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All you ever needed. The post Sam Moore had everything Sting ever wanted: “It’s all there in that unique texture” first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

Chaos is frightening. We live by identifying patterns that repeat. Those patterns spare us the costly effort of total alertness that a totally unpredictable situation requires. When dangers are not recognizable yet surely present, our drive to survive pushes us into this supremely stressful mode. Total awareness is overwhelming. Even more overwhelming is the need to choose a course of action. Among so many possibilities, how do we find the right path to choose? In the chaos, we cannot even know the nature of the threats well enough to set up triage, let alone a more deeply considered analysis leading to a proper setting of priorities. Chaos conceals the path to the best possible result. Chaos without resonates with chaos within. When no clear path to reducing the chaos is evident, its burden terrifies us. One solution to chaos is to deaden ourselves. If we do not care whether we live or die, then the urgency to preserve our life recedes along with the pain that indicates to us, like a hand on a hot stove, that our continued thriving requires action. Some choose chemical help and one can see the results of that choice all around the landscape, and in particular in large urban areas (though this plague is everywhere, it is more easily visible on city streets). Another is substituting a philosophy that operates like an opioid — some version of nihilism that denies meaning to anything in the world or beyond it. Preservation of life no longer serves as a clarifying moral anchor. Rather, progress is measured by the removal of boundaries that preserve life. This has been most obvious in the removal of those barriers around the beginning of life. By this, humans devalue their own lives, delinking themselves from the chain of life from which each person has sprung. This leaves each person’s humanity incomprehensible to themselves. Disconnected, the fragmented ego cannot stretch itself towards wholeness and community but turns in on its disconnected sense of self. Seeing themselves as utterly unique, and thus alone and unsupported, death becomes by default such a person’s organizing reality — that at least is real. It is a small step then to recommending death indiscriminately to others. It may seem at the beginning very distant from the final stop, put into words by a man who consummated the love of which he spoke, Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah: “We are going to win, because they love life and we love death.”  But as anyone can see after October 8, that love of death was fervently applauded by many who had no resistance to its narcotic message. [O]nly by grasping our part in the whole of providential reality do we find true meaning. Of course, very few of the useful idiots following the KGB/Khomeini/Nasrallah line would ever dream of strapping on a suicide vest. But they streamed like lemmings to the moral cliff of being unable to distinguish the reality of genocide, practiced publicly with orgiastic joy on the previous day, and the cynical accusation of genocide leveled as the final humiliation against the real genocide’s victims. Inability to perceive moral reality follows on conversion to the religion of death. All is staked on death and moral chaos. Like the bankrupt gambling addict who stakes all he has borrowed on one last toss of the dice, he hopes that his bet on death and chaos will bring a mighty jackpot of meaning. Like the person who gave up his job because of the thrill of the dice, his inner bankruptcy is self-imposed, he spurns the daily reality of moral choice and connection, seeing the life of the community only through the distorting spectacles of nihilism. Through that prism, Hamas’ deliberate placing of their own people where they must be killed if the Jews would defend themselves seems consistent, even brave. Death, more death, forever death — that is the faith they have joined. That is the logic that is working itself out in our schools, in our media, in the purveyors of culture, and around the world. More audacity, in maximizing chaos, in the cause of the love of death — enough chaos will break what the death-eaters believe to be the illusions of a constitutional republic carried forward by a broad community of moral and religious people in solemn covenant. They see no meaning in this covenant, only in how they can game it. They believe that the constitutional covenant constrains its believers to predictable and manipulatable behaviors.  