According to a Rasmussen poll released Monday, 65 percent of likely U.S. voters approve of the Court’s decision, including 49 percent who "strongly approve." Even as President Joe Biden denounced the Court’s ruling, 52 percent of Democrats said they supported the decision, with only 39 percent opposed.

Only 28 percent of likely voters expressed disapproval, with 16 percent saying they "strongly disapproved."

Less than one-fifth of respondents said that they thought affirmative action policies had been successful.

The newly released survey is hardly an outlier. An Economist/YouGov survey published earlier this month found that 59 percent of Americans agreed with the Court’s decision. While the media were quick to portray the decision as racist, this survey also found that pluralities of blacks and Hispanics supported the decision.

Prior to the Court’s decision, the vast majority of Americans, including most Democrats, believed that universities should not consider race as a factor in college admissions.

The post Poll: Two-Thirds Support Supreme Court's Affirmative Action Decision appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

• Celebrity actress Kristen Bell earlier this week posted a photo on Instagram featuring Tapper and his wife, Jennifer Marie Brown, enjoying a fancy dinner at the South Fork Lodge in Idaho.

• They were joined by a large group of celebrity couples, nearly all of them proud members of the white race.

• Social media users were stunned that the rich and socially enlightened liberal celebs would engage in such a flagrant act of white supremacy.

What they're saying: "Serious question for well-meaning white people. When you show up at a get-together like this, do you notice there are zero Black people, or nah?" wrote Twitter user Jay Perkins, a biracial black man and "antiracist" higher ed lawyer. "If so, do you say or do anything about it? To who? Please be honest. This is a safe space (unless you say something dumb or racist)."

What it means: The racially homogenous partygoers were most likely celebrating the Supreme Court's June 29 decision striking down race-based affirmative action in college admissions, an outcome backed by the vast majority of Americans.

• There appears to have been only one non-white celebrity couple in attendance. David Chang, the Korean-American restaurateur, was spotted at the dinner with his wife Grace, a Korean-born immigrant.

• The Supreme Court's ruling found that race-based affirmative action in college admissions violated the Constitution because it explicitly discriminated against Koreans and other students of Asian descent.

By the numbers: More than 82 percent of Idaho's population is white, according the U.S. Census Bureau, making it one of the whitest states in the country.

• The celebrity dinner party was even whiter. At least 90 percent of the guests were white, according to a Washington Free Beacon analysis.

• Approximately 0 percent of the guests were black, meaning the dinner party was demographically equivalent to a Pete Buttigieg campaign rally.

White power party: In addition to the Tappers, a bunch of other fancy white people attended the now-notorious dinner party in Idaho.

• Jennifer Aniston, star of Friends, one of the whitest shows ever made; Courteney Cox, star of Friends, and boyfriend Johnny McDaid of Snow Patrol, one the whitest bands in the world; Jason Bateman, host of the all-white podcast SmartLess, and his white wife; art gallery owners Heather Taylor and Alex De Cordoba; actress Shiri Appleby and restaurateur Jon Shook; Jimmy Kimmel and wife; Jimmy Fallon and wife; Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard; comedian John Mulaney and his half-Vietnamese mistress Olivia Munn; David Chang and wife; actor Adam Scott and wife; YouTube celeb Mark Rober; improvisational comedian Tim Curcio and wife.

Why it matters: At a time when many of our nation's journalists insist on touting the so-called benefits of diversity and inclusion, we applaud Tapper's courageous decision to reject phony moral values and embrace the "taboo" of "white racial solidarity."

• There's simply nothing wrong with a rich white journalist wanting to hang out with a bunch of rich white people (and a handful of Asians) at a fancy lodge in Idaho. It's a free country.

• The vast majority of Americans oppose the explicit racial preferences struck down by the Supreme Court. If that is indeed what the mostly white partygoers were celebrating, there's nothing wrong with that, either.

Bottom line: For rejecting diversity and refusing to live his life according to the "enlightened" moral code espoused by his colleagues in the corporate media, Jake Tapper is the Washington Free Beacon Hero of the Week.

Go deeper: CNN's Jim Acosta Celebrates Painfully White Staff in Majority Black City

The post HERO OF THE WEEK: CNN's Jake Tapper Toasts Demise of Affirmative Action at All-White Dinner Party appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

It's hardly the first time the overwhelmingly white press corps have misrepresented black opinion, and the error always seems to point in one direction.

Since the Supreme Court's June 29 ruling, headlines have blared dire predictions about the future of black students in American higher education—many by black college students and activists.

'If affirmative action was to go away, the diversity of schools would decrease and we would see the Black population be poorly represented," rising senior Gabrielle Wilson said before the ruling. pic.twitter.com/JG9F3fjUHa

— NBC News (@NBCNews) June 30, 2023

ABC News: "Students React to Landmark Supreme Court Affirmative Action Decision"

For Bunmi Omisore, a student attending Duke University, addressing in an essay how race has impacted her as an African American woman would be difficult. "If I were applying to college today, I would have to write about those traumas in my Common App essay. I would have to write about those traumas and those very hard experiences for admissions officers to accept the overwhelming truth that we all know—which is that it is hard to be a Black person in America. And I don't think that's fair," Omisore told David Muir in an ABC News Special Report.

For students applying under the new standard, it is "going to be hard to see themselves as someone outside of their race" if they can only address it through an essay, as opposed to simply disclosing it as one factor among many considered in the admissions process, Omisore said.

NBC News: "Without Affirmative Action, Advocates Fear Students of Color at Elite Colleges May Feel Disenfranchised"

That's why leaders Friday concurred that it's more important than ever for colleges to ensure all students feel like they belong on campus. They said they intend to do so by publicly embracing diversity and inclusion, as well as rejecting and condemning racism.

While leaders were reassuring students like Agustín León-Sáenz, a sophomore at Harvard, that they belong on campus, many students on the school's campus Thursday were expressing concern about how the ruling will affect aspiring college students of color.

"This is literally high stakes for my family," León-Sáenz told MSNBC. He said he thinks about how it will affect his little brother, who will apply for college in a few years, and his cousin, who will apply for college in the fall. It makes him think about "the people from my community, specifically from the state of New Mexico, where I am one of two students from New Mexico in my school year. So this has immediate impacts."

CNN: "The Gutting of Affirmative Action is a ‘Clear and Present Danger’ to Equal Education, Critics Say"

Wisdom Cole, national director of the NAACP Youth & College Division, called the rollback of affirmative action a "dark day in America." "Affirmative action has been a beacon of hope for generations of Black students," Cole said in a statement Thursday. "It stood as a powerful force against the insidious poison of racism and sexism, aiming to level the playing field and provide a fair shot at a high-quality education for all. Students across the country are wide-awake to the clear and present danger encroaching on their classrooms."... 

Apparently, however, elite college students and racial justice activists are not representative of black America. An Economist-YouGov poll published last week finds more black Americans than not approve of the Supreme Court's ruling against affirmative action.

A new poll finds an overwhelming majority of Americans—including a solid plurality of black and Hispanic Americans—back the Supreme Court’s ruling against race-based affirmative action. | @mccormackjohn https://t.co/vLgV3WibIU

— National Review (@NRO) July 11, 2023

Just 19 percent of black Americans feel affirmative action impacts them, and only 11 percent of those feel the policy affects them "positively," according to the survey. The poll is not an outlier, as political reporter Aaron Blake details in the Washington Post.

Journalists similarly stretch when they try to make black Americans avatars of progressive views on crime, abortion, and transgender rights.

