At least 22 people have died and eight others have been injured during a landslide in Colombia. 

'Holdouts are threatening to delay its passage'

Senate Republicans scaled the increase back down

THE CENTER SQUARE—The U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division has opened an investigation into the University of California system for potential race- and gender-based discrimination in employment. “The University of California’s ‘UC 2030 Capacity Plan’ directs its campuses to hire ‘diverse’ faculty members to meet race- and sex-based employment quotas,” wrote the DOJ. “These initiatives openly measure new hires by their race and sex, which potentially runs afoul of federal law. “ The UC 2030 Capacity Plan emphasizes expanding faculty diversity as a core goal of the 10-campus UC system as it endeavors to “become a Hispanic-serving and minority-serving system.” “For UC to remain excellent, it must grow and diversify its faculty,” wrote UC. “The University is committed to increasing the diversity of its faculty, both underrepresented minorities and female faculty.” “One way is to support the pathway to the professoriate is through programs like the UC President’s Pre-Professoriate Fellowship Program, the UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program and Chancellors’ Fellowship Program which encourage outstanding women and minority Ph.D. recipients with opportunities and resources to help launch their academic careers,” continued UC. “In addition, the University launched the Advancing Faculty Diversity program with one-time State funds and expanded the program with additional funding provided by the UC Office of the President.” “AFD identifies best practices in equity opportunity hiring by providing competitive awards to campus pilots testing new interventions aimed at increasing faculty diversity and improving academic climate and faculty retention.” The document mentions “diverse” and “diversity” 71 times, and “equity” 41 times.  It mentions “equality” only twice.  Under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it is illegal to practice discrimination in hiring on the basis of race, sex and other protected characteristics. Under Proposition 209, passed by California voters in 1996, it is illegal for state entities to consider race in hiring, contracting and education.  While many public and private institutes have reversed or renamed their diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, lawsuits regarding discrimination against non-priority races and genders are underway, resulting in a U.S. Supreme Court ruling earlier this month. In Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favor of a heterosexual woman who said she was discriminated against at her place of work on the basis of sexuality. This case also made it easier for plaintiffs to pursue cases by no longer having to provide “background circumstances to support the suspicion that the defendant is that unusual employer who discriminates against the majority.”  An ongoing class action lawsuit by Do No Harm and Students for Fair Admissions against the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA alleges the school is illegally discriminating against white and Asian applicants by holding some applicants to a much lower admissions standard.  This lawsuit may be able to use the new, lower Ames v. Ohio standard for “majority” discrimination, though it’s unclear if this standard will be applied to admissions as was to employment.  In 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard that race-based affirmative action policies for college admissions violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, paving the way for further cases against discriminatory admissions practices. Originally published by The Center Square The post DOJ Investigates University of California for Discrimination appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Andrew Schulz is disrupting the Legacy Media in real time. The rogue comic’s work, be it on stage or with his podcasts (“Flagrant,” “Brilliant Idiots”), undermines what biased reporters share. President Joe Biden is sharp as a tack, reporters claim. Schulz argues otherwise.     We use your personal data for interest-based advertising, as outlined in our Privacy Notice. Schulz, along with so-called “podcast bros” like Tim Dillon, Theo Von and Joe Rogan, gave Team Trump plenty of attention via their respective podcasts. And we all know who won last November. Now, Schulz is opening up to The New York Times on a host of issues. He’s a self-proclaimed Democrat who voted for Trump, for starters. He also sought to set the record straight on why he didn’t interview Vice President Kamala Harris in the waning days of the 2024 presidential campaign. He tried. She denied. And Team Harris won’t come clean about it. Schulz reveals his podcast contacts reached out to Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz and Harris for interviews during the campaign. They all declined. It gets worse regarding Team Harris, who he said lied about his outreach efforts. They say you didn’t? Yeah, and it’s wild to blatantly lie when not only did I reach out — Charlamagne, who’s working with them, reached out. Mark Cuban, who’s a surrogate, reached out, and we reached out, and they blatantly lie. Then when people write articles about it, they’ll say, 'Andrew says he reached out to Kamala, but we reached out to the Kamala people, and they said that never happened.' So what is the reader supposed to interpret that as? An evasion. I think it’s an indictment on me, because it’s almost like calling me a liar. It’s more than that, of course. Schulz is being diplomatic with the framing. The interview is fascinating on many levels, revealing a thoughtful comic who understands the culture and is still finding his role within it. He’s already learned the hard way how political operatives throw sharp elbows, the kind that aren’t remotely funny.  