They believe they can game it. Accepting no restrictions on themselves, except by compulsion, they view self-governance as does a sociopath — a map of weaknesses by which the lover of life can be mastered, rendered helpless, and be forced to convert to the cause of death or to die. They welcome either, though the true death worshipper has a powerful predilection for the latter. And so many find it sexually attractive, like the throngs of rapists among the October 7 murderers — or the would-be-groupie response to Luigi Mangione among so many of the new converts to the worship of death. In Last Full Measure, a historical novel of Grant’s year-and-a-month campaign against Lee, author Jeff Shaara imagines a conversation taking place between Grant and his wife, Julia. She asks her husband what he would say to someone whose husband is not coming home. Grant replies: I try not to think about that. It is part of my job. I make widows. I could not do that very well, talk to them, see the hurt, the tears. I must not do that. The war cannot have a face or a name. I hear about people I have known … men I have served with. I hear that they are dead and it shocks me how hard that hits me … How can I order men to their deaths if every death causes so much pain? In Shaara’s imagining, Julia answers: Because it is who you are. It is why God put you here. If you did not believe that, then you would not end the war. If the deaths of so many did not bother you, you would not care if it ended. There is a complexity here that has the ring of truth about it. The world does not conform easily to our wants or our ideologies. We can indeed cut loose from the real and embrace chaos as if it carried salvific meaning. But chaos will remain chaos. Love of death will perpetuate death and end only in its own death. Thus, the logic of the suicide of Hitler, Goering, Himmler, and Goebbels, after they tried their best to immolate Germany along with themselves, leaving vast piles of rubble, demolished lives, and ravished women. Thus, the logic of the deliberate sacrifice of the children and the civilians of Gaza in order to win publicity for the genocide libel of the actual practitioners of genocide. Thus, the organized work of grooming of American activists to increase tension and, a la Gaza, perhaps to gain the coveted publicity attendant on a devoutly wished-for death for the cause. Paralyze the people devoted to order with a vision of chaos that will never end, so that their only response will be submission. Their love is weak and exploitable. So many have given in. So many are persuaded by the simplicity of the mantra the worshippers of chaos and death require them to take. It is the crippling simplicity of modern-day idolatry. Idols are our own work. We persuade ourselves that they give us control over a complex and difficult world. Who needs devotion, apprenticeship, study, work. With one mighty swing of the ideological sword, we cut the Gordian knot. We have power! We do not need knowledge and the humility needed to gain it and the love to which the deepest knowledge leads. We need build nothing, only slander, deride, and destroy. We turn away from anything deep, unwilling to recognize the mystery and the irreducibility of Creation and the reality that underlies, sustains, and vivifies it constantly. Isaiah tells the great imperialist of his day, Cyrus, that God “fashions light and creates darkness” — both. Just as God Himself is irreducible to any duality, so too is God’s world and our role in it similarly and inevitably complex. Yet within that complexity, we find a gracious simplicity in the line of loving duty. As Julia Grant told her husband, only by grasping our part in the whole of providential reality do we find true meaning. In Grant’s case, it was that of the rightness of the cause of freedom and of constitutional covenant. He could wield mighty force, lethal force, and not be polluted or degraded by it. He could master chaos and death by a victory delivering the republic whole, renascent, and rededicated to its majestic founding Declaration. He grasped the whole of God’s complex reality for a cause of sublime and majestic humanity. He used death itself to end the killing of war and the living death of slavery. Isaiah declared to Cyrus of Persia Lo tohu bera’a — God did not create the world for chaos. Tohu may indeed be the starting point of creation, but it is not its endpoint. That endpoint, Isaiah made clear, was lashevet bera’a — the world is meant to be ordered and settled. He did not mean by that the oversimplistic idolatry of order so dear to the tyrannical mind. He meant a world that is constantly aware of the divine starting point of complete freedom — chaos — and of the human role to infuse it with an order that is equally divine, an order God gives us to know if only we embrace it. Ordered liberty. A beginning and an end linked together, achieving dignity and purpose, joining together the infinite and the finite in the wondrous vessel that is human life, created in the Creator’s own image. That is the vision that underlies our republic. That is the vision that underlies life itself. READ MORE from Shmuel Klatzkin: The Bonds of Affection Constitutional Clarity v. International Ambiguity Dancing in the Street, Listening for God      

