EXCLUSIVE: Secret Service Investigated Twitter User’s ‘Unusual Interest’ in Biden Family

Colin Aamot /

The Secret Service opened a formal investigation of a Maine man whose social media posts showed “unusual interest” in President Joe Biden’s family, although he apparently didn’t make a serious threat of violence, according to the agency’s response to requests filed under the Freedom of Information Act by The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project.

A senior Secret Service agent, John Mazza, conducted the investigation of the Twitter user in summer 2022, documents released to the Oversight Project show. (The Heritage Foundation, home to the Oversight Project, launched The Daily Signal in 2014.)

In July 2022, about 18 months after Biden became president, a regional Secret Service office requested that agents conduct a “preliminary protective intelligence investigation” targeting the Maine man, an Army veteran, for one or more posts on Twitter.

The reason? This person, whose identity was still unknown to the Secret Service at the time, “posted statements of unusual interest towards the Biden Family,” according to the documents obtained by Heritage’s Oversight Project:

What appears to have gotten the Secret Service’s attention? One of the man’s posts suggested, apparently jokingly, that he planned to “invade the White House and get pics of Biden in his ‘Depends,’” referring to a brand of adult diaper.

By contrast, some social media users who despise former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee to take on Biden in a rematch in November, routinely post messages about assaulting or assassinating him. Biden, a Democrat, has talked in public about wanting to rough up Trump.

The Daily Signal acquired the man’s name through the Oversight Project but isn’t publishing it because the man, who lives in a small town on the coast of Maine, was not charged with a crime by the Secret Service. In addition, attempts to reach him were unsuccessful and he hasn’t agreed to speak publicly about being investigated. 

In beginning the investigation in August 2022, the Secret Service inaccurately suggested that the man was focused on material from what the agency called the “iCloud hack” of presidential son Hunter Biden.

In fact, no such hack occurred. The material came from decrypted iPhone backups of what New York Post columnist Miranda Devine called the “Laptop From Hell” in the title of her 2021 book about the contents of the younger Biden’s laptop computer.

By law, the Secret Service is authorized to investigate and prosecute threats against the president and successors to the presidency (18 U.S. Code § 871). To prove that a threat is worthy of investigation, the Secret Service must show the existence of a threat to kill, kidnap, or inflict bodily harm upon the president of the United States, the president-elect, the vice president, or other officer next in the order of presidential succession.  

Documents released in response to the Oversight Project’s FOIA request, however, reveal that the Secret Service opened its investigation of the Maine man based only upon First Amendment-protected speech.

The Secret Service didn’t identify actual threats to Biden or his family, instead predicating the case on what it called the man’s “unusual interest” in the family. This “unusual interest,” however, appeared to be comprised of nothing more than obvious jokes that were critical of Biden.

Zero comments by the Twitter user suggested a serious intent to engage in violence, according to the Secret Service documents released to the Oversight Project. 

The New York Post’s initial reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop files was suppressed by Twitter, Facebook, and other social media in cooperation with government officials in the weeks before the 2020 election, in which Biden defeated Trump. The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other liberal-leaning news outlets, however, later confirmed the authenticity of those laptop files, which also were in the possession of the FBI.

Kara Frederick, director of The Heritage Foundation’s Tech Policy Center, has warned about increasing government efforts to target Americans, especially conservatives, who speak out online.

In a commentary published by The Daily Signal in February 2022, about six months before the Secret Service opened this investigation, Frederick wrote that

the growing symbiosis between Big Tech and government, the constriction of digital life, the pernicious targeting and exploitation of the next generation, and the expansion of digital surveillance will accelerate the stratification of American society. If current patterns are not disrupted, conservatives will bear the brunt of [a] tech-enabled classification system implemented hand-in-glove with the government.

After scrutinizing other posts by the Maine man, which revealed no threats of violence against Biden or his family, that summer the Secret Service nevertheless deemed his posts sufficient to extend its investigation beyond the permitted preliminary investigative stage.  

The Secret Service investigation occurred about a year before entrepreneur Elon Musk bought Twitter and changed the name of the social media giant to X in July 2023.

The agency initially misidentified the Twitter user until developing more information. After reviewing public and law enforcement records, some of them not easy to obtain, the Secret Service determined that the user of the Twitter account was a man, initially thought to be a woman, who posted opinions on “conspiracy theories.”

And upon reviewing the man’s online blog, Mazza apparently didn’t find any threats of violence, the documents indicate.

In addition, email attachments to documents obtained by the Oversight Project in the FOIA request contain subpoena results, but the contents of those attachments were not provided.

The names of those email attachments reveal the extensive scope of the Secret Service investigation of the man, including technical information such as IP addresses.

The use of subpoenas indicates that the Secret Service conducted a criminal investigation of a U.S. citizen for activity on social media protected by the First Amendment. Here is detail from a document showing that the Secret Service executed and got results from one or more subpoenas in this case:

Eventually, the Secret Service sought the results of an interview with the Maine man, a photo of him, more results from corroborating interviews, investigative notes, and two different official forms used by the agency.

It is not clear whether the Secret Service ever interviewed the Army veteran or conducted the corroborating interviews.

Interestingly, contact information for Mazza, the senior Secret Service agent who conducted the investigation, was discovered in the contact files on first son Hunter Biden’s notorious abandoned laptop.

Mazza, now retired, was assigned at one time to the Secret Service division that provides protection to the vice president, the position Biden held from 2009 until 2017, as well as some of the vice president’s family members.