Opposition to policing is often portrayed as a grassroots movement by and for black Americans.

For many Black Americans, real change still feels elusive despite the Chauvin verdict. The trial "is addressing a symptom, but we have not yet dealt with the disease." ⁦@abscribe⁩ ⁦@amy_harmon⁩ ⁦@stavernise⁩ ⁦@emilymbadger⁩ https://t.co/ttUH1wlbhl

— Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) April 21, 2021

But polls show again and again that black Americans overwhelmingly support maintaining or increasing police funding.

The Grio/KFF poll:

Only 17% of Black voters want to decrease police funding.

34% of Black voters want to increase police funding.

48% want to keep it the about the same.https://t.co/oSSoX21msr

— Tom Bevan (@TomBevanRCP) October 26, 2022

Abortion is regularly covered as a black "civil rights" issue.

Black men know the Black women in their lives will suffer some of the gravest consequences of Roe v. Wade’s reversal.

'For the Black man, it’s all painful, because these women mean so much to us," professor Rodney Coates told @NBCBLK.https://t.co/zfTEZ2octe

— NBC News (@NBCNews) June 30, 2022

But black Americans are less supportive of abortion rights than most Democrats, surveys show.

Black Americans are increasingly at the center of LGBT advocacy coverage, particularly on transgender issues.

Rally for Black trans lives draws enormous crowd in Brooklyn. https://t.co/J3qlK0r89X

— NBC News (@NBCNews) June 15, 2020

But a large majority of black Democrats—like Americans in general—reject progressive ideas about gender identity.

NEW: Black Democrats differ from other Democrats in their views on gender identity, transgender issues https://t.co/SZvGLH7naA pic.twitter.com/ZVd0ZF82GF

— Pew Research Center (@pewresearch) January 4, 2023

With the media so out of touch with black America, it's no wonder some leading Democrats have lost the plot, too.

Joe Biden said on Friday that black voters torn between voting for him or President Trump 'ain’t black." His comments came at the end of a testy exchange with Charlamagne Tha God on 'The Breakfast Club."https://t.co/uG4l7F4piD

— The New York Times (@nytimes) May 22, 2020

The post On Affirmative Action, Media Once Again Prove They Have No Idea What Black People Think appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

But Beau Biden's life of public service probably wouldn't have been possible without his father's helping hand, which was so evident in the early years of Beau Biden's professional life that it generated scrutiny from a local Delaware newspaper in 1996. Both Beau Biden and his father were forced to answer questions about how the young lawyer earned a spot in a hyper-competitive Justice Department program that would serve as the springboard for his political career.

Today, the story of how Beau Biden got that job provides an awkward backdrop to his father's rage in the wake of the Supreme Court's decision outlawing affirmative action in higher education: The president has responded not just by attacking the decision and the Court, but also by taking aim at so-called legacy admissions and directing his Department of Education to look at how such practices "hold back" diversity and inclusion on college campuses.

"When a poor kid—maybe the first in their family to go to college—gets the same grades and test scores as a wealthy kid whose whole family has gone to the most elite colleges in the country and whose path has been a lot easier, well, the kid who faced tougher challenges has demonstrated more grit, more determination," President Biden said.

In 1996, Beau Biden was far from the ideal applicant for a prestigious Justice Department job that saw 4,000 applicants for only 163 spots. He graduated with a 2.69 GPA from a third-rate law school, Syracuse University, and his only prior job experience was clerking for a New Hampshire judge—who, coincidentally, served as a New Hampshire co-chairman of Joe Biden's failed 1988 presidential campaign.

Still, the Wilmington, Del., News Journal reported in 1996 that Beau Biden snagged a spot in "an entry-level program for lawyers at the Justice Department." The article does not name the program, but it seems to be the Attorney General's Honors Program, described by the Justice Department as "the nation's premier entry-level federal attorney recruitment program" for "high-caliber attorneys." Beau Biden's father at the time was the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which oversees the Justice Department.

The arrangement raised eyebrows at the News Journal, whose reporters reached out to both Bidens to ask if favoritism played a role in Beau's new job. But the Bidens brushed them off. "I don't see any conflict," Joe Biden responded.

"Why would there be? The Justice Department is a gigantic department and he's qualified. At least they assumed he was," Joe Biden added.

Beau Biden struck a similar note. "Are you trying to say we should have been doctors?" he snapped at a News Journal reporter who pressed him about the fact that his brother, Hunter, was also pursuing a career in law.

After Hunter Biden passed the Connecticut bar exam, he took a job at MBNA, a Delaware-based bank. Months before Hunter Biden started working at MBNA, Joe Biden sold his home to the bank's chief marketing officer for $1.2 million—more than six times what Biden paid 20 years earlier. In 1996, Joe Biden's Republican opponent ran ads slamming the senator for his seemingly cozy relationship with the bank. The press had questions, too.

"Unfortunately, no matter where I went to work, some people would make an issue of it," Hunter Biden told the News Journal, when asked if his father helped him get the job.

With a degree from Yale Law—where he served as editor of the law review—Hunter Biden seemed qualified for the lucrative banking job. But how Hunter Biden ended up at Yale was a different story.

When Hunter Biden first applied to Yale Law School, he did so with the help of a powerful alumnus. In 1993, then-president Bill Clinton called then-Yale Law dean Guido Calabresi and urged him to admit Hunter Biden.

Hunter Biden was not initially admitted to Yale. But Calabresi, one of Clinton's earliest supporters, agreed to meet with the younger Biden, as the Chronicle of Higher Education reported in 2019. Calabresi suggested that Hunter Biden enroll in a different law school and apply for a transfer after one year.

Hunter Biden took Calabresi's advice and was accepted to Georgetown University, where Clinton had earned his undergraduate degree. After a year he applied for a transfer and was admitted to Yale Law. Shortly thereafter, Calabresi resigned his deanship to serve on the federal judiciary. The man who presided over his confirmation: then-senator Joe Biden. (Calabresi has since denied playing a role in Hunter Biden's admission to Yale Law.)

Both Hunter Biden's and Beau Biden's careers took off in the following years. The latter eventually parlayed his entry-level Justice Department position into a job as a federal prosecutor, followed by a stint as Delaware's attorney general. Beau Biden was widely held to be a shoe-in for the Delaware governor's mansion when he died from cancer in 2015.

As for Hunter, his extravagant lifestyle has been well documented for years. Before his descent into drug addiction, Hunter worked as a lobbyist and an investor, where he regularly took home seven-figure paychecks. His last-known residence was a $5.4 million home in Los Angeles.

A generation later, Joe Biden's view of the favors entitled to his own family members appears unchanged. Another poor student, Biden's granddaughter Maisy, was admitted to the University of Pennsylvania after her grandfather made a phone call to then-university president Amy Gutmann. Gutmann now serves as President Biden's ambassador to Germany.

The post Today, Joe Biden Rails Against Legacy Admissions. His Past Casts An Awkward Shadow. appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

The media began gushing over Jackson even before President Joe Biden nominated her to the Supreme Court last year, fulfilling his campaign pledge to pick a black woman for the job.

Now, the media are marveling at Jackson's stunning and brave "voice"—even if her influence on the conservative-dominated Court remains "at the margins," as the New York Times delicately puts it.

The Times: "In Her First Term, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson ‘Came to Play’":

The first Black female member of the Supreme Court wasted no time in finding her footing, asserting herself in dissents, alliances and questions from the bench.

