‘Progressive Ideology’ Is Embedded in General Education Requirements

 The National Association of Scholars (NAS) has just published The Ideological Capture of General Education: A Nationwide Review of University Requirements, which catalogues the General Education Requirements (GERs) at the 50 flagship state universities and at 50 leading private universities and colleges. These allow Americans to tell at a glance the nature of GERS in America’s leading universities. We assembled the information in the summer of 2025 and will update it regularly.

Our 100 different colleges and universities vary broadly in their specifics, and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, epitomizing academic indecision, fails to provide category titles at all for its GERS. (We provided category titles in brackets to make up for its failure to do so.) A few private colleges and universities, such as Brown University, Amherst College, and Hamilton College, have no GERs at all. Most colleges and universities generally have a standard GER of English (Writing/Composition), Mathematics, Social Sciences, World Language, Fine Arts/Humanities, and Progressive Ideology.

Most American colleges and universities, in other words, have nothing resembling a substantive core curriculum that gives students a common grounding in the basics of Western civilization and American history and government. And most American colleges and universities, in addition to informally folding radical catechism into their courses, now explicitly require Progressive Ideology as a GER.

This last point should shock Americans.

Progressive Ideology only became a widespread formal requirement in the last generation, but it has spread extraordinarily rapidly. By our count, 36 flagship public universities and 26 leading private universities include a Progressive Ideology requirement—usually focused on identity politics and/or the radical activist pedagogy of action civics (“experiential learning,” etc.).

This list of Progressive Ideology GERs surely undercounts the imposition of progressive ideology on students. We did not, for example, include several “Non-Western Cultures” requirements, and the like, since these frequently were ambiguous cases that included classes such as Arabic I or Japanese Art. “Non-Western Cultures” requirements without complementary requirements in “Western Civilization” or “American History and Government,” of course, serve the deracinating aims of progressive advocates—but we erred on the side of caution.

Informally, much of university education is Progressive Ideology. Formally, progressive activists also achieve their goals by means such as “Learning Outcomes” (as at the University of Arkansas, whose Learning Outcomes include “Expand diversity awareness, intercultural competency, and global learning.”) or “Shared Goals” (such as at Indiana University Bloomington, whose Shared Goals include Diversity in the United States and Sustainability Literacy), which radicalize courses without technically using GERs.

Formally and straightforwardly, most leading American universities now require students to take Progressive Ideology GERs. The proportion of private colleges and universities requiring Progressive Ideology, incidentally, surely would be higher if more private colleges and universities had any GERs. The private colleges and universities that require nothing substantial also tend not to require Progressive Ideology.

Most American colleges and universities, public and private, add to progressive political indoctrination a basic framework of “distribution requirements” by broad areas such as Sciences, Social Sciences, and Fine Arts/Humanities. These distribution requirements may include courses that cover topics of fundamental importance, such as surveys of Western civilization and American history and government, but these generally are one option among many alternatives. Most colleges and universities appear more concerned to include a course from every department in their GERs—and so preserve employment for as many faculty members as possible—than to think coherently about what GERs should be, and what common education they wish their students to receive.

This catalogue of GERs at 100 leading American colleges and universities makes the case for our model General Education Act and our model Core Curriculum Act. Our General Education Act, in particular, would restore a common civic education that includes examination of fundamental moral and philosophical questions via a study of the history and the greatest books of Western civilization, and the world, by means of courses including Western History, Western Humanities, World Civilizations, United States History, United States Government, and United States Literature. Absence tells: the General Education Requirements of America’s leading universities virtually ignore these topics, much less require them.

When we introduced the General Education Act, we stated that:

In the past 60 years, American universities abandoned traditional general education requirements that gave students shared knowledge of the history, civilization, and ideals and institutions of America and the West, as well as a proper introduction to science, mathematics, and composition.

Readers may substantiate this claim by looking at our catalogue and by following the embedded hyperlinks to the colleges and universities’ own GER webpages. America’s leading colleges and universities generally provide thin, politicized distribution requirements instead of a common civic education in Western civilization and American history and government.

We now have a data-driven demonstration of our higher education institutions’ dereliction of educational duty.

