were already looking at rental apartments.
"We have two kids and older dogs, we can't just bounce from hotel rooms to Airbnbs," he said. "We need something stable for the kids."
When they went to view a rental, there were already six families lined up ahead of them.
"It's totally crazy," Adolph said. "It's going in insane mode."
Even though his home was insured, he worries that surging construction costs and new insurance rates might price them out of their own neighborhood.
"So it's up in the air if we can actually rebuild," he said. He has no idea how long the county will take to clear the debris before they can even start. "We'd really love to stay, but who knows, we don't know."
'MUSICAL CHAIRS'
On the GoFundMe page set up by Kate Alexandria, she includes a photograph of the fire consuming her rental apartment in Altadena and says her credit cards are maxed out. People had donated more than $3,000 as of Friday.
lexandria, a 27-year-old grant writer, moved to Los Angeles three years ago from Grass Valley, a small city north of Sacramento, after becoming unnerved by nearby devastating wildfires.
She was renting what she described as an illegally converted apartment in Altadena above garages filled with fuel, paint and other fire accelerants. For a time, she split the $2,000 monthly rent, a bargain in Los Angeles, with a roommate.
After the fire, the landlord refunded January's rent, but she still has not got back her $2,000 security deposit, which she says she sorely needs.
Alexandria says she takes about 40 different medicines to control the painful symptoms of a disability, but most of the drugs were destroyed by the fire. Replacing the prescriptions will cost hundreds of dollars.
Her cat is staying at a friend's house in nearby Pasadena that's under renovation, while she crashes at the home of a friend's mother in Van Nuys, about 20 miles west of Altadena, until Saturday, when the mother returns from a trip. Most days she shuttles between the two places.
"It's going to be musical chairs for a bit," she said. FEMA has approved her for an initial payment of $770, not much in a city as expensive as Los Angeles. She is trying to get approved for a disaster credit from Airbnb.org, which would get her at least a few days in a rental.
California bans hiking prices by more than 10% in a declared disaster, yet rents have surged all the same. As Alexandria browsed apartment listings, places that were listed at $2,000 a month in January were now going for more than $3,000, she said.
She is dismayed at what she called the "ghoulishness" of landlords, but dreams of returning to her beloved neighborhood.
"It's just the weirdest and most wonderful place in Los Angeles," she said.
'FEELS LIKE A GHOST TOWN'
"I feel like where you live is part of your identity," said Deisy Suarez-Giles, who lost the four-bedroom Altadena home she bought in 2021 and the garden of citrus and avocado trees she planted on the property. "I feel like part of who we are is gone."
She and her husband, Keith Giles, have secured a hotel room in downtown Los Angeles near their spa business at about $170 a night, a sort of employee discount because the hotel uses their masseurs.
On Friday, they shifted to a free rental apartment donated by Airbnb for 10 days. After that, they do not know where they will end up.
The couple sent their two young sons to relatives in Florida, until some stability can be restored.
She and her husband still have to pay the mortgage every month on their destroyed home, on which they still owe $850,000. Mortgage payments are more difficult now because they had partly relied on the rent paid by a tenant living in a studio at the back of the house. And their spa business is suddenly slow.
"We've been struggling and now with the fire it just feels like a ghost town," she said. "Nobody's mindset right now is 'spa'."
She is waiting to hear from the insurer on how much of their expenses over the next 12 months it will reimburse. Before beginning their rental search in earnest, they need to know their budget.
They have put some feelers out, but a new Christmas puppy for the boys is proving an easy reason for landlords to dismiss them: "No pets."
'FORTUNATE AND BLESSED'
Kathleen McRoskey closed the deal to buy her two-story, four-bedroom home on the day of the 1994 earthquakes, and left it last week just before it was consumed by the Palisades Fire.
She and her husband, Mike, both grew up within a few miles of the Palisades and met in first grade. They have resolved to stay in the neighborhood where they raised their four children.
The family is now staying at her husband's sister's house near University of California, Los Angeles.
"It's invaluable to be with family and to be within miles of where we lost our home," McRoskey said. "On the other hand, we're putting a burden on her."
Navigating the Los Angeles market has been a jolt. A tip from her husband's friend who works in real estate about an unlisted rental house in Santa Barbara led to an early-morning viewing of the property that she said felt like a "drug deal."