From her first week on the Supreme Court bench in October to the final day of the term that ended last week, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson did something remarkable for a junior justice: She established herself as a distinctive voice on the court. … 

Justice Jackson is a member of a three-justice liberal minority, which means she typically does not have much power to affect the outcomes of major cases. But sometimes she may be able to make important contributions at the margins.

Washington Post: "Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Bold Debut and Independent Streak":

Jackson on Friday completed her rookie term as the first Black woman to serve on the nation’s highest court, making a forceful debut from the bench and in writing while showing signs of an independent streak. As anticipated, she was most often aligned with the court’s two other liberal justices—Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan—putting her on the losing side of high-profile, contentious decisions involving affirmative action in college admissions, gay rights and President Biden’s student loan forgiveness program.

But Jackson also demonstrated a willingness to part ways with her liberal colleagues, even when they were on the same side of an issue, to express her own vision of the law. She authored more solo dissenting opinions—three—than any of the three most recent justices to join the court did as newbies. …

Biden "may have been looking for a Black woman, but she wasn’t just any Black woman," [New York University law professor Melissa] Murray said. "She was excellent and prepared and made a critical difference in a number of cases."

Reuters: "For Ketanji Brown Jackson, a Self-Assured and Forceful U.S. Supreme Court Debut":

Boston College constitutional law expert Kent Greenfield said Jackson's presence on the bench may have helped shape those rulings in part by bringing a different life experience to the table."She's a person of heft, a person of high intellect and she's not being quiet," Greenfield said. "She's very self-aware of the role she's playing."

NBC News: "'Unabashed': Justice Jackson Marks Her First Year on the Supreme Court Unafraid To Stake Her Own Position":

Although Jackson, 52, is clearly a solid part of the liberal minority on the 6-3 conservative-majority court, her opinion in Glacier Northwest v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters illustrated how she was forthright and eager to have her voice heard, even when she was out on her own. …

Jackson made her presence felt on her first day in the Supreme Court's ornate courtroom in October, asking a series of polite but insistent questions, setting a trend that would continue throughout the term."Let me try to bring some enlightenment to it," she said on that first day, when the court was hearing a knotty case about federal authority to regulate wetlands under the Clean Water Act.

Bloomberg Law: "Justice Jackson Didn’t Win Often, But What She Said Mattered":

Opinion: Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson deftly used oral argument questions in her first term to make an impact in cases—even those she lost, writes @TonjaJacobi. https://t.co/bM1v9avMlJ

— Bloomberg Law (@BLaw) July 7, 2023

Any mention of glaring weaknesses in Jackson's decisions was almost entirely relegated to right-leaning media—even when the justice got basic facts wrong, as happened last week.

National Review: "Justice Jackson’s Abysmal Affirmative-Action Dissent"

Jackson took great umbrage at the Court’s striking down race-based college admissions in the case involving the policies of Harvard and the University of North Carolina. (She recused herself from the Harvard part of the ruling.)

Her much-praised handiwork, though, hardly qualifies as a legal opinion. It reads like a guest essay by "anti-racist" guru Ibram X. Kendi in the New York Times. 

Wall Street Journal: "Justice Jackson’s Incredible Statistic"

Even Supreme Court justices are known to be gullible. In a dissent from last week’s ruling against racial preferences in college admissions, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson enumerated purported benefits of "diversity" in education. "It saves lives," she asserts. "For high-risk Black newborns, having a Black physician more than doubles the likelihood that the baby will live."

A moment’s thought should be enough to realize that this claim is wildly implausible. Imagine if 40% of black newborns died—thousands of dead infants every week. But even so, that’s a 60% survival rate, which is mathematically impossible to double. And the actual survival rate is over 99%.

Ben Shapiro: "The best proof that affirmative action elevates the unqualified to high office are the recent dissents from Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor."

Meanwhile, the media are amplifying calls to remove the Supreme Court's other black justice, whose decades of conservative jurisprudence paved the way for many of this term's most significant rulings.

Calls to remove Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas have grown louder amid a new report detailing lavish trips he has taken with a powerful Republican donor.

Only one other justice has ever been impeached, and it was more than 200 years ago. https://t.co/N4AKwEYF4I

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) April 7, 2023

The post Irrelevant, Mistake-Prone Liberal Justice Is Supreme Court's 'Voice,' Media Say appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

The law school's office of student services, which coordinates applications to all journals including the flagship Columbia Law Review, said Sunday that journal acceptances had been postponed until the school could verify that they comport with the new, race-blind standard articulated in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard.

"In light of the Supreme Court decision on Thursday, we are working with university leadership to better understand any implications for the journal ranking process," the office told students in an email. "Because of this, journal acceptances will be delayed until we receive further clarity."

"We have an obligation," the office added, "to … ensure that our decision processes are consistent with the law."

Law journals have long used affirmative action to select student editors as well as articles for publication. The delay suggests that this widespread practice could be on the chopping block as a result of the High Court's sweeping ruling, which experts say has laid the groundwork for invalidating a host of race-based policies across academia and corporate America.

"It's almost impossible to avoid the implication that all recipients of federal funds are now subject to the same rule announced in Students for Fair Admissions," said Dan Morenoff, the executive director of the American Civil Rights Project, which filed an amicus brief in support of the group that sued Harvard. As long as a law review is part of a federally funded university, it faces "the same constraints that the 14th Amendment applies to state entities."

That could spell trouble for Columbia's journals in the event of a legal challenge. Though the Columbia Law Review is technically an independent nonprofit, students apply to it through the university's online portal, and those with questions about the review are referred to the law school's associate director of academic advising, Jordan Carr. Other journals at the law school are published "in partnership" with the university, according to their websites.

Neither Columbia Law School nor the Columbia Law Review responded to requests for comment.

Legal academia is already feeling the heat from the Supreme Court's decision. Within 24 hours of the ruling, the conservative public interest firm America First Legal sent letters to 200 law schools demanding that they scrap racial preferences not just in student admissions but also in faculty hiring and law reviews.

"We will represent victims of these policies and sue any law school that allows these illegal and discriminatory practices to continue," the letters read.

The pause at Columbia indicates that the school's journals have similar programs, as do the demographic data solicited by the Columbia Law Review. Applicants are asked about their race, gender, and sexual orientation, according to segments of application form reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon, and can also submit "other relevant information" about their "personal identity."

Even before the Supreme Court's ruling, law reviews were dealing with legal headaches over their use of racial preferences. In 2018, a Texas-based group sued the Harvard Law Review and the New York University Law Review for allegedly discriminating in the admissions process. While both lawsuits were eventually dismissed—largely on the grounds that the plaintiffs lacked standing—law reviews may struggle to fend off similar complaints going forward, Morenoff said.

The Supreme Court's new standard could pose a particular problem for the Yale Law Journal, which in 2021 released admissions data following accusations of racism from minority students. It turned out the top-ranked law review accepted white and Asian applicants at much lower rates than their black counterparts, numbers that parallel the disparities cited by the Supreme Court in its judgment against Harvard.

"It certainly sounds like the whole set of elite law journals will need to change their MO or face consequences," Morenoff said.

The post The Supreme Court's Affirmative Action Ruling Is Already Having an Impact. You Might Be Surprised Where.  appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

All that and more were mainstream media narratives last week. As usual, I’ve got the receipts.

"It's the West Coast. It's late at night..."

MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell offered an interesting defense of President Joe Biden calling Chinese president Xi Jinping a "dictator" as his secretary of state was in China trying to mitigate the damage:

"It's the West Coast. It's late at night. He's done four of these [fundraisers], plus that meeting on artificial intelligence earlier in the day, so he's had a very busy schedule."