One of the nation’s premier Catholic universities has disgraced its legacy and heritage by appointing a controversial pro-abortion professor to a prestigious role. Now, Catholic students are speaking out. As our own Ellie Gardey Holmes reported, the University of Notre Dame appointed abortion activist Susan Ostermann as the head of the school’s Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies. Ostermann has a lengthy history of promoting abortion, comparing “unwanted” pregnancies to sexual assault and writing in a Los Angeles Times op-ed, “Abortion saves women’s lives.” (One of Ostermann’s pro-abortion co-authors, Notre Dame professor Tamara Kay, later sued students for reporting on her abortion activism, which included helping students arrange or procure abortions.) In an article for the Chicago Tribune, Ostermann wrote of “Lies about abortion.” She listed as lie number 2: “Abortions kill babies. Almost 90% of abortions occur during the first 10 weeks of pregnancy when there are no babies or fetuses. There are only blastocysts or embryos so tiny they are too small to be seen on an abdominal ultrasound.” Ostermann also argued against pro-life laws regulating the abortion drug mifepristone, which she classified as “lifesaving.” Increased regulation of mifepristone “would be a terrible policy choice and violate human rights,” the self-described Catholic argued. The demented arguments presented by Ostermann over the years directly and blatantly contradict the clear, perennial moral teachings of the Catholic Church, begging the question: “Why on earth did one of the nation’s best-known Catholic schools appoint this pro-baby-slaughter harpy to head a high-profile institution?” Catholic institutions are no doubt targets of spiritual attack, that is to be expected. But they ought not to become weapons of spiritual attack. That’s exactly what Lucy Spence, editor-in-chief of The Irish Rover, Notre Dame’s Catholic student newspaper, asked in a letter to the editor published in The Observer. “The recent appointment of abortion advocate Susan Ostermann to director of the Liu Institute is astonishing coming from a university dedicated to the mother of an unplanned pregnancy,” Spence wrote, referring to the Blessed Virgin Mary. “And the decision should be viewed as none other than a slap in the face to every woman here.” “Our provost, John McGreevy, announced last year that the hiring of women and minorities would become a priority equal to that of hiring Catholics,” Spence shockingly shared. “Ostermann’s appointment, presumably an implementation of McGreevy’s plan, is doing nothing to aid women at Notre Dame. It is doing the opposite, promoting the saddest lie ever told to them: that their children are disposable,” she continued. “Women are tired of being told that their strength lies in the rejection of love.” “No, unplanned pregnancies do not ‘destroy lives,’” Spence wrote, refuting Ostermann’s arguments. No, a child born of rape is not a “form of violence.” In its appointment and promotion of Ostermann, Notre Dame has become complicit in feeding that great lie to its female students. Until it begins to defend the sanctity of all life — mother and baby alike — in all of its actions, Notre Dame can never hope to fulfill the singular duty it bears to its female students as Our Lady’s University. God bless Miss Spence. The Sycamore Trust, a coalition of Notre Dame alumni dedicated to preserving the university’s Catholic identity, also lambasted the appointment of Ostermann. “Notre Dame’s claim to be a Catholic university is tested not only by what it teaches but also by whom it entrusts with authority. Leadership appointments signal institutional priorities, especially when they touch matters at the heart of Catholic moral teaching,” the group said in a statement shared with The American Spectator. “A recent decision by the University raises serious questions about whether fidelity to the sanctity of human life remains among those priorities — at a time when abortion and population-control policies have wrought profound moral and human consequences across much of the world.” What, indeed, would Notre Dame — “Our Lady” — say in response to Ostermann? Our Lady instructed us, the followers of her Son, to “do whatever he tells you to” (John 2:5). Surely, Christ would not ask the leadership at the University of Notre Dame to advance pro-abortion insanity. Why does a school named after and dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the living exemplar of purity and the paragon of virtue and devotion to God, employ rabid abortion activists? It’s shocking enough that Ostermann is a professor at the university, but she is joined by fellow pro-abortion propagandists Tamara Kay and Tricia Bruce. Catholic institutions are no doubt targets of spiritual attack, that is to be expected. But they ought not to become weapons of spiritual attack, condoning, shielding, and even advancing arguments and activism in favor of the slaughter of unborn innocents. The “Catholic” leaders at Notre Dame could satisfy a deep hunger and amass a veritable army of faithful, loving students and alumni if they would just defend the principles of the Catholic Faith. Instead, they bow to the whims of the age, turning their backs on Our Lady and her Son. READ MORE from S.A. McCarthy: Are America’s Bishops Cowardly — or Just Greedy? When a Bishop Forbids Kneeling The Sheen Renaissance

