An advocacy group is asking Congress to investigate the tax-exempt status of one of the largest health care systems in New York City, pointing to massive executive pay hikes and a Justice Department antitrust lawsuit. Save Our States Executive Director Trent England asked House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., to probe the NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital system. “All these facts suggest a pattern of NewYork-Presbyterian taking taxpayer dollars and other government benefits and focusing on maximizing revenue and executive perks rather than on serving their patients,” says England’s letter to the House committee, shared with The Daily Signal. In March, the Justice Department filed an antitrust lawsuit against the hospital, citing “anticompetitive contract restrictions that deny New Yorkers the choice of lower cost healthcare options.” Save Our States also launched a new digital ad campaign titled “Patient Betrayal,” critical of the hospital, its spending, and its tax-exempt status. The nonprofit hospital system includes facilities at Columbia University Irving Medical Center and Weill Cornell Medical Center. Save Our States noted that the NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital CEO’s compensation jumped from $8.9 million to more than $23 million in a two-year period. Shortly thereafter, it reduced its workforce by about 1,000 employees due to “anticipated financial challenges.” “The American people deserve transparency and accountability in healthcare, especially from systems that benefit from taxpayer subsidies,” the letter continues. SaveOurStates Letter to House Ways and Means 4-27Download The ad and the letter highlight a $750 million settlement that the hospital and Columbia University paid to hundreds of women who sued, alleging they were sexually abused by a doctor, as reported by The New York Times. NewYork-Presbyterian did not respond to email and phone inquiries from The Daily Signal on Monday and Tuesday. However, the hospital has previously said the Justice Department antitrust lawsuit was “without merit” and said it “complies fully with all applicable federal and state laws and regulations.” “We do not seek to exclude any other hospital from any insurer’s network. Nor do we require more favorable treatment than any other hospital,” the hospital said in a statement to Fierce Healthcare. “In our contract negotiations with insurers, we seek to maximize access to the highest quality of care,” the hospital continued. “Insurance companies hold the market power and use it to restrict patient choice. The obligation of insurance companies is to their shareholders, while ours is to our patients.” The nonprofit hospital system lists more than 10,000 affiliated physicians and 50,000 employees, with more than 2 million visits annually. 

Following the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump over the weekend, some Americans have begun to posit a connection between the alleged shooter’s actions and the incubation of radical beliefs in California’s education system. On Monday, Cole Tomas Allen, a resident of Torrance, California, was charged with attempting to kill the president after being taken into custody following the incident at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington, D.C. The suspected shooter graduated from the California Institute of Technology with a mechanical engineering degree, interned at NASA, and was a part-time teacher in California at the time of his arrest. A review of his social media posts reportedly reveal Allen compared Trump to Adolph Hitler and encouraged detractors of the president to buy guns. “[Cole Tomas Allen is] a product of a very sophisticated indoctrination platform that is ubiquitous in the realm of higher education,” Lance Christensen, vice president of government affairs and education policy at the California Policy Center, told The Daily Signal. “It’s almost a given that every public college and university in California, and across the nation, is the bastion of left-wing radical intellectuals,” he said.  Federal Election Commission filings indicate that Allen donated $25 to ActBlue, a left-leaning political action committee. In resurfaced posts brought up by a user on X, Allen allegedly compared Trump’s 2024 presidential win to “Nazis getting elected.”  