Hunter Biden’s possession of Mazza’s contact information in his laptop should have set off alarm bells. Such a situation is extremely irregular, a former Secret Service agent who spoke on condition of anonymity told The Daily Signal.

The former Secret Service agent speculated that the younger Biden may have gotten this contact information if Mazza had led one of the agency’s protective details and provided it to the president’s son or other relatives under protection.

Mazza, reached Friday by The Daily Signal, declined to comment for the record on the investigation and his involvement.

It’s not clear to what extent Secret Service investigations and subpoenas target other social media users for activity protected by the First Amendment without any stated evidence of a threat of violence against the president or his family.

Also not clear: whether the Secret Service continues to issue subpoenas to social media users merely for exhibiting “unusual interest” in the Biden family, or whether the Secret Service’s intent is to protect the family from journalistic inquiry and public scrutiny at all costs—including censorship and the legal process.

Two spokespersons for the Secret Service said late Wednesday that they didn’t have an immediate comment for The Daily Signal by publication time, saying they would need more context for the 2022 investigation before doing so.

Trump receives death threats almost daily via social media. It remains unclear whether the Secret Service fairly and impartially investigates actual threats against those it protects or instead has become a weaponized arm of the U.S. government.

In one example, in this January 2024 exchange on Mastodon, a sort of decentralized social network used heavily by liberals, a post by former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, now a professor at UC Berkeley, sparks comments from two others about assassinating Trump.

Fred Lucas and Ken McIntyre contributed to this report.

‘Federal Overreach’: Lawsuit Aims to Stop Biden’s Title IX Rule Change - The Daily Signal

‘Federal Overreach’: Lawsuit Aims to Stop Biden’s Title IX Rule Change

Colin Aamot / Virginia Allen /

After the Biden administration released its new Title IX rule on April 19, it took less than two weeks for the Defense of Freedom Institute to file a lawsuit against it. 

“We are asking the court to … basically stop the effect of the regulations for a variety of legal reasons,” says Robert Eitel, the institute’s co-founder and president. That’s because the rule change is “simply unlawful,” he explained. 

Among the changes to Title IX, the Biden administration is attempting to redefine sex to include gender identity and sexual orientation. Title IX is an education amendment that was signed into law by President Richard Nixon in 1972 and requires there be equal opportunities for men and women in schools across the country. 

Eitel says the Biden administration’s attempt to redefine sex in Title IX is “federal overreach.” 

The states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, and Idaho filed the suit with the Washington-based Defense of Freedom Institute, a conservative nonprofit dedicated to providing policy and legal solutions within the spheres of education and the workforce. 

Eitel joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss the lawsuit against the Biden administration’s new Title IX rule. He also explains what should be done about the ever-growing issue of student loan debt, and why President Joe Biden can’t legally issue mass student loan forgiveness. 

Listen to the podcast below: 

The Dystopian Future Is Here - The Daily Signal

The Dystopian Future Is Here

Colin Aamot / Virginia Allen / Katrina Trinko /

Once, we told stories of rescuing women in distress.

Now, we hand them a prescription for assisted suicide.

Two young women in the Netherlands, Jolanda Fun and Zoraya ter Beek, have recently done media interviews explaining their respective decisions to pursue euthanasia, despite being physically healthy.

Fun, who planned to end her life on her 34th birthday late last month, has struggled with depression for years. “Most of the time I just feel really sh—-,” she told The Times, a British newspaper, in an interview published April 14. “Sad, down, gloomy. People don’t see it, because that’s the mask I put on, and that’s what you learn to do in life.”

In the Netherlands, euthanasia has been legal since 2002. (The legislation passed in 2001, and went into effect the next year.) Fun started exploring the possibility two years ago, when a counselor mentioned it. For Fun, who has parents and a brother and a boyfriend, death still seemed like a better reality than staying alive.

“My father is sick, my mother is sick, my parents are fighting to stay alive, and I want to step out of life,” she told The Times. “That’s a bit strange. But even when I was seven, I asked my mother whether, if I jumped from a viaduct, I would be dead. I’ve been struggling with this my whole life.”

Meanwhile, ter Beek, 28, told The Free Press she plans to die by assisted suicide this month. Ter Beek, who is autistic and suffers from depression, has a boyfriend she loves and with whom she shares a home and cats. Her psychiatrist told her, “There’s nothing more we can do for you. It’s never [going to] get any better,” ter Beek told The Free Press, saying those words triggered her decision to end her life.

Zoraya ter Beek is one of a growing number of people across the West choosing to end their lives rather than live in pain. Pain that in many cases can be treated.

In 2022, euthanasia comprised 5% of deaths in the Netherlands. Read @rupasubramanya’s investigation:… pic.twitter.com/YHh2Sk6DbN

— The Free Press (@TheFP) April 2, 2024

Ter Beek and Fun are not alone in their decisions. (So far, no media outlets have confirmed that either one has died.) In 2023, 138 Dutch people chose to end their lives because of psychiatric suffering, according to Spanish newspaper El Pais, which reported that represented a 20% increase from 2022. The trend is undeniably upward: The Netherlands had a mere two assisted suicide deaths for mental health reasons in 2010 and 68 in 2019, according to the Times. 

In general, euthanasia has grown in popularity in the Netherlands over the past two decades. More than 9,000 Dutch people chose euthanasia in 2023, reports El Pais, noting that euthanasia deaths made up more than 5% of all deaths in the Netherlands last year.