The “C” grade FedEx founder Fred Smith received from a Yale professor on a paper outlining his vision for an overnight delivery service is much less remarkable than is often assumed. Naturally, Smith got a C. Rest assured that most investors gave him an F, assuming they bothered to hear Smith’s pitch in the first place.Evidence supporting the above claim can be found in the billions Smith left behind, along with the market cap ($54 billion) of FedEx itself. Smith’s wealth and FedEx’s valuation are evidence of Smith’s entrepreneurial genius — his ability to see what others couldn’t, to act decisively, and to execute brilliantly on a vision that defied conventional wisdom.At least rhetorically, Donald Trump sees interconnectivity as impoverishing. That’s too bad.Stop and contemplate the miraculous nature of Smith’s innovation. No doubt many wished they could have next-day or two-day delivery. But as Smith’s billions yet again indicate, his greatest insight was in figuring out how to solve a problem that appeared insolvable: how to profitably move documents around the U.S. and around the world overnight. Investors didn’t believe it could be done, which is why opposite-thinking, passionate people like Smith are so crucial to progress.Which brings us to economist Joseph Schumpeter’s notion of “creative destruction.” It was his way of saying that great business ideas are routinely replaced by even better ones. Stasis is death in business.Adapt or dieSmith knew this well. Miraculous as overnight delivery was, the proliferation of fax machines in the 1970s and '80s could have been an existential threat to FedEx. Same with email, PDF attachments, hyperlinks, and eventually DocuSign in the 1990s and beyond.The easy move would have been to sell or shut down what technology was rapidly rendering dated — but that wasn’t Smith. A free thinker to the core, according to people like Cato Institute co-founder Ed Crane (Smith served on Cato’s board), who knew him well, Smith no doubt grasped that a world increasingly connected by split-second technology would be a prosperous one. And prosperous people don’t just want market goods — they want them quickly.RELATED: The tax trick pitting old-guard Republicans against the populist new right Photo by Eric Lee/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesWhile many entrepreneurs might have sold in the face of a technological onslaught, Smith kept on building. He pivoted his business to become more valuable — ironically, the more free-market forces rendered FedEx’s initial purpose dated and obsolete. Documents were to FedEx what books were to Amazon: just the test case for a business concept that would have even greater purpose the more the world thrived based on the connectivity that had, in so many ways, vitiated FedEx’s original business.Smith’s lesson for TrumpThe free, rapid movement of people and communications was only existential for Smith and FedEx insofar as he was unwilling to pivot. In other words, the free trade that Smith venerated didn’t victimize him or, for that matter, any entrepreneur capable of seeing that prosperity born out of open trade frequently creates even better lines for businesses to expand into. That’s why FedEx didn’t die long ago. Smith was too smart — not just for Schumpeter, but also for President Donald Trump.At least rhetorically, Trump sees interconnectivity as impoverishing. That’s too bad. As Smith’s towering achievements indicate, the only true barriers to prosperity are those that separate producers from one another.It’s a long way of saying Trump could learn from Smith’s constant evasion of creative destruction. The latter isn’t just an understatement — it’s also urgent.Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearMarkets and made available via RealClearWire.

His first two albums after having left the Yardbirds introduced the world to the talents of Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood. The post Jeff Beck Solo LPs, ‘Truth’ and ‘Beck-Ola,’ Get Color Vinyl Reissues appeared first on Best Classic Bands.

They Haven't Proven Us Wrong! Ben Dreyfuss Says It's 'Unhealthy' to Think Some SCOTUS Justices Are Stupid