BREAKING: I found Cole Allen's archived tweets.He predicted "Kamala wins all swing states," compared Trump's win to “Nazis getting elected,” and moved to Bluesky.The scary part: he retweeted every mainstream Democrat on this platform.Thread below. What radicalized him… pic.twitter.com/5VWHCZd6Rx— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) April 26, 2026 In response to a photo of Allen being recognized as teacher of the month at the California school where he worked, former Babylon Bee Managing Editor Joel Berry said on X, “It’s likely that the majority of public school teachers you leave your kids with all day agree with this guy.” It’s likely that the majority of public school teachers you leave your kids with all day agree with this guy pic.twitter.com/gmvueEOTzG— Joel Berry (@JoelWBerry) April 27, 2026 In an email to The Daily Signal, Defending Education President Nicole Neily also noted a connection between academia and radicalism. “The teaching profession today is a far cry from what it was when many of us grew up,” Neily said. “Rather than partner constructively with families to help students thrive, far too many educators now view their role as one of ‘reprogramming’ children away from their families’ values and closely held beliefs towards progressivism.” “Our 2024 report ‘CorruptED‘ explored how colleges of education center critical race theory, queer studies, decolonization, white supremacy, and equity into their degree programs—so it’s little wonder that America’s teachers now view themselves as social justice warriors, rather than the educators they were hired to be,” she added. Allen is not the first college-educated Californian to attempt to assassinate a right-leaning politician. Nicholas Roske—who identifies as Sophie Roske—was a California resident who attempted to murder U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in June 2022. Roske stood outside Kavanaugh’s Maryland home with a gun, ammunition, knife, hammer, duct tape, zip ties and other tools. Before committing the act, he received a call from his sister who convinced him to back away from the crime. Roske is now serving an eight-year sentence for attempted murder. Roske was a substitute teacher at the time, having graduated from California State University, Northridge with a degree in psychology. According to NBC News, Roske’s reason for the attempt came down to Roe v. Wade. “Roske allegedly told investigators that she decided to target Kavanaugh because she was angry about the possibility that the Supreme Court would overturn Roe v. Wade and about the deadly school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. She said she thought Kavanaugh would loosen gun laws,” the outlet reported, citing the complaint. Jack Posobiec, TPUSA contributor and the senior editor of Human Events, also made a connection with public education, posting on social media that he’s not surprised “a teacher opened fire on the White House press dinner.”  For those who are surprised a teacher opened fire on the White House press dinner https://t.co/As4jrvzghF— Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec) April 26, 2026

A majority of justices, though sympathetic, seemed reluctant to allow members of the Falun Gong movement to sue a U.S. tech firm they accused of assisting the Chinese communist government of “aiding and abetting” in torture. In the case of Cisco v. Doe, the Supreme Court is considering a lower court’s ruling that would have allowed the lawsuit against Cisco to proceed. “This case is about the systematic persecution of a religious minority by Chinese authorities and Cisco’s partnership in that persecution,” Paul Hoffman, lawyer for the plaintiffs, said during his argument. “Each of the plaintiffs was tortured or killed by Chinese authorities because of their religious beliefs. Cisco provided substantial assistance to this persecution from U.S. territory by providing a customized surveillance system designed to identify Falun Gong believers to Chinese authorities for detention and forced conversion through torture and other barbaric treatment.” The Falun Gong spiritual movement spread in China in the 1990s, but the Chinese Communist Party banned its practices in 1999. The lawsuit against Cisco commenced in 2011. Most of the conservative-leaning justices on the court expressed concerns that opening up a new avenue for lawsuits could pose foreign policy and separation-of-powers problems. The question before the court is whether two statutes, the 18th-century Alien Tort Statute and the 1991 Torture Victim Protection Act, provide a cause of action to sue. But several conservatives asked why Congress didn’t specify the right to sue in the law. “The job for creating causes of action because of foreign policy concerns, as sympathetic as this particular case certainly is, that the responsibility for creating causes of action generally lies not with judges but with Congress,” Justice Neil Gorsuch said. During arguments by Cisco attorney Kannon Shanmugam, Justice Sonia Sotomayor spent the most time questioning him. “It is alleged that by its internal and public statements it [Cisco] knew that those people would be tortured,” Sotomayor asked. “So what is the problem with how that fits into any conscious aiding-and-abetting statute, including our own domestic one that requires active inducement and active participation.” Shanmugam said, “With regard to the allegations in this case, Justice Sotomayor, it will not surprise you to learn that Cisco vigorously disputes those allegations.” He also argued Cisco cannot be held responsible for torture, as it didn’t commit the acts. “That is a form of secondary liability. It’s not full-fledged aiding-and-abetting liability,” he said. “And that just underscores that when Congress acts, it often acts in a restricted fashion with regard to secondary liability.”