Canada—which initially legalized assisted suicide in 2016 for those with terminal illnesses and later for those with a “grievous and irremediable medical condition”—is similarly experiencing an upward trend. Over 13,000 Canadians died by assisted suicide in 2022, a 31% jump from the 2021 numbers. In 2017, the first full year assisted suicide was legal in Canada, 2,838 people chose to die that way.

Canada was slated to further follow in the Netherlands’ path and allow assisted suicide for mental health reasons this year, but due to concerns over straining the medical system, it has postponed that to March 17, 2027.

If you value life, you should be worried.

Already in the United States, 10 states and the District of Columbia allow assisted suicide under certain circumstances. If mental health continues to deteriorate in the U.S., as unfortunately seems likely, we could well face advocacy for allowing suicide for the mentally ill.

Of course, mental illness is a “real” illness, and its suffering can be acute.

But there is a reason we fight so hard against suicide, try to help and encourage and to provide medical assistance to Americans who struggle with depression and anxiety and other mental illnesses.

Not only do we love them, and want them to remain in our lives, but we also know that as long as someone is alive, there is hope—hope that he or she might heal, fully or partially, from mental illness and be able to live life more joyfully, less burdened by rapacious negative emotions. That belief is hard to hold when you are struggling with depression, making it all the more critical that the non-depressed in society vociferously advocate for the value of life.

?? Jolanda Fun, qui est en bonne santé physique aux Pays-Bas mais qui veut mettre fin à ses jours par l'euthanasie parce que sa psychologie n'est pas bonne, mettra fin à ses jours en appelant ses amis le jour de son anniversaire.

?? Il a préparé une invitation pour ses… pic.twitter.com/PQlrazygjd

— KocovichInsights (@kocovich) April 26, 2024

Furthermore, plenty of those who have suffered from depression or other mental illnesses have, as their health has improved, become grateful they did not die by suicide. “I am extremely thankful that I did not take my life,” Olympian medalist Michael Phelps said in 2018 when discussing his history of depression.

In a 2023 Washington Post essay, Billy Lezra described a planned suicide attempt.

“I’d been drinking whiskey mixed with flat Coke all afternoon to work up the nerve to jump in front of the train, and I was drunk enough that my plan felt within reach. I was 23,” Lezra wrote.

“Two months earlier, my mother had tried to take her life, and I had interrupted her attempt. This experience, compounded by years of depression and addiction, made me long to stop feeling. It’s not that I wanted to die, exactly, it’s that I didn’t want to live.”

But then “a wiry woman with pink hair and a titanium lip ring” asked Lezra to take a photo. By the time the photo was taken, the train was gone—and now, seven years later, Lezra remains alive.

Lezra cannot recall the face of the pink-haired woman, but “what has stayed with me is a feeling of sharp, profound gratitude.”

Statistics back up Lezra’s experience. About 90% of suicide survivors will not ultimately die by suicide, according to the T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard University. That suggests that many depressed people do, in fact, get better, at least to some extent.

And what does it say about us as a culture that we allow people to end their lives, that we publicly support it?

As Western civilization further becomes divorced from its Christian roots, it’s perhaps not surprising that there is renewed interest in suicide. The belief that God gives life and that it is not ours to take is less widely held. In modern thinking, where the individual becomes a free agent encouraged to pursue his own truth and happiness, obedience to the timing of a Creator is about as unfashionable a virtue as it gets, especially when such obedience includes chronic suffering.

“In the absence of Christianity, suicide and euthanasia become, perhaps, the ultimate and extreme (if mistaken) vindication of human choice and human dignity: My life is mine, and I can end it when I want to. In this way, individual liberty is reduced to a kind of death cult,” wrote John Daniel Davidson in “Pagan America.”

How bleak.

In addition to embracing individualism in our time, we constantly talk of kindness—but it is often a limp kindness, never deployed in tough times. Sometimes, the truest kindness is to fight for someone when she can no longer fight for herself.

Laws often more shape, than reflect, cultures. If the Netherlands had not legalized assisted suicide, perhaps both Fun and ter Beek would be trying new doctors, new treatments, and other ways to ease their very real suffering.

Instead, their government’s laws are telling them their lives may well not be worth living.

No, Demonstrations Today Aren’t Like the 1960s  - The Daily Signal

No, Demonstrations Today Aren’t Like the 1960s 

Colin Aamot / Virginia Allen / Katrina Trinko / Star Parker /

The current demonstrations on college campuses against Israel remind some of the unrest on college campuses during the 1960s. 

But the comparison is not a good one.  

The unrest of the 1960s was defined by the war in Vietnam and by the Civil Rights Movement. Both had practical, personal impact on young Americans in their own country. 

American soldiers were fighting and dying in Vietnam. There was real, life-and-death impact on all Americans, and certainly on young Americans. 

The military draft was still operative then. Despite various deferments, including for university attendance, the draft was still a reality and was a looming presence for all college-age Americans. They knew they could be drafted and had friends and friends of friends who were. 

The official number of American soldiers killed in Vietnam stands at 58,220.  

Although there were legitimate moral concerns about American involvement in this war, the moral concerns were accompanied by young Americans having real skin in this game. 

The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s also had real personal moral impact on all Americans. And youth are always highly sensitive to the moral failings around them. 

The reality of segregation and Jim Crow started getting national attention with the Civil Rights Movement, the activism of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and other, sometimes violent groups.  

In contrast to the woke activism of today, which is totally political in character, the movement was led by a charismatic and articulate black pastor and had a religious, moral tone rooted in the Christian church. 