Spain has just made a decision that future governments will be unable to reverse, future voters will be unable to correct, and future generations will be forced to live with. By royal decree, the Sánchez government has announced it will grant legal residence and work permits to roughly half a million illegal migrants already inside the country. The measure is due to take effect in April 2026 and applies to those who can prove presence in Spain before the end of 2025 and who lack a criminal record, including many whose asylum claims were rejected or left unresolved, as reported by Reuters. (RELATED: Sánchez’s Spain Is a Caricature of Political Corruption) This is being presented as compassion. In reality, it is a political act of extraordinary consequence, executed in a manner that reveals far more than the rhetoric surrounding it. The choice of instrument matters. This was not legislation debated in parliament, amended, or subjected to the friction that democratic systems are designed to impose on decisions with permanent effects. It was imposed by decree. Governments do not govern this way when they are seeking consent. They govern this way when they are seeking finality. What distinguishes this decision is its timing, its scale, and its strategic usefulness. It arrives as Spain’s conservative opposition has gained support… Spain’s leaders insist the policy merely “recognises reality.” But governments recognise reality every day without taking steps of this magnitude. What distinguishes this decision is its timing, its scale, and its strategic usefulness. It arrives as Spain’s conservative opposition has gained support by articulating something most citizens understand instinctively: that immigration enforcement has weakened, overstays are routine, removals are rare, and the costs of this failure are borne by the public whether they consent or not. (RELATED: How Islam Conquered Catholic Spain — Again) Rather than answer that argument, the government has chosen to remove it from democratic contention altogether. The political logic is neither subtle nor novel. If enforcement becomes politically inconvenient, redefine it as immoral. If public concern grows, delegitimise it. And if the electorate begins to drift in the wrong direction, change the conditions under which future elections are fought. (RELATED: What’s Really Causing the Minnesota ‘Insurrection’?) Within days of the announcement, crowds began forming outside embassies and consulates across Spain, as migrants rushed to obtain criminal-record certificates and proof of nationality required to qualify for the amnesty. These scenes were documented in real time. The Daily Mail published photographs of long queues outside embassies serving Pakistan and several African states, with applicants seeking the final paperwork needed to convert illegal presence into legal residence. Similar pressure was reported at missions representing Morocco, Senegal, Mali, Guinea, and Nigeria, particularly in Madrid and Barcelona. This reaction matters because it exposes a basic truth governments prefer not to acknowledge: people respond to incentives, not assurances. The state can insist this is a one-off measure. What migrants hear is simpler. Stay long enough, and the system gives way. Spain’s undocumented population is now estimated at around 840,000, a dramatic increase from less than a decade ago, according to Associated Press reporting. A significant share of those eligible for regularization come from Muslim-majority countries and Sub-Saharan Africa, including Pakistan and several West African states. At the same time, irregular crossings into Spain continue, particularly along the Canary Islands route from West Africa, despite repeated assurances that the amnesty will not encourage further arrivals. This ongoing flow has been widely reported, including by the Guardian. What is rarely stated plainly — but matters more than any domestic justification — is what legal status in Spain actually confers. Once regularised, these migrants will hold lawful residence in a Schengen member state. That means freedom of movement across much of Europe: the ability to travel onward to France, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, and beyond, with minimal friction and without internal border controls. A decision taken in Madrid, therefore, does not remain Spanish. It becomes European. The claim that a mass regularization of this scale carries no signalling effect does not withstand scrutiny. Smuggling networks do not parse ministerial intent. They observe outcomes. Spain has just demonstrated that prolonged illegality is not a dead end, but a stage — and that the reward is not merely papers, but mobility across a continent. