Elizabeth Pipko On The Trump Administration Moving To Hold Harvard Accountable: 'It's Great How Public It's Becoming'
'It is one of the most confusing things I've seen. You know, I grew up dying to go to these schools. I hold degrees from Harvard and UPenn, two now of the most anti-Semitic schools I think that we have in our country. I am still paying off a student loan for one of them. And every time I make that payment, I have to think about the fact that they hate me and they hate everything that I represent. It is so scary and it's so sad. And at the same time, it is great how public it's becoming because if there's anything liberals care about more than their policies, it's their children and I want them to realize what's being done to their children in these universities. So they understand the brainwashing, what they're paying money for, and why it is that these kids are coming home after four years and hating everything, even that their parents stand for. So I'm actually happy that it's finally bled out into the forefront, and I hope a lot of people make some big changes because of it. '
To hear the full conversation, check out the podcast!
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New York Post
3 hours ago
- New York Post
Miranda Devine: The country deserves better than the Dems ‘cracked out clown show,' ‘elite' media ignoring Gabbard's bombshell
America deserves better than the degenerate propaganda machine that passes for 'elite' journalism. We deserve better than the evil 'cracked out clown show' the Democratic Party has become. The New York Times and The Washington Post all but ignored DNI Tulsi Gabbard's bombshell press conference Wednesday, at which she announced that she had sent criminal referrals to the DOJ and FBI implicating former President Barack Obama and his national security team in the 'seditious conspiracy' of the Russia collusion hoax. No wonder the best of the Democrats have switched to the Trump GOP. Authentic, principled leaders who might once have rescued Democrats from the abyss, like Gabbard and Bobby Kennedy Jr., now serve in the Trump cabinet, and countless unnamed voters have switched allegiance. Only the very wealthy protected class and the controlled underclass remain with a smattering of grifters and the irredeemably Trump-deranged, but that doesn't mean the party isn't dangerous. Advertisement As time goes on, and more evidence is painstakingly chipped out of hiding, we see just how rotten are the apex Democrats: Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. No wonder their party is a shambles: 'Constipated. Leaderless. Confused. A cracked-out clown car. Divided,' wrote veteran Democratic strategist James Carville in the Times this week, warning of an impending 'civil war' between whatever is left of the moderate rump and the parasitical radical faction that is sucking the party dry. Dem blood-suckers But the energy of the party is with the blood-suckers, like commie nepo-baby Zohran Mamdani, who may disastrously win the New York City mayoralty. His clones are popping up everywhere. Advertisement When Hunter Biden emerged from hiding to attack Obama and his proxies, the politically ambitious Hollywood 'brand' George Clooney ('not a f–king actor') and the smug former Obama bros at Pod Save America ('junior f–king speechwriters'), he was speaking on behalf of his father, Joe, the aggrieved former president who has become the scapegoat for his party's ills. 'What right do you have to step on a man who's given 52 years of his f–king life to the service of this country?' He actually has a point. But Hunter also looked for all the world, in his four-hour-plus rants on two podcasts, to be auditioning for his own presidential run in 2028, which, given the parlous state of his party, is not such an implausible prospect. Advertisement Hunter's friends often have spoken of his political ambitions. In writings on his laptop and in his memoir, he bitterly recalls ex-wife Kathleen's skeptical reaction when he expressed a desire to carry on the Biden political dynasty after brother Beau's funeral. 'Are you serious?' she said, reminding him that he had just been discharged from the Naval Reserve in disgrace after testing positive for cocaine his first weekend. As if to plant the seed of 2028, Hunter expounded this week on some of his whacky political positions — extreme open borders like Daddy, faux concern for the working man, crack is healthier than alcohol, a lot of F-bombs — and delivered a line that must have been practiced in the mirror, possibly naked. 