They know they have a relatively generous budget because, a few months ago, her husband decided to increase their fire insurance coverage after helping an elderly woman who struggled to file claims after losing a home in the 2018 fire in Malibu.
"We are extremely fortunate and blessed," she said.
They hope to move up the coast to Santa Barbara in February, when they will start to think about the years-long process of building a new home on their Palisades property.
"We never dreamed of rebuilding in our 70s," she said.
Perplexity AI submitted a bid to TikTok parent ByteDance Ltd., to merge with its US operations and create a new entity, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
The structure would allow most of ByteDance‘s existing investors to retain their stakes, according to CNBC, which cited a person with knowledge of the situation, and reported on the bid earlier Saturday.
Representatives for Perplexity and TikTok declined to comment.
Finding a buyer for TikTok presents a challenge, not just because ByteDance has balked at the idea of selling but because of the expected price tag. Few companies or individuals could likely afford TikTok, which is estimated to be worth as much as $50 billion.
One possibility is a billionaire acquirer, such as Elon Musk – whom the Chinese government is already evaluating as a potential new owner – or a team of investors, like Frank McCourt and Kevin O’Leary, who have publicly trumpeted their desire to take control of the app.
Perplexity AI, an artificial-intelligence search-engine startup, started 2024 with a roughly $500 million valuation and ended the year worth about $9 billion, CNBC said.
A merger with TikTok may give Perplexity access to a vast user base and a wealth of data that would feed its AI-driven search engine. TikTok’s burgeoning e-commerce operations would also be a potential complement to Perplexity’s efforts to get people to shop on its platform.
Even so, the deal would be unusual — and very difficult to pull off— for a business of Perplexity’s age and size. Funders typically back startups like Perplexity with an eye to an exit, such as a sale or an initial public offering—rather than the kind of complex financial maneuvers that a merger with TikTok would entail.
The Supreme Court on Friday unanimously upheld a law that would shut down TikTok, the wildly popular social media platform, as soon as Sunday in the US because of national security concerns. President Joe Biden told reporters after the ruling that he would not enforce the ban in his final days in office and that a decision on the app would be made by his successor.
TikTok’s China-based parent company is required to find a buyer for its US operations or face a shutdown on Sunday under the law.
TikTok said it will be forced to “go dark” in the US on Sunday unless there’s a clear statement from the Biden administration to service providers that are maintaining its availability.
A president can grant a 90-day extension on that deadline if a serious purchase negotiation is underway.
President-elect Donald Trump told NBC on Saturday he “most likely” will give TikTok the reprieve, saying in a telephone interview that he’ll “probably announce it on Monday” — the day of his inauguration to a second term.
President-elect Donald Trump is poised to seize greater control of the federal government than any modern president before him when he takes office on Monday, charging ahead with plans to dismantle what he and his allies call the "deep state," according to two sources familiar with transition discussions.
The effort could get underway as early as Trump's first day as president, according to one of the sources, with an executive order aimed at stripping job protections from an estimated 50,000 career federal employees, allowing their replacement by handpicked loyalist appointees.
The Trump administration will also push to fill the thousands of political appointments across government as soon as possible, another source told Reuters.
The goal is to inject political loyalists deep into the workings of government, perhaps more so that any other recent president.
In a harbinger of what may lie ahead, Trump's team has requested the resignation of three senior career diplomats who oversee the U.S. State Department's workforce and internal coordination, Reuters reported this week.
Trump allies blame bureaucrats they deem disloyal for thwarting his agenda during his first term in the White House by slow-walking initiatives in the Justice Department, the Department of Education and other agencies.
Nearly a dozen of Trump's top appointees for his second term have been given an explicit mandate to shake up the federal workforce or expressed support for those plans, according to personnel announcements and media interviews reviewed by Reuters.
Russell Vought, nominated by Trump to return as director of the Office of Management and Budget, played a central role in crafting an earlier version of the reclassification order, known as Schedule F, as Trump was leaving office in 2020.
The revived executive order on Schedule F would allow agency officials to reclassify positions from career posts to political appointments, one of the sources familiar with transition planning said.
That would enable the agencies to fire career employees without cause and replace them.
Vought will be aided during Trump's second term by Sergio Gor, who was nominated to head the White House personnel office.