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has responded to criticism not with caution, but with moral bravado. “When did recognising rights become something radical?” he asked, framing the decree as historic justice and dismissing opponents rather than addressing their concerns. When the charge of political advantage was raised, he brushed it aside with a line crafted for social media rather than statecraft: “Mars can wait. Humanity can’t,” as reported by the Guardian. Legal status is not an endpoint. It is a multiplier. Once granted, family reunification follows by law. Communities consolidate. Dependence on public systems increases. Citizenship pathways open. Over time, a population that arrived unlawfully becomes a permanent political fact — not because of ideology, but because of arithmetic. No serious government is unaware of this. Which is why the decree was delivered as a fait accompli. Parliamentary debate would have introduced friction. Friction would have invited scrutiny. Scrutiny would have forced trade-offs into the open. A decree avoids all of that. It projects inevitability. And inevitability is the point. Spain has therefore sent a clear message — to migrants, to smuggling networks, and to its European neighbours — that outcomes will be decided first, and acceptance managed later. Rules apply until they become inconvenient. Illegality is tolerated, then rewarded. Objections are not debated; they are neutralised. People can live with losing elections. They cannot live indefinitely with the discovery that decisions carrying permanent consequences have been taken beyond their reach, that the argument is over, not because it was settled, but because it was closed. What follows now is not a theory, but an experiment — one whose consequences will not be confined to Spain. Hundreds of thousands of newly regularized residents will now move freely across Europe. How this reshapes politics, public trust, and social cohesion is no longer a question of intention, but of consequence. We will see, in time, how this plays out. History suggests it rarely plays out quietly. READ MORE from Kevin Cohen: Why ICE Exists Drug Gangs, Child Gunmen and Antisemitic Abuse — Welcome to Marseille After the Illegal Immigrant Surge

The Super Bowl remains the largest shared media event in American life, but it now operates less as a football championship than as a national stage for culture, politics, and performance. Super Bowl LX is expected to draw more than 120 million viewers, yet much of the pregame attention has little to do with the matchup itself. Headlines are already dominated by Bad Bunny’s halftime show and by President Donald Trump’s decision to skip attending the game — figures who, for many viewers, matter more than the teams on the field. If news media is running pre-Super Bowl digital articles about political figures and anti-ICE controversies, those headlines are being consumed by some audience, and those clicks generate revenue for the media companies. There were also already several reports dissecting the biggest Super Bowl LX advertisements prior to the game, spoiling the surprise and revealing most marketing strategies. That imbalance says something important about where American culture is in 2026. The Super Bowl still gathers a massive audience, but the audience arrives carrying different expectations, loyalties, and media consumption habits. What once functioned as a shared civic ritual now plays out inside a fragmented ecosystem shaped by personalization, algorithms, and digital subcultures. For most of the Super Bowl’s history, its appeal to advertisers was straightforward: one night, one screen, one audience. Brands paid a premium to speak to the country all at once, trusting that viewers would absorb the same jokes, celebrities, and emotional beats together. Today’s dominant advertising model works in the opposite direction. Online, success comes from narrowly delivering tailored messages to specific demographics based on data, not shared experience. The Super Bowl remains one of the few media events where narrowcasting is impossible, and that cultural dissonance is visible everywhere. It explains creative choices like Instacart pairing Ben Stiller with pop singer Benson Boone. Stiller brings a familiar comedic presence recognizable across generations. Boone is supposed to represent Gen Z’s algorithm-driven pop culture, but the reality is that not everyone in Gen Z is experiencing the “Mystical Magical” “moonbeam ice cream” singer, unless they happened to scroll past a TikTok video mocking his viral 15-second song clip back in 2025. The football game no longer functions as a unifying cultural text so much as a shared timestamp; it is an anchor point around which millions of individualized experiences orbit. Variety reported that advertisers aim to capture the attention of Gen Z, quoting Instacart’s chief marketing officer, who called Benson Boone the “Gen Z poster child” who is “so in the zeitgeist right now.” While it may be true that many Gen Z viewers could identify Boone in a police lineup, this does not equate to cultural influence. In social media, culture does not dictate what content people consume; people control what culture they experience — or at least which media platforms they are exposed to. Benson Boone is one of thousands of “big name” faces encountered by Gen Z across an endless