'I'll tell you what, if I became president in two years from now — or four years from now, or three years from now . . .' Don't be surprised to see Hunter Biden vs. George Clooney, AOC and Jasmine Crockett, duking it out in the Democratic primaries. Advertisement If you think it's a clown car now, just wait. It can get a whole lot worse, to the detriment of all of us. It's not healthy to have one party spiraling. Dems have proved in the past six months they are not willing to admit where they've gone wrong. But Gabbard is forcing a reckoning on them, by declassifying Russiagate evidence in systematic, ruthless fashion, to focus accountability, at last, on Obama and his band of cynical manipulators who abused the intelligence agencies to sabotage Trump's first presidency. Damning evidence White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt introduced Gabbard to the podium Wednesday by crisply summarizing the latest damning declassified evidence and pointing the finger squarely at Obama, his former CIA Director John Brennan, former DNI James Clapper, former FBI Director James Comey, former deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe and others who 'conspired to subvert President Trump's 2016 election victory and undermine the democratic will of the American people while publicly pretending to engage in a peaceful transfer of power. 'In private, former President Obama went to great and nefarious lengths to sow discord among the public and sabotage his successor President Trump,' she said. 'The new evidence released by DNI Gabbard confirms that the Obama administration manufactured politicized intelligence which was later used against President Trump in an effort to delegitimize his [2016] victory before he even took the oath of office . . . 'The Russia collusion hoax was a massive fraud perpetuated on the American people from the very beginning. Advertisement 'And the worst part of this is Obama knew that truth . . . There was no collusion, no corruption except on the part of Barack Obama and the weaponized intelligence agencies at the time.' Leavitt wasn't finished. She called out The New York Times and The Washington Post, which had uncritically regurgitated the manufactured intelligence spat out by Obama's henchmen and 'ridiculously' won Pulitzer Prizes for their efforts. 'It's well past time for those awards to be stripped from the journalists . . . 'It is not journalism to propagate political disinformation in service of the Democrat Party and those in the intelligence community who hand over out-of-context and fake intelligence to push a false political narrative.' Advertisement Gabbard then unveiled a series of bombshells including: Brennan suppressed intelligence showing Russia was not favoring Trump and actually believed that Hillary Clinton would inevitably win the 2016 election; Russia was withholding compromising evidence on Clinton until after her victory so they could damage her presidency. Russia's foreign intelligence service had DNC communications that Clinton was suffering from 'intensified psycho-emotional problems, including uncontrolled fits of anger, aggression and cheerfulness [and was] placed on a daily regimen of 'heavy tranquilizers.' The original December 2016 Presidential Daily Brief with intelligence showing Russia did not interfere in the 2016 election would have been briefed to Trump if it hadn't been scrapped and a new bogus intelligence assessment [ICA] fingering Russia ordered by Obama. Advertisement The fabricated Steele Dossier that was forced into the ICA by Brennan, against objections from the CIA's top Russia experts, was not just in the appendix of the new ICA, but in the body. When confronted by his own handpicked analysts objecting to the inclusion of the farcical 'pee tape' dossier, Brennan said, 'Yes, but doesn't it ring true?' The evidence 'directly point[s] to President Obama leading the manufacturing of this intelligence assessment,' said Gabbard. The result was 'a yearslong coup against the incoming president of the United States, Donald Trump.' Advertisement The first question from CNN to Gabbard was whether she was just trying to curry favor with Trump. The Times buried the story on its webpage, mentioning it only in a scathing 'analysis' addendum to its breathless Epstein coverage, to say that Gabbard 'targeting Obama' was an attempt to 'change the topic.' The Washington Post was just as bad, with a loaded headline downpage: 'Gabbard sidesteps question on weaponizing intelligence.' Talk about burying the lead. The Democratic Party will never reckon with its problems while it has a media that continues to cover for it.
E&E News
4 hours ago
- E&E News
Lobbyists spent millions to save green energy. Wins were few.