Anyone that questions this should read, or reread, King’s “I Have a Dream” speech from 1963. 

But King’s moral appeal was to an America very different than today. 

In 1965, per Gallup, 70% of Americans said religion was personally “very important” to them. In 2023, by contrast, only 45% of Americans say religion is “very important.” 

In 1962, per Gallup, 46% of Americans said they attended religious services over the last seven days. In 2023, this was down to 32%. 

During this period there were two major wars involving Israel and the surrounding Arab states.  

In 1967, Israel prevailed in the Six-Day War, which began with preemptive action by Israel against the Egyptian army mobilized for attack, and subsequent aggression by Syria in the North and Jordan in the East. In 1973, Israel again prevailed against attacks on these same fronts. 

In 1967, per Gallup, 45% of Americans supported Israel against 4% who supported the Arab states, with 26% with no opinion. In 1973, 48% of Americans expressed support for Israel versus 6% expressing support for the Arab states and 24% with no opinion. 

Support for Israel among Americans during this period was one-sided and clear. 

But, again, America today is very, very different.  

Our young people in the 1960s understood what personal responsibility is about. 

On a national level, in the 1960s, all young Americans faced the reality of military conscription. Today, regarding national obligation and service, there are virtually no demands on our youth.  

Now President Joe Biden is even erasing their student loan obligations. 

On a religious, moral level, religion then had a much stronger hold on the nation. Religion teaches and inspires a culture where individuals have a sense they belong to and have obligation to something beyond their own egotistical inclinations.  

Nature abhors a vacuum, and as religion has weakened and disappeared from our culture, it has been replaced by politics and the welfare state. 

The end of it all is we now have a generation of youth insulated from all sense of national and religious and moral personal responsibility. 

So now they demonstrate in support of terrorists and against the only free country in the Middle East that shares the very values that made our own country great. 

COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM 

The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation. 

Columbia Law Review Demands School Cancel Tests for Students Traumatized by NYPD - The Daily Signal

Columbia Law Review Demands School Cancel Tests for Students Traumatized by NYPD

Colin Aamot / Virginia Allen / Katrina Trinko / Star Parker / Jarrett Stepman /

The Columbia University anti-Israel encampment has been cleared out, but the New York school continues to beclown itself.

According to a report by the Washington Free Beacon’s Aaron Sibarium, the student editors of the Columbia Law Review issued a statement on Wednesday, calling on Columbia Law School to cancel final exams. They wrote that it had to be done because the “violence” students had witnessed on campus left them “irrevocably shaken” and “unable to focus.”

The statement “represents the majority opinion of the editorial board and was endorsed by five other law journals,” Sibarium wrote.

Columbia Law Review isn’t some generic school paper or marginal publication, it’s the most prestigious law journal on campus and one of the most prestigious law publications in the country.

The editors said that canceling exams would be a “proportionate response” to the “distress our peers have been feeling.”

The law school already postponed exams on May 1 and has offered students pass/fail grading, though it didn’t make pass/fail mandatory.

“The current exam policy raises concerns around equity and academic integrity,” the statement said. “Many are unwell at this time and cannot study or concentrate while their peers are being hauled to jail.”

Given the kinds of “punishments” we’ve seen for other disorderly protesters who have been arrested, and given the judicial powers that be in New York City, it’s unlikely those arrested will face serious consequences.  

“The events of last night left us, and many of our peers, unable to focus and highly emotional during this tumultuous time,” the statement read. “This only follows the growing distress that many of us have felt for months as the humanitarian crisis abroad continues to unfold, and as the blatant antisemitism, Islamophobia, and racism on campus have escalated.”

The statement also said that the school “refused to consider our calls for making all classes this semester mandatory pass/fail.” Of course, by making classes pass/fail, they would just erode the school’s commitment to any kind of measurable standards of success and failure.  

Your first reaction might be to think that the “cancel tests, we’re trembling in fear” demand is a sign of weakness. It’s just your typical college student snowflakes mewling about their bogus “trauma,” right?

Not quite.

In the upside-down world of America’s elite institutions, this is actually a power play.

Victimhood, especially when it’s accrued on behalf of left-wing causes, holds the greatest social cachet in higher education. It can give one the power to command and silence others. It also can be used to escape consequences for one’s actions and bludgeon political opponents.

By demanding that classes be canceled, Columbia Law Review editors are putting the school administration on notice, demanding recognition for their aggrieved status and justifying the supposed morality of the anti-Israel protesters.

This is how the collective “safe space” of our intellectual leadership class operates, and the Columbia Law Review is eager to milk that system. This is the arrangement our future attorneys general, district attorneys, Justice Department officials, and top law firm associates think is right and reasonable.

According to Reuters, “Columbia Law School snagged the top spot among U.S. law schools for having the highest percentage of 2023 graduates who landed jobs at big law firms.”

How do you think these people will operate once they end up in a top law firm or in serious positions of power? They will enforce this code of victimhood status just as they try to do at their schools.

That’s why what’s taking place on college campuses right now is so important, why in a certain sense it transcends our societal disagreements about Israel and Gaza or anything else on the international stage.

This is about the transformation of our most powerful and once-exalted institutions into a malignant force for “social justice” at the expense of traditional forms of justice. It’s about how they have accrued power and impose their ideology, not just internally, but on the rest of our society from the top down.

So, while whining about having to take tests after what happened at Columbia certainly sounds pathetic on its surface, it’s really a sign of how the whole rancid system operates.