Some journalists might worry that the leader of the free world doesn't have the mental stamina to speak at night. But not Mitchell:

Andrea Mitchell recounts a short history of illness and health scares of former presidents following news that President Biden has tested positive for Covid-19, adding, "it's very important in the modern age for presidents to be as transparent as possible" https://t.co/Oh0cOuxvx1 pic.twitter.com/SIGCQBkSTJ

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) July 22, 2022

WATCH: President Biden makes jokes about his age, Fox News, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Ron DeSantis, Trump's legal troubles, and more at this year's White House Correspondent's Dinner. https://t.co/bo1CwTNaVb pic.twitter.com/FqYYtwfkbc

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) April 30, 2023

"Sleep apnea is a common disorder..."

The media finally found something about Biden's health they want to talk about: his sleep apnea. From the New York Times:

President Biden has begun using a CPAP machine in recent weeks to help deal with sleep apnea, a common disorder in which one’s breathing is interrupted as one sleeps, White House officials said Wednesday. When Mr. Biden left the White House on Wednesday morning for a speech in Chicago, he had indentations across both sides of his face from having worn the device, known as a continuous positive airway pressure machine. "Since 2008, the president has disclosed his history with sleep apnea in thorough medical reports," said Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman. "He used a CPAP machine last night, which is common for people with that history."

The media jumped all over this story, with reports from CNN, Reuters, the Associated Press, NPR, and beyond. Bloomberg's Jennifer Jacobs got the original "scoop":

Scoop: Biden has begun using a CPAP machine, per sources. The device is to treat longstanding sleep apnea, one of the people said. As Biden departed the White House this morning for Chicago, indentations from the CPAP straps could be seen on his face. Story by @jendeben and me. pic.twitter.com/U4Chkp16Pq

— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) June 28, 2023

Just don't ask about his mental well-being:

• CNN: "Republicans keep trying to make Biden’s mental capacity an issue":

During the course of the 2020 campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly tried to make Joe Biden’s mental state a major issue....

The Point: This is the sort of gross, lowest-common-denominator politics that drive people away from public life. If Republicans have some sort of proof that Biden is declining, they should bring it forward. If they don’t, they should stop doing what they’re doing. Immediately.

"...all but ensuring that elite institutions become whiter..."

The media melted down in response to the news that the Supreme Court had struck down the use of racial affirmative action in college admissions. The New York Times had a response that seemed... pretty racist.

Breaking News: The Supreme Court rejected affirmative action at Harvard and UNC. The major ruling curtails race-conscious college admissions in the U.S., all but ensuring that elite institutions become whiter and more Asian and less Black and Latino.https://t.co/SlMCRldkvN pic.twitter.com/flnORE7sHa

— The New York Times (@nytimes) June 29, 2023

To help make the ruling relatable, the Times caught up with some prospective students touring Harvard University:

The teenagers seeking shade as their tour groups crisscrossed leafy Harvard Yard on Thursday knew that they would be among the first students to feel the effect of the Supreme Court’s ruling on race-based admissions when they applied to colleges.

What they didn’t know was exactly how it would affect their chances. But many high school students, visiting Harvard University and beyond, said they were concerned to see long-established admissions practices giving way to something new and unfamiliar.

Suffer the (wealthy, privileged) children!

"It's the story leading the broadcast evening news..."

The media are outraged that the submersible that exploded looking for the Titanic got more attention than a shipwreck that killed dozens of migrants. CNN media critic Oliver Darcy explains:

But questions have also been raised about whether the press is going overboard focusing on the story. Is the high volume of coverage and breathless nature of it warranted? Should a missing tourism vessel for the ultra-wealthy take precedence over other consequential stories happening around the world?...

Meanwhile, as the furious coverage of the missing vessel entered its third day, growing more feverish with time, critics pointed out that other tragic maritime accidents have received far less attention from the press.

"The media obsession with the Titanic submersible is in contrast with the relative meagre coverage of the drownings in the Mediterranean Sea," the Irish journalist Vincent Browne pointed out on Wednesday, referring to the boats carrying scores of migrants that have sunk in recent months in a desperate attempt to reach Europe.Just last week, Pakistani authorities said that more than 300 people were killed when a fishing boat packed with people sunk off the coast of Greece. Ylva Johansson, the European Union commissioner for home affairs, described the horrific incident as perhaps "the worst tragedy ever" in the Mediterranean Sea. And yet, the disaster did not inspire a level of coverage close to what major news organizations have devoted to the ocean submersible.

Darcy's urging fell on deaf ears... at least at CNN, where over a week later, the submersible is still front-page news.

The Greek migrant crisis? Not so much.

"One of many provocative expressions used to regain control of slurs against LGBTQ people."

The media's bizarre Pride coverage reached a peak when NBC News excused marchers' chants of "we're coming for your children" as some kind of cheeky inside joke:

Over the weekend, a short video circulated widely on social media of an unidentified person at a New York City march during Pride festivities saying, "We’re coming for your children."...To conservative pundits, activists and lawmakers, the video confirmed the allegations they’ve levied in recent years that the LGBTQ community is "grooming" children. But to Brian Griffin, the original organizer of the NYC Drag March, if that’s the worst they heard, it’s only because he wasn’t there this year. Griffin said he chanted obscene things in the past, like "Kill, kill, kill, we’re coming to kill the mayor," and joked about pubic hair and sex toys during marches. People at the Drag March regularly sing "God is a lesbian."...

The "coming for your children" chant has been used for years at Pride events, according to longtime march attendees and gay rights activists, who said it’s one of many provocative expressions used to regain control of slurs against LGBTQ people.

The real victims here, to hear NBC News tell it, are the Pride parade attendees.

Conservative politicians and pundits have increasingly referred to advocates for LGBTQ rights as "groomers," associating people who oppose laws that restrict drag performances or classroom discussions of gender identity with pedophiles. The charge is an echo of a decades-old trope anti-gay activists have used to paint the community as a threat to the country’s youths, an allegation that some advocates say endangers LGBTQ people. And the intense reaction to the video has scared some attendees, who insist the quip has been taken out of context. "It’s really scary to us," said Fussy Lo Mein, a drag performer and activist who was at this year’s march and declined to give their real name because of safety concerns. "It doesn’t represent everybody — it represents that individual. I thought it was a dumb idea, and I started chanting on top of it with alternate verses."

"An I.R.S. investigator’s testimony ... is at odds with the version laid out by Attorney General Merrick Garland."

The New York Times buried an important detail about an IRS whistleblower who worked on the Hunter Biden investigation deep in a recent piece, as the Washington Free Beacon's Chuck Ross caught:

NYT buries in the 21st paragraph that it has an independent source who confirms the two IRS whistleblowers' claim that David Weiss said he was blocked from bringing charges against Hunter Biden in California. https://t.co/nH55AVQAJq pic.twitter.com/wSPKT4aiMG

— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) June 27, 2023

Why would the Times take so long to mention that they had corroborated the allegations? Well, one possible theory:

In providing accounts of internal discussions at odds with Mr. Garland’s testimony, Mr. Shapley gave Republicans a fresh opening to raise questions about the case and to cast doubt on the Justice Department’s repeated statements that Mr. Weiss had complete control of the investigation with no political interference.

That’s enough media for now. See you next week.

The post Drew's Receipts: Media Failures of the Week, July 1 appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Here are the 10 must-read quotes from the justices on the case.