Jewish groups have used paid informants to protect synagogues from antisemitic violence, and the Southern Poverty Law Center has claimed that it was funding KKK members for similar reasons, but a group that represents 2,500 Orthodox Jewish rabbis is crying foul. Last week, a federal grand jury indicted the SPLC on wire fraud, bank fraud, and conspiracy charges for sending money to members of the very white supremacist groups the center claims it exists to dismantle. The SPLC did not deny funding members of the Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan Nations, but insisted the funds were part of an informant program that it used to prevent violent attacks. The Forward, a Jewish news outlet, cited multiple Jewish organizations condemning the indictment and featured historian Stephen J. Ross, whose book “The Secret War Against Hate: American Resistance to Antisemitism and White Supremacy,” was published Tuesday. Ross’s book covers the history of Jewish groups embedding informants in white nationalist organizations. Yet Rabbi Yaakov Menken, executive vice president of the Coalition for Jewish Values, insisted that any tie between the history of Jewish groups using informants to prevent violence and the SPLC’s defense of funding KKK members is “ludicrous.” “It’s a ludicrous comparison, for the simple reason that not all transactions are created equal,” Menken told The Daily Signal in a statement Tuesday. “Infiltration and use of paid informants have been used throughout history to learn enemies’ intentions and capabilities. The SPLC is accused of advising and funding hate in America in order to have causes against which to fundraise. If true, this is simply reprehensible.” A History of Private Informants Ross defended the practice of nonprofit organizations hiring informants to defend against violent threats. “If a government cannot protect the lives of its citizens, it is up to the citizens to protect their own lives,” the author told The Daily Signal in a Tuesday interview. Ross’s earlier book, “Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America,” outlines the history of the informants hired by the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, and the Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League from the 1930s into World War II. “The Secret War Against Hate” covers the end of the Second World War to Jan. 6, 2021. The AJC maintained informants until the 1960s, the Anti-Nazi League maintained them until the 1970s, and the ADL still maintains them, Ross told The Daily Signal. Neither the AJC nor the ADL responded to The Daily Signal’s request for comment. He said most organizations require paid informants to sign a document stating something to the effect of “I will not pretend to be a government authority, nor will I break any law.” “They want you to go undercover, find out what’s going on, if you can accumulate evidence, and then report it back,” and they would forward that information to law enforcement, Ross explained. According to the Justice Department indictment, the SPLC was paying some of the same activists it highlighted in “extremist profiles.” Ross said that “isn’t odd.” “If you want to give somebody legitimacy within that group, the fact that they are put on a most wanted list by the Southern Poverty Law Center only strengthens their position within that group,” he argued. All the same, he said neither the ADL nor the AJC nor the Anti-Nazi League ever engaged in that kind of behavior, to his knowledge. Ross condemned the indictment against the SPLC, saying, “I think this is a harassment case. To my mind, it’s not a legitimate case.” He condemned what he called the “hypocrisy” of the FBI working with the Justice Department to bring charges against the SPLC when the FBI also pays informants. Are They Really Informants? The indictment suggests the recipients of SPLC cash were more than mere informants, however. The indictment claims the SPLC supervised the “racist postings” of an organizer of the 2017 Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally, for instance. Critics have long faulted the SPLC for placing conservative and Christian nonprofits that do not advocate for violence on a “hate map” alongside Klan chapters. The SPLC bills the map as revealing the “infrastructure upholding white supremacy.” The indictment suggests that the funding to members of the KKK has more to do with propping up a false “hate” threat to use in fundraising than to actually combat violence. Menken, the leader of the Coalition for Jewish Values, accused the SPLC of effectively abetting antisemitism. “We have long pointed out that the SPLC is itself acting as a hate group,” he told The Daily Signal. “Not only does it vilify those with biblically-based viewpoints on family values, it also calls out causes as ‘anti-Muslim’ for opposing radical Islamic groups which ally with designated foreign terror organizations and engage in antisemitic expression.”

The Daily Signal’s Senior National Security and Legal Analyst Mehek Cooke said the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump should be treated as a clear, intentional act of political violence and a warning sign of a broader national security crisis. In an appearance Monday on NewsNation’s “Katie Pavlich Tonight,” Cooke addressed the legal consequences facing the suspect, identified as Cole Allen, 31, who is now charged with multiple offenses, including attempting to assassinate the president—a crime that carries a potential life sentence. She said prosecutors will focus heavily on intent, which she argued is already evident in the case. “This is almost like a mosaic,” Cooke said, explaining that investigators will examine travel records, weapons purchases, and the fact that the suspect discharged his weapon multiple times while attempting to enter the ballroom at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, where President Trump and administration officials were presiding. “This wasn’t an accident. This wasn’t a fluke. And then he left a manifesto. All of this ties into intent.” Cooke said the case should be a “slam dunk” for prosecutors and argued that anyone who had advance knowledge of the attack should also face legal consequences. She expressed confidence in U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro, saying the American people expect full accountability and transparency. Beyond the courtroom, Cooke warned that the attack cannot be dismissed as an isolated incident. She said increasingly aggressive political rhetoric—now echoed not just by fringe figures but by prominent Democratic leaders—has created a dangerous environment. “It doesn’t surprise me that you have podcasters and influencers doing the same,” Cooke said of the rhetoric, pointing to what she described as a strategy to exploit societal weakness. Cooke specifically criticized Democratic leaders for doubling down on rhetoric portraying Trump as an existential threat, while simultaneously continuing normal political and media engagement around him. “If he’s a Nazi, if he’s a fascist, if he’s all these terrible things, then why are these reporters showing up?” Cooke asked. “It just goes to show they are lying to the American people.” She also emphasized that President Trump faces heightened threats not only domestically but from foreign adversaries, including Iran, and said federal agencies must reassess security failures and follow through on promised reforms. “We were promised that this would not happen again,” Cooke said. “The American people deserve to know what those changes are.” Cooke concluded by urging Americans and conservative leaders to continue speaking clearly and forcefully. “We have a moral obligation, Katie, to continue to speak the truth,” she said.