scroll of online content, and only those who engage with the singer’s music would say he wields any “zeitgeist” power beyond the visibility brands throw his way in a family-friendly register. This shift helps explain why the Super Bowl now feels simultaneously unavoidable and strangely hollow. Everyone is watching, but not everyone is watching for the same reasons. Viewers arrive with second screens in hand, primed to react on X, TikTok, or Instagram, parsing moments into clips, memes, and outrage cycles that immediately splinter the broadcast into competing narratives. The game itself becomes just one content stream among many, often secondary to whatever discourse can be generated around it. In that environment, advertisers are no longer trying to create a single, universally resonant moment. Instead, they aim to seed fragments that will travel differently across platforms: a celebrity cameo that sparks TikTok edits, a quip engineered for ironic use, some anti-Trump bluster to whip up the Fox News anchors, an anti-ICE signal to excite the leftist activists, and so on. XFinity’s Jurassic Park reunion leans on 1990s nostalgia, while Uber Eats stuffs its ad with more celebrities optimized for online circulation rather than message clarity. These commercials are designed less for viewers in the moment and more for influencers, brand accounts, and media outlets that will remix, react to, and rank them afterward. The commercial is no longer the art form; the engagement funnel is. None of this means the Super Bowl is dying. Its ratings suggest the opposite, although its role in American culture has changed. The football game no longer functions as a unifying cultural text so much as a shared timestamp; it is an anchor point around which millions of individualized experiences orbit. People still tune in, but they do for different purposes, paying attention to different things and extracting different meanings. This may be the defining feature of American culture in 2026. The Super Bowl still gathers the country, but it won’t tell the country who it is. Instead, it reveals how fragmented America’s national identity has become in the face of global communications technology, and how easily we mistake engagement for relevance, visibility for influence, and shared screens for shared culture. READ MORE from Julianna Frieman: Guilt Isn’t Genetic Gen Z in the Age of Digital Polyculture Artificial Afterlife Julianna Frieman is a writer who covers culture, technology, and civilization. She has an M.A. in Communications (Digital Strategy) from the University of Florida and a B.A. in Political Science from UNC Charlotte. Her work has been published by the Daily Caller, The American Spectator, and The Federalist. Follow her on X at @juliannafrieman

President Trump announced this week that the federal government will pursue a billion dollar lawsuit against Harvard University, accusing the institution of attempting to avoid a settlement through a job training proposal he described as “wholly inadequate” — alleging that the university’s actions rise to the level of criminal misconduct. The conflict between Trump and Harvard intensified in 2025 as the administration launched investigations into alleged antisemitism and ideological bias on campus. In response to Harvard’s refusal to implement proposed reforms, including changes to hiring and admissions practices, the Trump administration froze $2.2 billion in federal research funding and, in May, barred the university from enrolling students on foreign visas. In September 2025, a federal judge reversed the funding freeze, ruling it violated constitutional free speech protections and federal law, but also reiterated Trump’s claim that the White House had a “legitimate interest” in combating antisemitism and criticizing Harvard’s past tolerance of hateful speech and behavior. Alan Garber, who assumed the Harvard presidency amid campus turmoil following the October 7, 2023 Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel, has pushed back against the Trump administration’s methods and conditions of compliance. During an interview on NBC Nightly News, he stated that generally the administration wants to review who Harvard hires on its faculty — suggesting that it has implications for what kinds of views can be expressed on campus. In addition, he said the administration also wants to be able to tell Harvard who it needs to fire as well as intervene in its admissions process. The Harvard president’s remarks are a combination of hyperbole, misinformation, and misdirection. President Trump’s initiatives with Harvard are aimed at balancing faculty appointments with regard to political ideology as opposed to today’s categorical bias against conservative and liberal scholarship. And yes, it does have to do with “what kind of views” can be expressed on Harvard’s campus — political discourse should be well-rounded. Moreover, absolutely, people should be relieved of their employment if prejudice and racism are part of their speech and behavior on campus, especially if that speech and behavior is derived from