Even Community Colleges Are Going All-In on DEI

• Over 80% of medium or large community colleges in the U.S. have diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, according to a report from Jonathan Butcher, education fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy.
• Community colleges allow students who struggled in high school or who cannot afford a four-year college to continue their education and enhance their job prospects.
• Yet DEI activists have captured community colleges across the country, which already have dismally high dropout rates. DEI programs do not improve student outcomes.
• State lawmakers should prohibit public two-year colleges from using taxpayer resources to fund DEI offices, staff, and programs.

Schedule an Interview: Jonathan Butcher

China May Be the Ultimate Beneficiary of Oct. 7 Hamas Attack on Israel

• Iran’s long sponsorship of Hamas is well known, and the October 7 attack, which came on the eve of what was projected to be a seismic Israel-Saudi Arabia peace deal brokered by the U.S., demonstrates how thoroughly Tehran has trained, equipped and directed Hamas’s activities.
• Given Iran’s well-documented intention to eradicate Israel, the regime has good reason to want to disrupt an Israel-Saudi deal that would build on the legacy of the Abraham Accords and solidify relations between the Jewish state and Iran’s leading regional competitor.
• But Iran may have had a patron of its own that also has a vested interest in killing the deal – one that was ultimately calling the shots: the People’s Republic of China.
• A successful Israel-Saudi peace deal would cement Saudi’s security partnership with the United States, which would give Washington more control over supplies coming out of the Gulf.
• Recent Chinese inroads in Middle East diplomacy, notably the Iran-Saudi deal on Yemen brokered in Beijing last March, could be derailed, all of which gives China, as well as Iran, a vested interest in disrupting such a deal.

Schedule an Interview: Victoria Coates and Robert Greenway

Janet Yellen Fiddles While America’s Economy Burns

• Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen recently said the United States economy is not only “doing very well,” but that the nation can “certainly afford” to pay for two wars at the same time: Ukraine and Israel.
• It’s distressing to realize that the woman ostensibly in charge of the nation’s finances knows nothing about them — and the Treasury’s data prove it.
• Under the leadership of Mr. Biden and Ms. Yellen, prices have risen more than 17%, and they continue rising. Inflation has outpaced earnings growth so rapidly that the average worker has lost the equivalent of about 5% of his annual income from the dollar’s reduced purchasing power.
• For the typical American family, today’s higher prices and higher inflation are the equivalent of losing about $7,300 in annual pay.
• Federal finances, overseen by Ms. Yellen, are doing even worse. The federal government ran up a deficit of almost $1.7 trillion in the last fiscal year. The Treasury announced it expects to borrow $1.6 trillion in just the first half of the current fiscal year—on track to almost double the deficit.
• Not only is this entirely unsustainable, it also means the federal government cannot afford to pay its current bills, let alone pay for one war, and certainly not two — not to mention three if China invades Taiwan.

Schedule an Interview: EJ Antoni