1. Chief Justice John Roberts: "Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it."

2. Justice Clarence Thomas: "Justice Jackson would replace the second Founders’ vision with an organizing principle based on race. In fact, on her view, almost all of life’s outcomes may be unhesitatingly ascribed to race. ... This lore is not and has never been true. Even in the segregated South where I grew up, individuals were not the sum of their skin color."

3. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson: "With let-them-eat-cake obliviousness, today, the majority pulls the ripcord and announces 'colorblindness for all' by legal fiat. But deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life. And having so detached itself from this country’s actual past and present experiences, the Court has now been lured into interfering with the crucial work that UNC and other institutions of higher learning are doing to solve America’s real-world problems."

4. Justice Neil Gorsuch: "The words of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 are not like mood rings; they do not change their message from one moment to the next."

5. Thomas: "Justice Sotomayor apparently believes that race-conscious admission programs can somehow increase the chances that members of certain races (blacks and Hispanics) are admitted without decreasing the chances of admission for members of other races (Asians). This simply defies mathematics."

6. Jackson: "For high-risk Black newborns, having a Black physician more than doubles the likelihood that the baby will live, and not die." FACT CHECK: FALSE

7. Roberts: "While the dissent would certainly not permit university programs that discriminated against black and Latino applicants, it is perfectly willing to let the programs here continue. In its view, this Court is supposed to tell state actors when they have picked the right races to benefit."

8. Thomas: "After siloing us all into racial castes and pitting those castes against each other, the dissent somehow believes that we will be able—at some undefined point—to 'march forward together' into some utopian vision."

9. Thomas: "Justice Jackson uses her broad observations about statistical relationships between race and select measures of health, wealth, and well-being to label all blacks as victims. Her desire to do so is unfathomable to me. ... it is an insult to individual achievement and cancerous to young minds seeking to push through barriers, rather than consign themselves to permanent victimhood."

10. Thomas: "While I am painfully aware of the social and economic ravages which have befallen my race and all who suffer discrimination, I hold out enduring hope that this country will live up to its principles so clearly enunciated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States: that all men are created equal, are equal citizens, and must be treated equally before the law."

The post Top 10 Quotes from the Supreme Court’s Affirmative Action Decision appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

The timing of the decision is meaningful, coming days before the July 4th holiday: The Court’s 6-3 ruling vindicates the country’s founding principles and the idea of equal treatment enshrined in the 14th Amendment.

The most important aspect of the ruling, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, is the affirmation that the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees to all citizens the equal protection of the law, means that the same law applies in the same way to every person—without regard to race. The Court rejected the so-called antisubordination view, which holds that the Fourteenth Amendment forbids only laws that hurt minorities, not those that help them—that is, that different treatment under the same law is permissible in light of historical inequities.

They made clear that the law guarantees equality of opportunity, not outcome. Justice Clarence Thomas, in his concurrence, addressed this point powerfully. Advocates of the 14th Amendment, he wrote, "explicitly clarified that the equality sought by the law was not one in which all men shall be ‘six feet high’; rather, it strove to ensure that freedmen enjoy ‘equal rights before the law’ such that ‘each man shall have the right to pursue in his own way life, liberty, and happiness.’"

For decades, we have heard from college administrators that they only employed a little bit of racial discrimination—in cases of two equally qualified applicants, in borderline cases, and so on. If the data unearthed in the litigation wasn’t damning enough, the Ivy League’s collective meltdown over the ruling was itself an embarrassing refutation of those claims. Harvard immediately encouraged applicants to write about their race in their personal essays, while Princeton’s execrable Christopher Eisgruber said the Court had "significantly" narrowed the school’s discretion to admit applicants.

Those responses demonstrate how rampant and pervasive the discrimination in university admissions has been, and how salutary Thursday’s verdict might be. Three cheers.

But now comes the hard part. It is clear from the response of President Biden and the many universities that have already spoken out that they plan to use every means at their disposal to circumvent the law and impose a new regime of racial discrimination relying on proxies for race. A new battle begins today, but the forces of equality have won an important victory over the forces of equity—we can enjoy that for a moment, at least.

The post The Colorblind Constitution Prevails appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

While the Court rejected affirmative action, Harvard president Lawrence S. Bacow noted that it also "ruled that colleges and universities may consider in admissions decisions ‘an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.’"

"We will certainly comply with the Court’s decision," Bacow and other Harvard administrators wrote in a Thursday statement.

Harvard president-elect Claudine Gay released a video statement saying that the school was still "working to understand this decision and its implications for our policies."

"While we don’t have all the answers about what’s next, we do know that we will move forward together," she said.

The essays could provide a loophole for advocates of race-based admissions, some of whom have vowed to fight the ruling. In a speech on Thursday, President Joe Biden said "we can’t let this decision be the last word" on affirmative action, and said he would direct the Department of Education to come up with alternatives to ensure racial diversity on college campuses.

But the move could also violate the Court’s ruling, which held that college admissions essays could not be used directly as a tool to continue race-based admissions.

Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote the majority opinion, said that while nothing prohibits schools from considering essays that discuss the race of the applicant, "universities may not simply establish through application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today."

"A benefit to a student who overcame racial discrimination, for example, must be tied to that student’s courage and determination," Roberts wrote. "In other words, the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race."

Bacow's full statement to the Harvard community can be read below.

Dear Members of the Harvard Community,

Today, the Supreme Court delivered its decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College. The Court held that Harvard College’s admissions system does not comply with the principles of the equal protection clause embodied in Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. The Court also ruled that colleges and universities may consider in admissions decisions "an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise." We will certainly comply with the Court’s decision.

We write today to reaffirm the fundamental principle that deep and transformative teaching, learning, and research depend upon a community comprising people of many backgrounds, perspectives, and lived experiences. That principle is as true and important today as it was yesterday. So too are the abiding values that have enabled us—and every great educational institution—to pursue the high calling of educating creative thinkers and bold leaders, of deepening human knowledge, and of promoting progress, justice, and human flourishing.

We affirm that:

Because the teaching, learning, research, and creativity that bring progress and change require debate and disagreement, diversity and difference are essential to academic excellence.

To prepare leaders for a complex world, Harvard must admit and educate a student body whose members reflect, and have lived, multiple facets of human experience. No part of what makes us who we are could ever be irrelevant.

Harvard must always be a place of opportunity, a place whose doors remain open to those to whom they had long been closed, a place where many will have the chance to live dreams their parents or grandparents could not have dreamed.

For almost a decade, Harvard has vigorously defended an admissions system that, as two federal courts ruled, fully complied with longstanding precedent. In the weeks and months ahead, drawing on the talent and expertise of our Harvard community, we will determine how to preserve, consistent with the Court’s new precedent, our essential values.

The heart of our extraordinary institution is its people. Harvard will continue to be a vibrant community whose members come from all walks of life, all over the world. To our students, faculty, staff, researchers, and alumni—past, present, and future—who call Harvard your home, please know that you are, and always will be, Harvard. Your remarkable contributions to our community and the world drive Harvard’s distinction. Nothing today has changed that.