Renewable energy lobbyists dumped millions of dollars over the past few months in a frenzied push to save green energy priorities. In the end, they didn't get much bang for their buck. As Republicans ramped up their efforts to roll back tax credits, the top renewable energy advocacy organization in the country, the American Clean Power Association, spent a record $3.8 million lobbying federal officials for the second quarter that ended in June. That's more than six times as much that they spent a year ago in the same time period, new disclosures show. The GOP ended up slashing the incentives anyway in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the tax and spending budget reconciliation bill. Advertisement 'We all failed to appreciate just the intensity of the desire to undo any fraction of any figment of any remaining Biden policy,' Jason Grumet, the group's CEO, said of former President Joe Biden's green agenda on POLITICO's Energy podcast. 'The [Trump] administration really prioritized the narrative around ending the Biden program, above an assessment of what the benefits were.' ACP was far from the only group that significantly boosted its advocacy work in the period from April to June. Congressional lobbying disclosures due this week show that dozens of companies and associations in wind, solar, batteries, electric vehicles and related fields went all out in trying to persuade lawmakers not to quickly halt their tax subsidies. Other sizable increases came from the Solar Energy Industries Association, which more than doubled its spending to $950,000 for the quarter. The Zero Emission Transportation Association's spending was more than four times the level a year prior, at $130,000. While much of the spending by lobbyists was aimed at preserving green energy tax credits, advocates also spent money on other renewable energy priorities and legislation. The lobbyists were, for the most part, unsuccessful in pushing back at what President Donald Trump and many Republicans had long promised: to end the incentives from the Democrats' Inflation Reduction Act that the GOP has labeled the 'Green New Scam.' The new law sets a quick timetable to end incentives for wind and solar, as well as batteries, electric vehicles and vehicle charging infrastructure, while repealing other pro-clean-energy policies. 'Was it a failure? No, absolutely not.' Yet, as they reflect on the fight, some advocates say they are proud of their efforts. 'I've seen some armchair quarterbacks saying the industry failed, sure, but those people weren't involved in the actual work, don't know what they are talking about, or both,' said Colin Hayes, founding partner at Lot Sixteen, which has a number of clients in clean energy and batteries. 'Was it a failure? No, absolutely not. Every single Republican voted against the IRA in the first place, so anything north of complete repeal was a win.' Indeed, industry advocates did notch some accomplishments. The tax credits do not end immediately, and a last-minute push by some Senate Republicans gave developers one year to start their wind and solar projects and get the credits. And they defeated an earlier Senate proposal to impose a new excise tax on wind and solar projects based on the amount of equipment they use from China and other adversaries. Renewable energy lobbyists and their allies also softened supply chain mandates and preserved a practice allowing companies to transfer credits to third parties. The Kayenta Solar Plant in Arizona. |Not all industry fared the same. Individual solar manufacturing, nuclear, and biofuel companies saw more success after they sent their CEOs to the Capitol, said Jeff Navin, founder of the firm Boundary Stone, which represents solar manufacturers, battery companies and similar clients. But advocates representing solar and wind energy developers 'ran into headwinds of Donald Trump, who has strong opinions about wind in particular,' he said. 'They did change some minds of Republicans, not enough to overcome Trump's tweets and the political disaster of cutting Medicaid.' Ultimately, he said, 'I think it's easy to write the story that says they spent a lot of money and they lost,' Navin said. 'That's true and you don't want to lose. [But] it's not like they didn't get anything for it. We just have more work to do to build and broaden the coalition.' Conservatives celebrate Conservatives and fossil fuel advocates acknowledge they didn't get everything they wanted — but they did get one thing: 'One of the highest priorities was to get these things phased out before President Trump left office because in the past they've always sunset and then the political climate changed,' said American Energy Alliance President Tom Pyle. Renewable energy companies' strategies to save the credits largely focused on hiring Republican lobbyists, flooding congressional offices and trying to appeal to moderates with big investments in their districts. They emphasized forecasts of job losses if the credits were repealed; SEIA, for instance, repeatedly cited research it commissioned saying that repeal threatened 330,000 solar jobs. SEIA and other groups even passed out stickers with Trump's signature 'energy dominance' catchphrase on Capitol Hill. But observers noted it was too little, too late. 'Their entire strategy was to build relationships with the Democratic Party and green groups,' Pyle said of solar and wind lobbies. 'They ran into a brick wall in the name of President Donald Trump.' Even before the last election, groups like ACP have made a point of increasing their outreach to Republicans but their efforts have not softened the president's animosity to renewable energy. And many GOP solar and wind allies on the Hill seem to feel they can only do so much to buck Trump's agenda. In a recent interview with POLITICO's E&E News, SEIA CEO Abigail Ross Hopper highlighted the sector's accomplishments in the budget legislation. 