FIRING LINES
Others tasked with eradicating the "deep state" include Attorney General nominee Pam Bondi, the possible next FBI director, Kash Patel, Secretary of State nominee Marco Rubio, national security adviser, Mike Waltz, education nominee Linda McMahon, and Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who will head up Trump's government efficiency effort, the Reuters review found.
When asked, Trump's transition team would not provide details on a timeline for the planned shakeup, which could take months due to federal rule-making procedures.
"The Trump Administration will have a place for people serving in government who are committed to defending the rights of the American people, putting America first, and ensuring the best use of working men and women's tax dollars," said spokesperson Brian Hughes.
Critics and the unions that represent federal workers say there is no such thing as a "deep state," and that Trump and his allies are trafficking in a conspiracy theory to justify an executive-branch power grab.
James Eisenmann, a lawyer and expert on federal workforce policy, said in an interview that Trump is mistaken that most government employees harbor an ideological agenda and noted that under current law, underperforming or insubordinate workers can be fired.
Schedule F, he said, would create a culture of silence and fear that could affect job performance.
"People are going to be afraid to speak up or even suggest something helpful out of fear of getting fired," Eisenmann said. "When people are afraid, it's not easy to get them to do stuff."
Steve Lenkart, executive director of the National Federation of Federal Workers, said in an interview that the new classification was aimed at creating "a secret police" within the federal government.
"The incoming administration admits they will use Schedule F to subject professional employees to professional or to political loyalty tests and will get rid of the undesirables," he said.
Hughes, the Trump transition spokesperson, did not respond to questions about what role individual nominees would play in carrying out Trump's agenda, or to the "secret police" allegation.
FINDING TARGETS
During Senate confirmation hearings on Wednesday, Vought and Bondi expressed support for the policies behind Schedule F.
Vought testified that he believes portions of the federal government have been "weaponized."
He declined to answer questions about whether he had advised Trump to conduct mass firings, but said reclassifying career employees would ensure the president has individuals in a policy-making role "who are responding to his views, his agenda."
Bondi, during her hearing, said Special Counsel Jack Smith's probe of Trump was evidence of partisanship within the Justice Department.
She vowed not to use the department to target people based on their politics, but dodged direct questions about investigating Trump's political adversaries.
The Biden Justice Department has long denied that it pursued criminal cases against Trump for political reasons. It did not respond to a request for comment on Friday.
The process of identifying members of the federal bureaucracy whose views could be at odds with the incoming administration has already begun.
In December, the American Accountability Foundation, which operates with support from the conservative Heritage Foundation, sent a letter to Pentagon nominee Pete Hegseth naming 20 leaders across the U.S. military whom it deemed to be overly focused on diversity and inclusion initiatives.
Outgoing Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has defended such efforts, saying the diverse military reflects the diversity of the United States.
The Pentagon referred a request for comment to the Trump transition team.
The American Accountability Foundation also published a "Top 10 Targets" list on its website of career employees at the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department it claims are resistant to increased border-security efforts.
There are more names to come, said Yitz Friedman, a spokesperson for the group.
Virginia Gov.Glenn Youngkin (R) harshly criticizedPresident Biden forcommutingthe sentences of 2,500 nonviolent drug offenders including two men sentenced to life in prison for killing a local police officer.
“I am beyond outraged and in utter disbelief that President Biden would announce clemency for Ferrone Claiborne and Terence Richardson—two men who admitted for being responsible to brutally killing Officer Allen Gibson, a hero and dedicated servant to our community,” Youngkin wrote in a Saturday statement.
“What makes this even more unconscionable is the Biden U.S Attorney advised the White House not to commute these sentences as they are violent offenders. The pain and sorrow this clemency causes the Gibson family is unimaginable,” he added.
The two men were acquitted of the 1998 murder of Allen Gibson by a jury but still sentenced to life in prison by a judge according to The Appeal, a non-profit news outlet.
Despite a lack of physical evidence linking the men to the crime scene, Youngkin remains convinced the two men shot Gibson.
“To know that the men who took Officer Gibson’s life will walk free is not just a grave injustice—it is a heartbreaking blow to those who continue to mourn his sacrifice,” the Republican wrote in his statement, citing President Obama’s decision not to grant the two inmates clemency.
“This is despicable; a grim day for justice and for the families who trust that our system will hold the guilty accountable.”
Claiborne and Richardson are expected to be released in July.