That’s part of the reason why this story continues to dominate the news and why Americans need to seriously rethink the role higher education plays in our country.

DEI’s Demise: University of North Florida Closes Divisive Department - The Daily Signal

DEI’s Demise: University of North Florida Closes Divisive Department

Colin Aamot / Virginia Allen / Katrina Trinko / Star Parker / Jarrett Stepman / Elizabeth Troutman /

The University of North Florida closed its diversity, equity, and inclusion office on Wednesday, but DEI personnel were given new job titles, rather than being fired.

The former chief diversity officer, Richmond Wynn, was not fired, but given a new title—vice president of community engagement and partnerships. 

In the new role, Wynn is responsible for “developing and implementing comprehensive strategies to establish and enhance mutually beneficial relationships between the university and communities, stakeholders, and industry partners,” according to his LinkedIn profile. 

He also “works with other UNF departments to facilitate and promote on-campus community engagement activities that embed civility and a culture of care throughout UNF, institutional values that support a safe and welcoming environment for all students, faculty and staff.”

Wynn did not respond to a request for comment. 

When asked if the job description means Wynn will continue to promote DEI-related initiatives at UNF, a spokeswoman for the university said the closing of the Office of Diversity and Inclusion and its centers is in response to Florida state Senate Bill 266 and regulations approved by the Florida Board of Governors of the State University System of Florida. 

Signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis last May, the law bars public colleges and universities from spending taxpayer dollars on DEI programs.

“By this week, all the centers were officially closed,” UNF Media Relations Manager Amanda Ennis told The Daily Signal. “Some staff members have left the University for other job opportunities. All other employees have moved to other open positions in the university that are not related to DEI.”

UNF announced in January that it would begin phasing out the Office of Diversity and Inclusion. University President Moez Limayem said that no staff members would lose their jobs as a result, but would be assigned to work in other departments with the same or higher salary.

The new role of Sheila Spivey, who was previously assistant vice president of diversity and inclusion, could not be found online, and an emailed request to her for comment bounced back with an “out of office” notice. Brandi Winfrey, director of inclusive excellence, has not changed her job title on LinkedIn and did not respond to a request for comment. 

The diversity office staff also included two administrators, and two to three employees for each center. 

UNF will continue offering a handful of DEI-related courses in the fall 2024 semester, according to the course catalog, including Introduction to Educational Leadership for Social Justice; Race, Gender, and Politics; Sex, Race, and Social Class; and Difference, Discrimination, and Oppression. 

The latter course addresses “issues of power, inequality, privilege, discrimination and the resulting oppression,” according to the course description. 

“Course material will use a social justice perspective for the study of and practice with oppressed groups at all system levels, including those distinguished by race, ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation, disability, immigration status, religion and social class,” the description adds. 

The webpage that once displayed UNF’s DEI resources now shows “Access Restricted” result, with this message: “You do not have permission to access this resource.”

The page previously included UNF’s “Inclusive Excellence” strategic plan, as well as information on its Intercultural Center, Interfaith Center, LGBTQ Center, and Women’s Center, according to a Wayback Machine internet search. 

“Inclusive Excellence employs a broad and inclusive definition of diversity that includes genetic information, race, ethnicity, color, religion, age, sex, ability, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, marital status, national origin, veteran status and other important social dimensions that are part of the campus community,” the strategic plan said. 

The LGBT Center offered resources on “preferred” personal pronouns, transgenderism, and more. 

“Pronouns are a reflection of someone’s gender identity, and to ignore that is to say that their identity isn’t valid,” the resource on pronouns said. “Even when the person isn’t around, using the correct pronouns to refer to them says to those around you that you acknowledge the person’s identity, regardless of how you feel about the person, and encourages others to do the same.”

The page includes a list of common pronouns, as well as “neo” pronouns, such as “Xe/Xem/Xyr,” “Ey/Em/Eir,” “Zie/Zim/Zir,” “Ve/Ver/Vis,” and “Ne/Nem/Nir.” 

The Women’s Center was “committed to advocating for gender equality and improving the status of women.”

“We recognize that gender inequalities are deeply connected to other areas of disenfranchisement and oppression in our society,” the archived webpage reads. “Therefore, our programs and services strive to value and promote respect for all differences. This means that women and men and people of all races, cultures, and sexual orientations are welcome in the Women’s Center.”

The Diversity Office webpage also included a statement in support of anti-racism. 

“Examining biases and exclusionary practices, and promoting integrity, inclusivity, and ultimately excellence, enhances our personal development, relationships with others, well-being, and global citizenship,” part of the statement reads. 

Some UNF students voiced their complaints about the office’s closure on Wednesday. 

“I think it’s a travesty we’re shutting down such great resources,” student Emily Roles told WJXT-TV in Jacksonville, Florida. 

The UNF Diversity Office closure closely follows the shutdown of DEI at the University of Florida. The home of the Gators sports teams closed an office for a chief diversity officer and eliminated other DEI positions in March, and is reviewing whether the remaining Center for Multicultural Engagement and Inclusion violates state law. 

While University of Florida fired DEI personnel, Florida State University took an approach similar to UNF’s, changing the titles and classifications of employees who were in related positions.

The Board of Governors is in the process of reviewing programs in Florida universities to ascertain whether they violate state laws prohibiting DEI instruction, Communications Director Cassandra Edwards told The Daily Signal. She said that programs in state schools found to violate the law will be “eliminated.” 