'We have emerged from this legislative battle with the tax credits certainly curtailed, but not eliminated, and with some paths forward that are super important,' she said. 'I don't know that there's anything at the moment I can think of that we would have done differently.' Abigail Ross Hopper, CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association, speaking last year in Washington during the group's 50th anniversary celebration. | Eric Kayne/AP Big spending elsewhere Grumet, the American Clean Power Association CEO, said he and others misjudged how far Republicans would go in rolling back the policies that had been enacted or expanded in the Inflation Reduction Act. 'I think we have become, as an industry, almost a political football in which both sides exaggerate either our glory or our dismay and use us as a talking point for their larger political ambitions. I think that the Congress misread the bipartisan support for clean energy,' Grumet said. A number of individual clean energy companies also boosted their advocacy work in the second quarter. Rooftop solar firm SunRun spent $320,000 in the quarter, up more than 500 percent from a year prior. Solar manufacturer First Solar's $520,000 in lobbying was more than double the same period in 2024. In wind, Vestas North America put $100,000 into lobbying, up from $30,000 a year before. Tesla doubled its expenditures to $320,000. Many of the companies hired new lobbying firms during the reconciliation fight, or retained their first firms. Advantage Capital, an investment firm in renewable energy, hired Barker Leavitt and Patel Partners in June, contributing to a 600 percent increase in its lobbying expenditures. T1 Energy, a solar and battery manufacturer, signed with Continental Strategy and Checkmate Government Relations in June and spent $260,000 in the quarter, after not having any lobbyists before November 2024. The clean energy industry similarly carried out an intense lobbying campaign in 2022 in the lead-up to the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. But the sharp increase in lobbying expenditures in 2025 was unprecedented. ACP, for instance, had never exceeded $700,000 in one quarter since it launched in 2021. Its predecessor, the American Wind Energy Association, spent a record $1.8 million in the second quarter of 2009, at the peak of debate over climate change legislation. SEIA's previous quarterly record was $710,000, set in the first quarter of 2025. Reporter Nico Portuondo contributed. This story also appears in Climatewire.
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Yahoo
State Department launches new investigation into Harvard
The State Department will investigate Harvard University's eligibility to sponsor international students and researchers, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Wednesday, the latest attempt by the Trump administration to pressure the Ivy League university. 'The American people have the right to expect their universities to uphold national security, comply with the law, and provide safe environments for all students,' Rubio said in a statement. 'The investigation will ensure that State Department programs do not run contrary to our nation's interests.' The State Department is probing the Exchange Visitor Program at Harvard, which allows the school to bring international students, researchers and faculty to the university for temporary periods. Revoking its status as a sponsor makes it harder for the university to bring these people to its Cambridge, Massachusetts, campus. Rubio said that to maintain the 'privilege' to sponsor exchange visitors, Harvard must act in a manner that does not 'compromise' America's national security interests. This isn't the first challenge Harvard has faced during President Donald Trump's second term. A federal judge in June blocked a Trump effort to prevent international students from enrolling at the university. And Harvard is suing the Trump administration for cutting more than $2 billion in federal grants. A university spokesperson said in a statement this was "yet another retaliatory step" taken by the Trump administration to violate Harvard's First Amendment rights. "Harvard continues to enroll and sponsor international scholars, researchers, and students, and will protect its international community and support them as they apply for U.S. visas and travel to campus this fall," the spokesperson said. "The University is committed to continuing to comply with the applicable Exchange Visitor Program regulations.' The fight with one of America's most prestigious universities comes as the Trump administration says it wants to crack down on antisemitism at higher education institutions. Trump has accused Harvard of failing to protect its Jewish students — in violation of the Civil Rights Act — amid a greater reckoning on college campuses in the aftermath of pro-Palestinian protests. 'Harvard is an Anti-Semitic, Far Left Institution, as are numerous others, with students being accepted from all over the World that want to rip our Country apart,' he wrote in a Truth Social post in April. 'The place is a Liberal mess, allowing a certain group of crazed lunatics to enter and exit the classroom and spew fake ANGER AND HATE.' Trump suggested in late June that the federal government could reach a deal with Harvard, but that has yet to materialize. In an April statement, Harvard's President Alan Garber acknowledged that there are 'valid concerns' surrounding rising antisemitism but argued that the Trump administration was attempting to use these concerns as a 'justification' for unlawful actions. 'These actions have stark real-life consequences for patients, students, faculty, staff, researchers, and the standing of American higher education in the world,' Garber said.