substandard scholarship. Finally, the Trump administration does want to intervene in the admissions process by requiring greater transparency to ensure students are not being selected by race, gender, or other non-meritocratic qualifications. After all, the university receives enormous federal assistance through research grants and other funding and the public has a stake in ensuring people are treated fairly. The Ivy League institution, through the office of its president, has already admitted culpability as to the Trump administration’s assertions of antisemitism on its campus. Despite President Garber’s remarks against the Trump administration, he has repeatedly discussed institutional failures on the part of Harvard in public statements and interviews. In a March 2025 letter to the Harvard community-at-large, Garber wrote that antisemitism “is present on our campus,” adding, “I have experienced antisemitism directly, even while serving as president.” In The Harvard Crimson, Garber said the university “went wrong” by allowing faculty activism in classrooms, stating that such conduct chilled free speech and debate on campus. He has also  acknowledged complaints about ideological imbalance, saying his administration has heard that “conservatives are too few on campus and their views are not welcome,” conceding that, “insofar as that’s true, that’s a problem we really need to address.” But for Harvard the arrogant intransigence in denying the anti-Semitism and ideological bias it tolerates … has already cost it plenty. Consider the numbers: Jonathan Turley notes that, “In a country with a plurality of conservative voters in the last election, less than 9 percent of the Harvard student body is conservative. Less than 3 percent of the faculty identified as conservative.” In response to a New York Times report which alleged Trump was reducing his previously negotiated $500 million demand from Harvard to a non-cash arrangement, Trump posted on Truth Social: Strongly Antisemitic Harvard University has been feeding a lot of “nonsense” to The Failing New York Times. Harvard has been, for a long time, behaving very badly! They wanted to do a convoluted job training concept, but it was turned down in that it was wholly inadequate and would not have been, in our opinion, successful. It was merely a way of Harvard getting out of a large cash settlement of more than 500 Million Dollars, a number that should be much higher for the serious and heinous illegalities that they have committed. Dr. Alan Garber, the President of Harvard, has done a terrible job of rectifying a very bad situation for his institution and, more importantly, America, itself. He was hired AFTER the antisemitism charges were brought — I wonder why??? We are now seeking One Billion Dollars in damages, and want nothing further to do, into the future, with Harvard University. As The Failing New York Times clearly stated, “Some connected to the University, however, think Harvard has no option but to eventually cut a deal … Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP. Harvard’s attorneys have issued a terse response to the administration’s demands, writing that it is unfortunate that the Trump administration’s correspondence disregards Harvard’s efforts and instead presents demands that invade university freedoms of speech and privacy. At the same time, several other Ivy League schools, including Columbia University and Brown University, have reached agreements with the administration and accepted certain government demands. Columbia agreed to pay more than $220 million from its $15.9 billion endowment to the government, and Brown said it will pay $50 million from its roughly $8 billion endowment to support local workforce development. Cornell has agreed to settle over alleged “use of DEI rubrics in faculty hiring, racial identity-based scholarships, and alleged anti-Semitic discrimination in campus programs and policies. The $60 million settlement, which barely impacts the university’s $11.8 billion endowment, includes a $30 million payment to the federal government over three years and $30 million for “research programs that will directly benefit U.S. farmers.” Northwestern university agreed in November to pay the federal government $75 million from its $14.3 billion endowment over three years to restore $790 million in frozen federal research funding. President Trump was telling the truth in his Truth Social post when he said even the New York Times conceded that “Harvard has no way out” of making a deal with the White House — their culpability is glaring. There is no question that the cost will be easily absorbed by their $56.9 billion endowment. But for Harvard the arrogant intransigence in denying the anti-Semitism and ideological bias it tolerates, in and out of the classroom, has already cost it plenty in terms of its credibility in the court of public opinion. READ MORE from F. Andrew Wolf Jr.: Lord Mandelson: The Albatross Around Sir Keir’s Neck The Productivity Boom Economists Didn’t See Coming The Data Is In — and the Narrative Is Wrong