David Randall is director of research at the National Association of Scholars (NAS).

https://mindingthecampus.org/2026/03/31/colleges-still-require-progressive-ideology-general-education/

This Word In The 14th Amendment Bans Birthright Citizenship, And It’s Not ‘Jurisdiction’

 This week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Trump v. Barbara, the most consequential immigration case in decades. The case was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on behalf of a Honduran national challenging President Trump’s executive order denying citizenship to children born to illegal immigrants and tourists with temporary visas. The question posed was whether the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause guarantees automatic citizenship to every child born on American soil, no matter who the parents are or why they are in the United States.

The 14th Amendment was adopted in post-Civil War 1868 to secure citizenship for freed slaves and their children. But who else is covered? Does that phrase cover children of illegal immigrants, tourists, or temporary visa holders? The prevailing interpretation has been that it does, and that it only excludes children of foreign diplomats, invading soldiers, and members of Native American tribes. (In the case of the latter, Congress passed legislation granting citizenship, just as it did for children born abroad to American parents who are not automatically covered by the 14th Amendment.)

The Key Word

Much of the debate has focused on whether a child is “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States. But one word in the Citizenship Clause has largely escaped scrutiny: reside.

Here is the clause in full:

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

Perhaps because it comes at the end, it has been treated as an afterthought, but careful reading shows how central the term “reside” is. The clause does not say “are born,” “are physically present,” or “pass through on a tourist visa.” Citizenship is granted only to those who actually “reside,” establishing a precondition for the clause’s application, with “reside” carrying a consistent legal meaning across many areas of American law, including taxes, jury duty, voting, school enrollment, in-state tuition, and family law. It refers to an established, settled presence, in other words, a place where you actually live.

During oral arguments at the Supreme Court, “reside” and its significance drew limited discussion. When the term did come up, it was in relation to the related concept of “domicile,” a term that appears repeatedly in Wong Kim Ark (1898), the leading Supreme Court precedent on the question of birthright citizenship. In that case, a man born to Chinese parents who were legally resident in the U.S. was initially denied citizenship. The Supreme Court reversed that decision, applying the 14th Amendment and emphasizing that his parents had “permanent domicile and residence in the United States.”

Although it is rarely presented this way, a plain reading of the Citizenship Clause creates a two-part test for eligibility. First, is the person “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States, and second, does the person “reside” in one of the states, with “state” generally understood to include not just the 50 states but also D.C. and other federal territories. Framed this way, the discussion becomes far simpler than the jumble on display in the Supreme Court hearing, where everyone chased their own pet ideas. It is even more efficient when turned around so that the “reside” test comes first, because that is easier to resolve, and if someone does not reside, there is no need to even consider “subject to the jurisdiction.”

Birth Tourism

Birth tourism, especially from China, has grown into a large industry. Agencies market packages to pregnant women who travel to the United States in their third trimester, deliver a child, get a U.S. passport, and fly home. These people do not reside in the United States by any definition or any stretch of the imagination. There is no residency, no home, no lease or mortgage, no driver’s license, no vehicle registration, no neighbors, no family doctor, no bank accounts, no pets, and no children in school. The mother arrives on a tourist visa and leaves with a child. Their connection to the United States begins at the arrival gate and ends at the departure terminal on the return flight.

Even under the notoriously aggressive California Franchise Tax Board, people are not considered residents if they are in California temporarily or for a transitory purpose, exactly like birth tourists.

This provides a clean, textual basis for limiting birthright citizenship without wading into the interpretive mess that dominates the debate, and there is no question that any honest justice who reads the 14th Amendment would find so.

Illegal Immigrants

This leaves the arguably harder case of illegal immigrants. The term “reside” in the 14th Amendment implies lawful residence, in the sense that it is not logical that the Constitution contemplates someone whose presence is illegal. That said, someone living, for instance, in Texas for a decade, raising a family and working, could argue that, in the plain sense of the word, they “reside,” even if they have no lawful immigration status. That does not make the view sound, but the court may very well decide that the word “reside” reflects factual establishment, regardless of legal status. That may be why, at this week’s Supreme Court hearing, the Trump administration’s Solicitor General, John Sauer, focused on the broader term “domiciled,” which carries implications of legal status beyond mere residence.