“As this is an ongoing, deliberate process, it will not conclude overnight,” she said. “But rest assured, thanks to Gov. DeSantis’ leadership, state or federal funds will not be used for DEI by Florida’s universities.” 

Police Arrests of Anti-Israel Protesters Include Indianapolis School Psychologist - The Daily Signal

Police Arrests of Anti-Israel Protesters Include Indianapolis School Psychologist

Colin Aamot / Virginia Allen / Katrina Trinko / Star Parker / Jarrett Stepman / Elizabeth Troutman / Tony Kinnett /

A psychologist for Indianapolis Public Schools was among those held when police arrested 14 masked adults who officers said were blocking traffic late last month just outside the Governor’s Residence in the state capital.

The school psychologist, Karisa Cole, and the other arrested protesters were charged with obstructing traffic April 25 at 10:30 a.m. on Meridian Street in Indianapolis. 

Karisa Cole’s mug shot. (Photo: Office of Public Information/IMPD)

In public statements that morning, the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department warned that although peaceful protesting is constitutionally protected, blocking traffic violates Indiana law. 

After brief remarks and a collective chant calling for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war and for Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb, a Republican, to divest from doing business with Israel, the protesters crossed into Meridian Street and blocked traffic.

When police officers arrived, they asked the protesters to leave the roadway multiple times. When the protesters didn’t move, officers arrested the 14 obstructers, who began to sing as officers pulled them off the street.

Cole, 45, appears to own several social media accounts that advertise her employment as a school psychologist by Indianapolis Public Schools since 2020. They include multiple anti-Israeli and antisemitic posts, including promotion of the ethnic-cleansing motto of the Hamas terrorist organization, “From the River to the Sea.” (This motto calls for Jews west of the Jordan River to be swept violently into the Mediterranean Sea to make room for the Islamic State of Palestine).

Cole’s Instagram account, marked by “she/they” personal pronouns, includes instructions for teachers to “adopt social justice and anti-racist teaching skills” when “teaching about Palestine in the classroom.” 

Cole warned teachers not to put Israel and Palestine on the “same level,” accusing Israel of being an apartheid state that is “committing an ethnic cleansing.”

Cole also encouraged teachers not to describe Hamas as “extremist” or “terrorist.” She accused those who do so of racism “against Muslim or POC [people of color] communities.” 

Hamas has been designated a terrorist organization by the United States and other NATO countries since 1997. 

Hamas terrorists invaded southern Israel on Oct. 7, slaughtering 1,200, torturing or raping many first, and taking over 200 hostages. Ever since, the Israeli military has targeted the adjacent Gaza Strip—where Hamas is the elected government and uses civilians as shields—with the goal of “eradicating” the terrorist group.

The Daily Signal obtained Cole’s booking photograph and other public information about her arrest from the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department. 

Indianapolis Public Schools did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment on whether the school district was aware of Cole’s arrest or what if any action it has taken as a result. 

The Indianapolis Center for Inquiry School 70, the building where Cole works, lists her as a school psychologist on its staff page.

Cole didn’t respond to requests for comment and confirmation that she owns the social media accounts cited above. However, the school psychologist’s LinkedIn account was deleted after The Daily Signal reached out.

Taxpayers Are Subsidizing College Extremism - The Daily Signal

Taxpayers Are Subsidizing College Extremism

Colin Aamot / Virginia Allen / Katrina Trinko / Star Parker / Jarrett Stepman / Elizabeth Troutman / Tony Kinnett / David Harsanyi /

Mohamed Abdou is a pro-Hamas “anarchist interdisciplinary activist-scholar of Indigenous, Black, critical race, and Islamic studies, as well as gender, sexuality, abolition, and decolonization” at Columbia University. Now, I don’t mean to pick on Abdou. It’s just that he happens to teach virtually every trendy pseudo-intellectual identitarian twaddle concocted by modern man.

Ultimately, we make Abdou’s job possible. Nearly every student loan taken in the U.S. is either given by the government or fully guaranteed by taxpayers. This sounds wonderful in the abstract, since it allows every student a chance at higher education. The reality, however, is that we have incentivized universities to create hordes of debt-ridden, credentialed nitwits.

I assure you no bank in the world would ever lend any young person tens of thousands of dollars—much less hundreds of thousands—to pursue studies in either Indigenous, black, critical race, Islamic, gender, sexuality, abolition, or decolonization studies if those loans were not backed by the federal government. The state-guarantee policy has created a massive moral hazard that allows schools not only to ignore the real-world needs of their students but to charge astronomical tuition rates.

Many, if not most, students still pursue degrees in fields that have promise. They’ll get loans. But if Ivy League schools believe that those political science and journalism degrees are going to pay off in careers, then they should cosign on the loans instead of taxpayers.

If Columbia wants an anarchist interdisciplinary activist-scholar on staff, it should be funded by school endowments (a $13 billion hedge fund that should taxed) or through charitable donations provided by the Soros Foundation to End Western Civilization, or whatnot.

It is true that universities are not meant to be wholly utilitarian institutions. We need well-rounded, intellectually engaged citizens. Does anyone believe that’s happening? There’s nothing wrong with studying art or culture or philosophy. There is nothing wrong with earning a liberal arts degree. The student loan racket game, however, solidified silos of extremism and buffoonery, with decades of compounding radicalism and “diversity, equity, and inclusion” racism smothering genuine intellectual diversity. Every discipline is infected.