Sincerely,

Lawrence S. Bacow

President, Harvard University

Alan M. Garber

Provost, Harvard University

Meredith Weenick

Executive Vice President, Harvard University

Claudine Gay

Dean, Faculty of Arts and Sciences

President-elect, Harvard University

Tomiko Brown-Nagin

Dean, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study

Nancy Coleman

Dean, Division of Continuing Education and University Extension

George Q. Daley

Dean, Harvard Medical School

Srikant Datar

Dean, Harvard Business School

Emma Dench

Dean, Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Francis J. Doyle III

Dean, Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences

Douglas Elmendorf

Dean, Harvard Kennedy School of Government

William V. Giannobile

Dean, Harvard School of Dental Medicine

David N. Hempton

Dean, Harvard Divinity School

Rakesh Khurana

Dean, Harvard College

Bridget Terry Long

Dean, Harvard Graduate School of Education

John F. Manning

Dean, Harvard Law School

Sarah M. Whiting

Dean, Graduate School of Design

Michelle A. Williams

Dean, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

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"It is basically saying that whatever caste system we have right now—that should stay intact," said American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten in a conversation with National Education Association president Becky Pringle. Weingarten said the decision is "as bad as Dobbs," the Supreme Court's ruling last year that there was no constitutional right to abortion.

"It is 2023, and we are having Supreme Court decisions that are taking us further backwards in the progress that we've made," Pringle said.

The union leaders' reactions come after the Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision, on Thursday struck down the use of race-based affirmative action in college admissions. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, wrote that "eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it." Weingarten and Pringle echoed dissents from Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Both unions filed amicus briefs urging the Court to allow colleges to continue using race as a factor in college admissions. With more than three million members, the National Education Association is the largest teachers' union in the country, followed by American Federation of Teachers with 1.7 million members, according to the organizations.

Angela Morabito, a spokeswoman for the Defense of Freedom Institute and former Education Department press secretary, told the Washington Free Beacon that union leaders should be supporting the Supreme Court's decision.

"If teachers' union bosses truly wanted what's best for students, they would be celebrating the end of race-based discrimination in college admissions," Morabito said. "The best thing Randi Weingarten and Becky Pringle could do to help minority students is to stop trapping them in failing government-assigned schools and get out of the way of school choice programs that students need and parents deserve."

During a Thursday live-streamed conversation, Weingarten described what she would say in class if she were a civics teacher.

"If I was teaching this decision tomorrow in class, what I would be doing is I would be actually pulling together … the arc of the moral universe," said Weingarten, "what we have tried to do from the Civil War, the end of the Civil War, to the Civil Rights Movement and how this just throws a wrench into all that progress."

Weingarten questioned whether she would be allowed to teach about the decision if she were a teacher in Florida because of the state's "restrictions on the teaching of honest history."

"I might be really in trouble in teaching about this decision—in trouble in teaching about the dissents of this decision," Weingarten said.

Florida's "Stop WOKE Act," signed last year by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R.), explicitly requires the teaching of the "history of African Americans," including "the enslavement experience, abolition, and the contributions of African Americans to society."

The Court's opinion was part of the continuing backlash to former president Barack Obama's election, Pringle said.

"We knew when President Obama was elected there was going to be a backlash—we knew that," Pringle said. "I don't think we quite grasped the depth of it until we started to see that the highest court in the land is totally rejecting the notions, the ideals, on which this country was founded."

Weingarten cited Alexis de Tocqueville's description of America, saying Tocqueville recognized the country's "diversity and how that made us stronger."

"We're going back to 'Is America a salad bowl, a melting pot?'" Weingarten said. "Or is it what this decision is saying, which is we can all be in our separate fiefdoms and tribes and never any one of us meet?"

Weingarten said the Court's majority opinion advocated ignorance of racial inequities in today's America.

"What this decision does is basically ignore the original sin of slavery and the effects of that original sin and pretends that there is no longer an effect to it," Weingarten said. "It basically says that equal protection means that whatever the dominant power play is right now, that's what should be happening in America."

Roberts's opinion and other justices' concurrences presented a different view of American history and the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in his concurrence that the "great failure of this country was slavery and its progeny" but presented an optimistic view of the nation's future.

"While I am painfully aware of the social and economic ravages which have befallen my race and all who suffer discrimination," Thomas wrote, "I hold out enduring hope that this country will live up to its principles so clearly enunciated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States: that all men are created equal, are equal citizens, and must be treated equally before the law."

The post 'As Bad as Dobbs': Randi Weingarten Laments End of Affirmative Action appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

• The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that race-based affirmative action policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution.

• Warren argued that the "extremist" Court's decision, supported by the vast majority of Americans, "rolled back the march toward racial justice, and narrowed educational opportunity for all."

Crucial context: Warren, a former Harvard professor sometimes referred to as "Pocahontas," repeatedly claimed to be of Native American ancestry throughout her career in academia. She is roughly 0.1 percent Native American, according to the results of a DNA test the senator released in 2018 ahead of her failed presidential run.

• From a Fordham Law Review article published in 1997: "Harvard Law School hired its first woman of color, Elizabeth Warren, in 1995."

Bottom line: The Court's decision is bad news for white people who lie about their race to get ahead. People like Elizabeth Warren.

Go deeper: Elizabeth Warren Donor Arrested for Dog Sex

The post Harvard Law School's 'First Woman of Color' Cries (Like Wolf to Blue Corn Moon) After Supreme Court Strikes Down Affirmative Action appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Some of their reactions were kind of racist:

Breaking News: The Supreme Court rejected affirmative action at Harvard and UNC. The major ruling curtails race-conscious college admissions in the U.S., all but ensuring that elite institutions become whiter and more Asian and less Black and Latino.https://t.co/SlMCRldkvN pic.twitter.com/flnORE7sHa

— The New York Times (@nytimes) June 29, 2023

Some lamented the end of diversity as we know it:

BREAKING: @NBCNews Special Report: Supreme Court bars affirmative action in college admissions in a major blow to diversity efforts. https://t.co/8ohLwlWBGg https://t.co/Eqrn84qZri

— NBC News (@NBCNews) June 29, 2023

.@majorcbs lists eight states where using race as a factor in college admissions has been banned.

"There are real world examples of where if you take race out of the equation... it is very hard to reach these goals of diversity that colleges... have set for themselves" pic.twitter.com/wIva8YflIW

— CBS News (@CBSNews) June 29, 2023

• NBC News: "Supreme Court Strikes Down College Affirmative Action Programs":

The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down affirmative action programs at the University of North Carolina and Harvard in a major victory for conservative activists, ending the systematic consideration of race in the admissions process....

The decision was condemned by liberals who argue that affirmative action is a key tool for remedying historic race discrimination....

The court’s decision is a major blow to the most selective universities that say some consideration of race is vital in ensuring they have diverse student bodies.

The small number of schools that have extremely competitive admissions programs are the most affected. They have predicted that rulings against the colleges will lead to a significant drop in the enrollment of minority students and require admissions officers to experiment with new race neutral plans intended to counteract the impact.

The media had been preparing for this ruling for weeks:

• Politico: "How the Supreme Court’s Decision on Affirmative Action May Change the Future of College":

The Supreme Court seems destined to end its term with a big rollback of the tool colleges employ to boost racial diversity on their campuses.

What’s unclear is how schools fashion race-neutral workarounds to fill that gap — or if the ruling pushes colleges to retreat on a goal that’s been a priority for decades.

• NBC News: "Looming Supreme Court Affirmative Action Ruling Has Elite Colleges on Edge":

Late June is normally a peaceful time on college campuses. Not this year.

On Zoom calls, in working groups and in text chains, officials at elite schools are anxiously preparing. Within days, the Supreme Court could bar them from considering race as a factor in the admissions process....

Schools can’t use quotas or set-asides, the court has ruled, but once students check boxes that indicate their race or ethnicity, those part of their identities can be taken into account. Until now, the court’s proffered justification has been that certain "educational benefits" flow from a diverse student body, but a majority of justices have also ruled that lower courts must scrutinize whether schools have tried "race-neutral" alternatives.