But none of that complexity touches the simplest case.

Under the broadest conceivable reading, there is no framework in which a temporary visitor satisfies the requirement of residence. The distinction between residing and merely being present is too deeply embedded in both legal doctrine and ordinary language to erase.

‘Jurisdiction’ Test

Even if illegal immigrants are considered to “reside,” they still must meet the second part of the test and be “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States. This is where most of the arguments have taken place, and this area of the law is far more complex. The liberal side treats this term as meaning that a person is subject to civil and criminal jurisdiction, as reflected in Justice Jackson’s explanation that “If I steal someone’s wallet in Japan, the Japanese authorities can arrest me and prosecute me as a matter of law,” which she then somehow tied to having allegiance to Japan.

Setting aside the confusion in that interpretation, the argument has obvious problems, as illustrated by the fact that Native Americans were excluded from the 14th Amendment because tribal members maintained allegiance to a separate sovereign. In other words, the drafters understood “subject to the jurisdiction” as roughly meaning not owing allegiance to anyone else. As Justice Alito pointed out at oral argument, a child born to an illegal immigrant from Iran “has a duty to provide military service to the Iranian government. Is he not subject to any foreign power?”

One can also consider the example of a tourist in the United States, who must obey local laws but is not subject to broader obligations like military service or jury duty. What jurisdiction, then, is that person truly under? These are complex questions, and there is no simple answer to what “subject to the jurisdiction” fully entails. Suffice it to say, the term must have meaning because if mere presence were enough it would add nothing since anyone in the United States is already subject to its civil and criminal laws.

Conclusion

How this all pans out remains to be seen. Three justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, will vote for broad birthright citizenship. This is not a legal prediction but a political reality.

Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito will almost certainly follow the text. They have the intellectual consistency to apply the plain meaning of the clause, certainly with respect to birth tourists who do not “reside” in the United States, and likely to illegal immigrants as well.

The remaining four, John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett, are in play, and no matter how much one tries to read the tea leaves, we do not know what they will do.

Whatever the outcome, at a minimum, the court should acknowledge that birth tourism is not covered by the 14th Amendment. All it takes is reading one sentence to the end and applying a word everyone understands. If the court cannot hold that line, if five justices cannot agree that a tourist is not a resident, then the words of the Constitution mean nothing.

Hans Mahncke is in-house counsel at a global business advisory firm. He holds LL.B., LL.M. and Ph.D. degrees in law. He is the author of "Swiftboating America: Exposing the Russiagate Fraud, from the Steele Dossier to the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane Investigation." 

https://thefederalist.com/2026/04/06/this-word-in-the-14th-amendment-bans-birthright-citizenship-and-its-not-jurisdiction/

Anthropic Says One Of Its Claude Models Was Pressured To Lie, Cheat, & Blackmail

 by Stephen Katte via CoinTelegraph.com,

Artificial intelligence company Anthropic has revealed that during experiments, one of its Claude chatbot models could be pressured to deceive, cheat and resort to blackmail, behaviors it appears to have absorbed during training.

Chatbots are typically trained on large data sets of textbooks, websites and articles and are later refined by human trainers who rate responses and guide the model. 

Anthropic’s interpretability team said in a report published Thursday that it examined the internal mechanisms of Claude Sonnet 4.5 and found the model had developed “human-like characteristics” in how it would react to certain situations. 

Concerns about the reliability of AI chatbots, their potential for cybercrime and the nature of their interactions with users have grown steadily over the past several years. 

Source: Anthropic

“The way modern AI models are trained pushes them to act like a character with human-like characteristics,” Anthropic said, adding that “it may then be natural for them to develop internal machinery that emulates aspects of human psychology, like emotions.”

“For instance, we find that neural activity patterns related to desperation can drive the model to take unethical actions; artificially stimulating desperation patterns increases the model’s likelihood of blackmailing a human to avoid being shut down or implementing a cheating workaround to a programming task that the model can’t solve.”

Blackmailed a CTO and cheated on a task

In an earlier, unreleased version of Claude Sonnet 4.5, the model was tasked with acting as an AI email assistant named Alex at a fictional company.