European Union (EU) bureaucrats will stop at nothing to punish large and successful companies that improve consumers’ lives. To make matters worse, the EU’s regulatory overdrive is disproportionately targeting U.S. companies and American consumers. The House Judiciary Committee recently announced it “subpoenaed Europe’s secret 183-page censorship order to [the social media platform] X.” The findings are deeply disturbing. According to the Committee, “The [EU’s] first ever fine under the Digital Services Act (DSA) was against X and Elon Musk for €120 million — nearly 6 percent of its GLOBAL revenue — for defending free speech. Now we know why: … Euro bureaucrats fined X because it innovated its blue checkmark system and refused to give into demands from misinformation pseudoscientists.” Unfortunately, this is the very tip of the iceberg. President Trump and Congress must continue pushing back against this foreign red tape. Punishing X for improving its services is troubling, but not surprising. Following the implementation of the Digital Markets Act (DMA), Apple was mandated to allow third-party app marketplaces to exist on its products in the EU. Despite real security concerns posed by this onerous requirement, Apple has done its best to comply by allowing other stores and subjecting them to fees to mitigate these risks and ensure a safe experience for consumers. But pricing changes have not been allowed — because of the very regulators who have been implementing DMA requirements. The company notes, “The European Commission [EC] has refused to let us implement the very changes that they requested. In October, we submitted a formal compliance plan and they have yet to respond. The EC is using political delay tactics to mislead the public, move the goal posts, and unfairly target an American company with burdensome investigations and onerous fines.” And now, European bureaucrats are reportedly trying to blame Apple for third-party app stores’ business failures. Because of the EC’s mandate that “[g]atekeepers, like Apple, must allow interoperability of third-party devices with their operating systems,” Apple has also been forced to rethink the engineering of features such as iPhone mirroring to Mac and live translation with AirPods, and delay rollout. The newest and best technologies are remarkable feats of engineering, and requirements like interoperability can prove extraordinarily costly to implement. As Jennifer Huddleston (senior fellow in technology policy at the Cato Institute) pointed out on X, “The real time translation feature would be immensely helpful in Europe with so many languages; however, the consequence of European regulation is that it might not be available. Once again DMA means less benefits from innovative technology for the consumer.” President Trump has laudably pushed back against this regulatory overreach, and Congress has entered the fray as well. Regulators in Brussels claim that expansive tech regulations will ensure transparency, protect consumers, and level the competitive playing field. In the EC’s own words, the DMA “establishes a set of clearly defined objective criteria to qualify a large online platform as a ‘gatekeeper’ and ensures that they behave in a fair way online and leave room for contestability.” Consumers are noticing firsthand that these lofty expectations are falling far short. For example, Redditors have been pointing out that Google Maps has been “a severe pain in the butt” lately because of DMA-related changes. As Politico’s Edith Hancock recently reported, “users could [previously] search for a location on Google by simply clicking on the Google Map link to expand it and navigate it easily. That feature doesn’t work in the same way in Europe anymore and users are irritated.” DMA has also been a drag on Europe’s tourism industry. Because the regulation prohibits Google Search from showing travel-related results that link directly to airline and hotel sites, users must make do with intermediary websites that cost extra time and money to navigate through. And when companies don’t act precisely how EU bureaucrats demand, they are hit with bruising fines. Apple and Meta were punished for bringing their innovations to European markets, being hit with €500M and €200M fines under the DMA (respectively). These fines were levied despite these businesses introducing data transparency, message interoperability, and new advertising-related choices into their products. But that does not matter when Brussels regulators are determined to punish foreign competitors anyway. President Trump has laudably pushed back against this regulatory overreach, and Congress has entered the fray as well. The U.S. government must continue to fight for U.S. consumers and companies and keep away the Brussels bureaucrats. READ MORE from Ross Marchand: The Post Office Declares War on Apartment Dwellers Postal Service-run Census Would be a Costly Mistake Young Federal Government Workers Should Accept Trump’s Buyout Ross Marchand is the executive director of the Taxpayers Protection Alliance.

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