For nearly as long as affirmative action has existed, it has had its conservative detractors on the court. The most vocal has been Justice Clarence Thomas, whose former law clerks are now arguing the cases against the schools that the court is about to decide....

The problem, schools say, is the alternatives to race simply don’t produce the same results. Femi Ogundele, the dean of undergraduate admissions at the University of California, Berkeley, says he has seen that firsthand. California is one of nine states that banned the use of affirmative action for public universities. In the immediate aftermath, selective schools in the state had a 50% decline in Black and Latino students admitted. Those numbers have never rebounded.

• Associated Press: "The Supreme Court’s Biggest Decisions Are Coming. Here’s What They Could Say.":

The survival of affirmative action in higher education is the subject of two related cases, one involving Harvard and the other the University of North Carolina. The Supreme Court has previously approved of the use of affirmative action in higher education in decisions reaching back to 1978. But the justices’ decision to take the cases suggested a willingness to revisit those rulings. And when the high court heard arguments in the cases in late October, all six conservative justices on the court expressed doubts about the practice.

The Biden administration has said that getting rid of race-conscious college admissions would have a "destabilizing" effect that would cause the ranks of Black and Latino students to plummet at the nation’s most selective schools.

The press has already started worrying about what the decision could mean for the future of corporate racism:

Now that the Supreme Court has struck down the use of race-conscious admissions at universities, conservative groups say that the private sector should get ready for further challenges to their diversity, equity and inclusion — or DEI — initiatives. https://t.co/UksvWJvBdi

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) June 29, 2023

Ruling on college admissions could fuel attacks on corporations' diversity efforts https://t.co/z5RJzPUiuV

— POLITICO (@politico) June 29, 2023

The post Media Not Happy About High Court's Affirmative Action Ruling appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

"This is not a normal Court," Biden stated Thursday in response to a reporter who asked if he thought the justices had gone "rogue."

Biden's comments came after he gave a speech criticizing the Supreme Court's ruling. In the case, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the Court ruled that colleges and universities can no longer use race-based admissions programs, with Chief Justice John Roberts writing that racial admissions preferences "cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause." The vast majority of Americans, including around 60 percent of Democrats, agree, according to a New York Times poll.

The reporter in her question referenced the Congressional Black Caucus's statement on the ruling, which said the Court "has thrown into question its own legitimacy."

Biden's statement casting doubt on the Court's integrity comes after numerous outlets and academics said that former president Donald Trump threatened democracy and the rule of law in the wake of his indictment.

While Biden has touted his support for the rule of law, he is facing his own legal challenges. In recent days, the president angrily denied knowing of his son Hunter's threatening 2017 texts to a Chinese businessman. Hunter Biden claimed that he was with his father when he wrote the texts, the Washington Free Beacon reported. Two of Hunter Biden's former business partners have said the president was directly involved in negotiations with the Chinese businessman's company.

The post WATCH: Biden Trashes SCOTUS After Affirmative Action Decision appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

• The 6-3 opinion argued that race-based admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina run afoul of the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution because they "unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points."

Why it matters: Some have argued the Supreme Court faces a "crisis of legitimacy" because its opinions do not always reflect the views of the American public. By this standard, the Court's decision to strike down race-based affirmative action is laudably legitimate.

• The vast majority of Americans, including a majority of Democrats, oppose race-based affirmative action in university admissions, polls show.

By the numbers: More than two-thirds of Americans say colleges and universities should not use race as a factor in admission, according to the New York Times. Opposition to affirmative action is slightly higher when respondents are asked about public universities funded by taxpayers.

• Americans oppose affirmative action at public colleges and universities by an overwhelming margin of 74 percent to 26 percent.

• A solid majority of Democrats agree: Sixty percent said they oppose race-based admissions at public universities, while 58 percent said the same about private universities.

What they're saying: "The opinion today will serve only to highlight the Court's own impotence in the face of an America whose cries for equality resound," Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a dissenting opinion.

• Alas, the American public appears to have a different definition of "equality."

Bottom line: The Supreme Court's legitimate decision to end race-based affirmative action is an accurate reflection of the American public's views. Congratulations!

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In a 6-3 opinion authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, a longtime opponent of racial preferences, the court ruled that the admissions programs at Harvard and University of North Carolina "cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause" because they "lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points."

In a concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that "the Constitution continues to embody a simple truth: Two discriminatory wrongs cannot make a right" and racial preferences "appear to be leading to a world in which everyone is defined by their skin color, demanding ever-increasing entitlements and preferences on that basis."

Roberts was also joined by Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett.

In a dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the Court’s ruling "rolls back decades of precedent and momentous progress" and "cements a superficial rule of colorblindness as a constitutional principle in an endemically segregated society where race has always mattered and continues to matter."

The decision is a major victory for opponents of affirmative action, including Students for Fair Admissions, the advocacy group that brought the cases against Harvard and University of North Carolina. The ruling will also force many universities that use race as an admissions criteria to find new recruitment strategies.

Students for Fair Admissions argued that Harvard, in its quest for racial diversity, violated the Civil Rights Act by holding Asian applicants to higher admissions standards than other racial and ethnic groups. Students for Fair Admissions also claimed that the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s race-based admissions policies were at odds with the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

The decision overturns the 45-year-old Supreme Court decision in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, which held that colleges could use race as one of multiple factors for admission.

Supporters of affirmative action—including the Biden administration, which had urged the Supreme Court not to take the case—argued that overturning that decision would be a massive setback for campus diversity.

The Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law wrote in a pro-Harvard amicus brief that the university does not "treat race as the defining feature of an application" and said race-conscious admissions are necessary to ensure that students of all races are well-represented on campuses. The group also claimed that outlawing the practice would cause the share of black students admitted to plummet from 14 percent to 6 percent.

The ruling will likely force many schools across the country to revamp their recruitment and application processes. In California, where affirmative action was banned in 1995, the percentage of black and Latino students at the University of California at Los Angeles fell by around 50 percent immediately following the prohibition. Since then, the university has managed to recruit an even higher percentage of black and Latino students than before the ban, without using race as an admissions factor.

The last time the Court revisited the Bakke decision on affirmative action was in the 2003 case Grutter v. Bollinger. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who wrote the majority opinion upholding Bakke at that time, argued that affirmative action should be a temporary measure and "expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today."

The post High Court Strikes Down Racial Preferences In College Admissions appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

The Pew Research survey, published Thursday, found that 76 percent of Asian Americans believe colleges should not consider race or ethnicity when making admissions decisions.

Just over half of Asian Americans who have heard of affirmative action have a favorable view of it, while only 19 percent say it is a bad thing, per the poll. When asked directly about the use of race to screen college applicants, however, only 21 percent say they are in favor.

The poll results come as the Supreme Court is preparing to rule on two affirmative action challenges that the group Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) brought against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina. In oral arguments, the majority-conservative Court appeared ready to overturn previous rulings that permit colleges to use race as a factor in admissions.

SFFA has argued that Harvard in its admissions process specifically discriminated against Asian Americans, who as a group are academic overachievers.

The Pew results are in line with other surveys. A 2022 Washington Post poll found that 65 percent of Asian Americans support banning colleges and universities from considering race, along with 63 percent of all U.S. adults.