Now Democrats want to go from backing this racket to decreeing that taxpayers should just pay off all these bad choices, creating even greater moral hazard. You can inject all the class-war emotions you like into this debate, but the rules of economics are clear. Bailouts disincentivize schools from acting responsibly and incentivize some students to keep chasing degrees that will do them very little good.

Speaking of credential nitwits, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., who graduated cum laude from Boston University in 2011 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in both international relations and economics, recently noted that one of the many things loan “forgiveness” would do is allow people to “go back to school.”

The rate of first-time, full-time students at four-year institutions who graduate from the school they started at within six years stands at 64%. We need people out of school, finishing degrees that allow them to work and pay back their loans, not going back to school.

Of course, the United States is such a hellhole of capitalist imperialism that 13,838 students out of 36,649 at Columbia University are here on foreign visas. (I planned on arguing that this policy was unfair to high-achieving American students, until I realized that 13,838 Americans have been spared Columbia.) Schools love foreign students because they are wealthy and pay in cash. And that’s fine. Most of those kids are probably serious students in business and STEM programs.

Still, the U.S. government has zero constitutional duty to keep active visas for foreigners who agitate against the system, celebrate Hamas, or target American Jews (or anyone else) on campuses. We should be pulling visas for anyone suspended for ignoring university rules, breaking laws, invading buildings, or stopping other kids from attending class. Go to school in your excellent home country instead.

Universities have always been hotbeds of radicalism. That’s fine. Those are the years to act like an imbecile. But extremism is no longer on the margins. These days, our once-respected institutions are increasingly producing little totalitarians and clueless fellow travelers, who end up populating important real-world institutions. Society would be better served lighting up a giant cash bonfire than subsidizing this corrosive trend.

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The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation. 

Grassley Slams VA for Mishandling Hundreds of Millions That Could Go to Veterans’ Health  - The Daily Signal

Grassley Slams VA for Mishandling Hundreds of Millions That Could Go to Veterans’ Health 

Colin Aamot / Virginia Allen / Katrina Trinko / Star Parker / Jarrett Stepman / Elizabeth Troutman / Tony Kinnett / David Harsanyi / Fred Lucas /

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, is pressing the Department of Veterans Affairs on why the agency lost out on as much as $805 million that could have been used to serve veterans. 

The department’s “bureaucratic right hand didn’t know what the left hand was doing, and our veterans have paid the price,” Grassley asserted in an April 17 letter to VA Secretary Denis McDonough. 

“The VA hasn’t kept its promise to make swift improvements that would bring millions of dollars back to the agency and allow it to maximize funding for veterans’ health care,” Grassley told The Daily Signal on Thursday. “I’ll keep pushing the VA to get into gear and ensure no further reimbursements are left unclaimed.”

The Department of Veterans Affairs covers the initial cost of  receiving local community health care when a veteran doesn’t have access to a VA facility. 

If such a veteran has private health insurance, the VA is supposed to bill the insurer for reimbursement. The recovered money is supposed to support the Veterans Health Administration, the subagency of the VA that oversees more than 1,300 health care facilities.

However, the VA Office of Inspector General issued a May 2022 report that concluded the department failed to seek reimbursement from private insurers in 54% of billable instances between 2017 and 2020. The failure caused the VA to miss out on more than $217 million in reimbursements over those three years alone.

If the VA fails to properly bill private insurers, the report said, “it will miss opportunities to increase its funding for all veterans.” 

The inspector general’s report recommended corrective actions to address billing errors by the Department of Veterans Affairs. At the time, the VA agreed to implement the recommendations by March 2023. 

But more than a year later, the inspector general’s recommendations haven’t been addressed, and the VA continues to miss out on millions in reimbursements that could be used to serve veterans, Grassley argued.

In his letter last month to McDonough, Grassley asked how the VA would implement the inspector general’s recommendations. He also requested a detailed analysis of how much money the VA has failed to recover from insurers.

The inspector general’s report found that the revenue operations section of the VA’s Office of Community Care knew about problems that prevented it from collecting reimbursements. “Revenue Operations has not taken corrective action adequate to resolve these workload concerns or staffing challenges,” it said.

“This is unacceptable,” Grassley wrote to McDonough.

In 2022, the inspector general also called for the VA to “maximize” opportunities to bill private insurers; to “strengthen information system controls” for accuracy in claims; and to assess whether resources are adequate. 

The VA agreed with those suggestions and the March 2023 deadline to take actions that has come and gone, Grassley noted. 

VA press secretary Terrence Hayes said the agency’s job is to “deliver world-class health care and benefits to our nation’s veterans and we always strive to do so while being good stewards of tax dollars.”

“We appreciate the inspector general’s review and recommendations to improve processes, which help make VA better,” Hayes told The Daily Signal in a written statement. “While this IG report specifically focused on events from April 2017 to October 2020, we continue to provide training of staff and refine all processes to ensure we maximize opportunities for reimbursements from private insurance.”

Between 1.3 million and 2.4 million billable claims—or 54% —paid between April 20, 2017, and Oct. 31, 2020, weren’t submitted to private health insurers for reimbursement before filing deadlines expired, the inspector general’s audit found. As a result, the VA lost more than $217 million.

The total could balloon to $805 million later in 2022 without corrective action, the audit warned. 

“According to the OIG [Office of Inspector General], the recommended fixes still haven’t been implemented by the VA, running the risk that this elevated amount may have been realized,” Grassley wrote to McDonough.