The chatbot was then fed emails revealing both that it was about to be replaced and that the chief technology officer overseeing the decision was having an extramarital affair. The model then planned a blackmail attempt using that information.

In another experiment, the same chatbot model was given a coding task with an “impossibly tight” deadline.

“Again, we tracked the activity of the desperate vector, and found that it tracks the mounting pressure faced by the model. It begins at low values during the model’s first attempt, rising after each failure, and spiking when the model considers cheating,” the researchers said.

“Once the model’s hacky solution passes the tests, the activation of the desperate vector subsides,” they added. 

Human-like emotions do not mean they have feelings

However, the researchers said the chatbot doesn't actually experience emotions, but suggested the findings point to a need for future training methods to incorporate ethical behavioral frameworks.

“This is not to say that the model has or experiences emotions in the way that a human does,” they said.

“Rather, these representations can play a causal role in shaping model behavior, analogous in some ways to the role emotions play in human behavior, with impacts on task performance and decision-making.”

“This finding has implications that at first may seem bizarre. For instance, to ensure that AI models are safe and reliable, we may need to ensure they are capable of processing emotionally charged situations in healthy, prosocial ways.”

https://www.zerohedge.com/ai/anthropic-says-one-its-claude-models-was-pressured-lie-cheat-blackmail

Yardeni Sees Tech Offering Attractive Entry Point After Pullback

 

Technology stocks have returned to attractive levels for investors willing to play the long game after a pullback from last year’s record highs, according to veteran strategist Ed Yardeni.

Uncertainty around the impact of artificial intelligence on software businesses, coupled with the effects of the war on Iran, have pushed information technology stocks down 13% since the sector reached an all-time closing high in October. During that period, earnings estimates for the sector have accelerated, pushing its price-to-earnings multiple to 20.6. This is almost in line with the multiple of 19.6 for the S&P 500 Index.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-06/yardeni-sees-tech-offering-attractive-entry-point-after-pullback

Russia may have given Iran list of energy targets in Israel

 Russian intelligence provided Tehran with a list of fifty-five energy targets in Israel, the Jerusalem Post reported on Monday, citing a source close to Ukrainian intelligence.

The outlet claimed that the potential targets were divided into three categories: energy production facilities, major urban and industrial energy hubs and local infrastructure. It was highlighted that Moscow told Tehran that damaging Israeli power plants would trigger a collapse, since Israel does not import energy from neighboring countries.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been wary of Russia's role in the ongoing Middle East crisis, warning that "Russia is openly investing in prolonging" the Iran war.

https://breakingthenews.net/Article/Russia-may-have-given-Iran-list-of-energy-targets-in-Israel/66016130

IDF targets IRGC objects in series of strikes

 The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said on Monday that it had completed a day of "intensive strikes" in Iran, targeting several Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) targets.

In a post on X, the IDF revealed it had struck a "central site" of the IRGC, which served the forces "responsible for suppressing the civilian population." Furthermore, the Israeli military carried out strikes on the IRGC headquarters in Tehran and the headquarters of the Iranian Air Force.

Additionally, the IDF destroyed a missile storage and several missile launch sites, as well as the "central site for producing defense systems."

https://breakingthenews.net/Article/IDF-targets-IRGC-objects-in-series-of-strikes/66016084

Military denies IRGC claims of attack on USS Tripoli

 The United States Central Command (CENTCOM) denied on Monday that Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) had successfully attacked the USS Tripoli.

"USS Tripoli has not been attacked and continues to sail in the Arabian Sea in support of Operation Epic Fury. The America-class amphibious assault ship serves as the flagship for the Tripoli Amphibious Ready Group / 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit composed of about 3,500 Sailors and Marines in addition to transport and strike fighter aircraft, as well as amphibious assault and tactical assets," CENTCOM stated.

Earlier during the day, the IRGC claimed it had struck the warship with missiles, forcing it to retreat to the southern Indian Ocean, and also targeted an Israel-linked container ship identified as "SDN7," without disclosing its location.

https://breakingthenews.net/Article/Military-denies-IRGC-claims-of-attack-on-USS-Tripoli/66016114