"Overall, majorities of Asian adults across gender, age, education, and origin groups say race or ethnicity should not factor into college admissions," the Pew survey states. Clear majorities across the political spectrum opposed race-based college admissions, with 90 percent of Asian Republicans saying race should not be a factor, along with 69 percent of Asian Democrats.

According to the Pew survey, 87 percent of respondents say that high school grades should be considered. Seventy-one percent say standardized test scores and community service should play roles in admissions decisions.

Asian-American views on the issue reflect the views of Americans in general. Eighty-two percent of U.S. adults believe colleges should not consider race in admissions decisions, the survey found.

The post Asian Americans Oppose Race-Based College Admissions, Pew Survey Finds appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

McLean Hospital, which describes itself as the "largest psychiatric teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School," has since 2021 hosted a paid research program for "Black, Indigenous, and underrepresented people of color," according to the hospital’s website. The 10-week internship offers participants a $7,000 stipend and places them in prestigious labs.

The internship may ramp up legal scrutiny on America’s oldest Ivy, which, alongside the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, is battling a high-profile lawsuit from Students for Fair Admissions, a nonprofit opposed to affirmative action.

That scrutiny hasn’t stopped either school from promoting discriminatory programs: UNC Chapel Hill has at least five scholarships, fellowships, and other initiatives that are available only to minorities; a sixth initiative, exclusively for "BIPOC" students, was made available to all races following a discrimination complaint.

Lawyers say that these programs violate civil rights law and demonstrate just how committed universities are to racial preferences.

"UNC and Harvard have been doubling down on Ibram Kendi-style ‘you have to be racist to be anti-racist’ programming," said Ilya Shapiro, the director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute. "Not only are these clear-cut legal violations, but it’s not a good look as the Supreme Court scrutinizes the use of racial preferences in admissions."

The McLean internship likely violates the Civil Rights Act of 1866—now codified as section 1981 in the United States legal code—which bans race discrimination in contracting, according to Jonathan Berry, a partner at Boyden Gray & Associates, and Dan Morenoff, the executive director of the American Civil Rights Project. It may also violate Title VI, which bans race discrimination by federally funded entities, Morenoff said.

Though Harvard states on its website that it "does not own or operate" its teaching hospitals, it does appear to be operating this program. The internship’s director, Oluwarotimi Folorunso, and its principal investigator, Elena Chartoff, both hold posts at Harvard Medical School, and McLean's website directs questions about the program to a Harvard.edu email address.

"At a minimum, it looks like Harvard is facilitating McLean's race-based system," Berry said. The fact that Harvard employees run the program, he added, "increases the likelihood Harvard would be liable alongside McLean" in the event of a lawsuit.

Harvard and McLean did not respond to requests for comment.

Though universities are currently allowed to use race as a "plus factor" in admissions, that could soon change. Students for Fair Admissions is asking the Supreme Court to outlaw affirmative action entirely, arguing that it violates Title VI and—when done by public universities—the 14th Amendment as well.

The Court’s conservative justices have repeatedly expressed sympathy for that argument. A ruling in the case, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, is expected later this year.

The post This Prestigious Harvard Fellowship Bans White Applicants appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

The initiatives include three scholarships that are available only to black students, as well as a "Well-Being Initiative for Women Faculty of Color" available only to "BIPOC" women, per the program's website. In August 2022, the university also hosted a "BIPOC New Student Meet and Greet" at its school of public health, which touted the event as an example of "inclusive excellence."

The complaint, filed late last month by the economist Mark Perry with the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights, argues that these programs violate Title VI and Title IX, the laws that prohibit race- and sex-based discrimination at federally funded institutions. It could spell additional legal headaches for the embattled university, which is awaiting a verdict from the Supreme Court on its affirmative action program.

The scholarship programs may prove a particular liability. Though private donors can offer scholarships based on race, courts have struck down these programs when they are administered by public schools. In a 1994 case, Podberesky v. Kirwan, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a black-only scholarship at the University of Maryland was unconstitutional. That precedent is binding on UNC Chapel Hill, which is also in the Fourth Circuit.

UNC general counsel Charles Marshall did not respond to a request for comment.

Beyond the brazen embrace of racial preferences, UNC's programs highlight the hyper-therapeutic ethos that has taken hold of academia. The Well-Being Initiative for Women Faculty of Color initiative, sponsored by UNC Chapel Hill's pharmacy department, includes conferences on "selfcare," "goal setting," and "authenticity."  Pitched to professors at "predominantly white institutions," the program will support the "professional success" of "25 BIPOC women" through "wellness and well-being."

An earlier civil rights complaint, also filed by Perry, concerned the university's Fellowship for Exploring Research in Nutrition, which accepted applications exclusively from "BIPOC" students. UNC Chapel Hill scrubbed those criteria 24 hours after Perry filed the complaint—and after a Washington Free Beacon report shed light on it—stating that students of all "underrepresented" backgrounds could apply.

The complaints come as the university is fending off a high-profile lawsuit from Students for Fair Admissions, a nonprofit opposed to affirmative action. Along with Harvard University, also a defendant in the case, UNC Chapel Hill has argued that its race-conscious admissions policies do not violate the Constitution or anti-discrimination law.

The Supreme Court's conservative majority seems poised to reject that argument: At oral arguments in October, Justice Clarence Thomas likened affirmative action to segregation.

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The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill—whose affirmative action program, along with that of Harvard University, is under review by the Supreme Court—sponsors the Fellowship for Exploring Research in Nutrition, which accepts applications exclusively from students who are "Black, Indigenous, or People of Color (BIPOC)," according to the program's website. Fellows earn thousands of dollars, live in on-campus apartments paid for by the university, and receive generous mentorship opportunities, including letters of recommendation.

"The field of nutrition is overwhelmingly comprised of white researchers," an ad for the fellowship states. "Increased BIPOC representation in food policy research is critical for developing effective, equitable, comprehensive, and culturally competent policies that address nutrition-related health disparities."

On Monday, the economist Mark Perry filed a complaint about the fellowship with the District of Columbia's Office of Civil Rights. The complaint, which was reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon, asks the office to investigate the university for "race-based discrimination."

UNC Chapel Hill did not respond to a request for comment.

The program, which UNC Chapel Hill announced last week on its website, comes as UNC Chapel Hill and Harvard await a verdict from the Supreme Court over a lawsuit from Students for Fair Admissions, a nonprofit opposed to affirmative action. The group argues that both schools are violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bans racial discrimination by the recipients of federal funds, and that UNC Chapel Hill, as a public university, is also violating the 14th Amendment, which bans racial discrimination by the government.

At oral arguments for the case in October, the Supreme Court's conservative justices seemed receptive to that argument. The nutrition fellowship—and white students' explicit exclusion from it—undercuts the school's claim that it does not discriminate based on race, though in this case the discrimination is occurring outside of the school's admissions office.

"It is indisputable this UNC student research program is racially exclusive and therefore is in violation of our nation's civil rights laws," said Edward Blum, the founder of Students for Fair Admissions. The program is similar to other minority-only fellowships, such as Pfizer's Breakthrough Fellowship, that have been hit with discrimination lawsuits in the past year.

If Students for Fair Admissions wins the case, colleges and universities will no longer be allowed to use race as a factor in admissions. Ryan Park, the solicitor general for North Carolina, told the Supreme Court that such an outcome would deny students "the educational benefits" of diversity. That led to a tense exchange in which Justice Clarence Thomas, who grew up in a segregated town in Georgia, pressed Park to explain what he meant.

"I guess I don't put much stock in that" argument, Thomas interjected, "because I've heard similar arguments in favor of segregation too."

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