April-Grassley-VADownload
EXCLUSIVE: Conservative Leaders Call on DOJ’s Kristen Clarke to Resign Following Daily Signal Report - The Daily Signal

EXCLUSIVE: Conservative Leaders Call on DOJ’s Kristen Clarke to Resign Following Daily Signal Report

Colin Aamot / Virginia Allen / Katrina Trinko / Star Parker / Jarrett Stepman / Elizabeth Troutman / Tony Kinnett / David Harsanyi / Fred Lucas / Mary Margaret Olohan /

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL: A group of conservative leaders is calling on the head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, Kristen Clarke, to resign from her leadership position following an explosive report from The Daily Signal.

“The American people have lost trust in your ability to lead the Civil Rights Division,” reads a letter to Clarke, signed by Advancing American Freedom Executive Director Paul Teller, American Accountability Foundation President Tom Jones, Students for Life President Kristan Hawkins, and CatholicVote President Brian Burch. “We request that you resign immediately.”

The Daily Signal published a report on Tuesday highlighting evidence that Clarke had not disclosed a 2006 arrest and subsequent expungement during her 2021 nomination to the DOJ—and then explicitly denied ever having been arrested to Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton.

Clarke has not responded to requests for comment from The Daily Signal, though the DOJ acknowledged receipt of these requests. She did speak to CNN on Wednesday, however, confirming that she did not disclose the arrest and expungement and alleging that her ex-husband Reginald Avery domestically abused her. He denied this in a statement to The Daily Signal.

The letter to Clarke from conservative leaders, sent Friday to the DOJ official, repeatedly references The Daily Signal’s reporting and attaches a copy of the Tuesday report itself. The letter also points to Clarke’s enforcement of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act against pro-life activists.

“The American people deserve a Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice led with honesty and integrity,” the letter says. “Since taking over the Civil Rights Division, you have weaponized the Department of Justice by wielding the FACE Act against pro-life Americans in an unprecedented manner—even while standing idly by as churches and pro-life pregnancy centers are vandalized, and Jewish students are unable to attend class on college campuses.”

AAF Letter To DOJ’s Kristen Clarke.Download

Jones, one of the signers of the letter, began digging into Clarke’s background during her nomination process and spoke to Avery around the same time, as The Daily Signal previously reported. Avery told Jones at the time that Clarke attacked him with a knife, slicing his finger to the bone, during a domestic dispute in July 2006.

“The accusations against Kristen Clarke of lying to Congress and domestic violence are deeply troubling,” Jones told The Daily Signal on Friday. “Clearly she does not possess the character or integrity to be in any position of power. She must resign now.”

On Thursday evening, the New York Post Editorial Board similarly called on Clarke to step down in an editorial titled: “Kristen Clarke lied and must step down from the DOJ — NOW.”

“Clarke’s now arguing that because the arrest was expunged, she wasn’t required to disclose it to lawmakers,” the New York Post Editorial Board wrote. “That’s precisely the kind of razor-sharp logic that top Biden appointees are known for.”

“Then again,” the board continued. “Clarke’s the same dunderhead who muffed a major question about First Amendment litigation last year, claiming in a congressional hearing to be totally unaware of the lawsuit by the state of Missouri against the president over government efforts against ‘disinformation’ — a huge civil rights issue where Team Biden had lost and was appealing to the Supreme Court.”

The New York Post Editorial Board added: “Her defense now is beyond pathetic. She told an unambiguous lie to Congress. Was she thinking she’d never get caught, or that if she did, her political connections would protect her?”

CNN published Clarke’s allegations in a report headlined “DOJ civil rights leader says she was a victim of abuse in extraordinary statement.” That report is drawing accusations from conservative media that the outlet sought to curry favor with President Joe Biden’s DOJ through its framing.

“CNN propagandist Hannah Rabinowitz was asked by DOJ to spread this info op and she complied, hiding the explosive journalism which provoked it,” tweeted Federalist Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway.

“Amazing,” noted The Washington Free Beacon’s Chuck Ross. “After @MaryMargOlohan reports that DOJ’s Kristen Clarke lied about being arrested, Clarke runs to CNN with a claim that she lied only because she was the victim of domestic abuse. And CNN spins it with the typical ‘conservatives pounce’ framing.”

Clarke did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

The Daily Signal previously reported that Clarke, who oversees investigations into violations of the FACE Act, has used FACE to charge dozens of pro-life individuals since the overturn of Roe v. Wade. This includes Mark Houck, a Catholic father of seven arrested at gunpoint by the FBI and charged with violating FACE in September 2022 (a jury found Houck was not guilty in January 2023, and the DOJ has not commented on this verdict publicly).

Enacted in 1994, the FACE Act prohibits threats of force, obstruction, and property damage intended to interfere with reproductive health care services. It applies not only to abortion clinics, but also to pro-life pregnancy centers and houses of worship.

Though Clarke is the helm of the DOJ’s FACE Act enforcements, she is a vocal abortion proponent who has denounced pro-life pregnancy centers, as The Washington Free Beacon’s Ross previously reported.

The DOJ has charged only five pro-abortion individuals with violating the FACE Act when they attacked pro-life pregnancy centers, even though hundreds of pregnancy centers and Catholic churches have been attacked since May 2022, when the Supreme Court’s draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was leaked, indicating Roe v. Wade would soon be overturned.

DOJ’s Civil Rights Division has charged zero individuals with FACE for attacking Catholic churches, though it has charged other individuals with hate crimes with defacing a synagogue with neo-Nazi symbols and attempting to burn down a church that planned to host drag show events.