Morehouse College President David A. Thomas said Thursday he would shut down commencement ceremonies “on the spot” rather than allow police to remove student protesters in zip ties during President Joe Biden’s graduation speech. Biden’s scheduled commencement speech Sunday at one of the nation’s preeminent historically Black colleges comes as school officials around the country have called in law enforcement to clear pro-Palestinian encampments and quell demonstrations in recent...

Arts and Sciences faculty at Columbia University on Thursday passed a vote of no confidence in the institution’s president, Minouche Shafik — a sign of growing dissent over her controversial handling of pro-Palestinian demonstrations. Out of the 709 professors who voted for the resolution — introduced by the Columbia chapter of the nonprofit American Association of University Professors — 65 percent expressed no confidence in Shafik, while 29 percent voted against it and 6 percent abstained...

The House Judiciary Committee on Thursday advanced a measure to hold in contempt Attorney General Merrick Garland in an 18-15 party line vote, a step Republicans on the House Oversight panel are also expected to take later this evening. A last-minute move from President Biden to claim executive privilege over audio recordings from his interview with special counsel Robert Hur did not dissuade the GOP from proceeding, even as Garland said those asserting the privilege “cannot be prosecuted...

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's funding mechanism in a challenge brought by the payday loan industry, handing a victory to President Joe Biden's administration and a setback to the agency's conservative critics. The 7-2 decision, authored by conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, reversed a lower court's ruling that the CFPB's funding design violated a provision of the U.S. Constitution called the "appropriations clause" giving Congress the...

At least 50 people were arrested after hundreds of anti-Israel protesters swarmed the campus of UC Irvine in California and set up barricades, the university confirmed Thursday.  The university said that 50 individuals who were on campus and disrupting university operations in violation of university policy and state laws were arrested for failure to disperse and trespassing.  UC Irvine could not confirm whether those arrested were students or not affiliated with the school. The...

Forget the drive-thru. Walmart wants diners to find a value meal in its grocery aisles. As fast food gets pricier, the nation’s largest grocer sees a sales opportunity. On a call with CNBC on Thursday, Walmart Chief Financial Officer John David Rainey said some of the discounter’s sales growth in the recent quarter came from customers who turned to its grocery aisles for cheaper meals than they can get at quick-service restaurants. “It’s roughly 4.3 times more expensive to eat out than...

It’s about time! At long last, National Institutes of Health (NIH) principal deputy director Lawrence Tabak admitted to Congress Thursday that US taxpayers funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China in the months and years before the COVID-19 pandemic. Asked by Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.) whether an NIH grant to the Manhattan-based nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance supported the gain-of-function experiments, Tabak said, “If you’re speaking about the generic...

President Joe Biden’s campaign demanded a ban on audiences during the proposed presidential debates with former President Donald Trump. The demand appears to be designed to reduce the risk of any Biden protestors attending the event. Anti-Israel protestors often appear at Biden’s public events. In a letter to the Commission on Presidential Debates, the Biden campaign said it was providing notice that it would not participate in commission debates. The campaign said Biden would only...

SlateStone Wealth chief market strategist Kenny Polcari argues Biden's China tariffs are a 'political ploy' that will drive up inflation on 'The Big Money Show.'

New tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles and batteries, solar cells, medical equipment and other goods are intended to protect U.S. jobs and manufacturers. They could raise prices on certain specific items, experts say, though a broad inflationary impact is unlikely in the short term. The tariffs will be phased in over the next three years, officials said. Those that take effect in 2024 include EVs and EV batteries, along with solar cells, syringes, needles, steel and aluminum and more...