Good morning, and welcome to Broad + Liberty's Weekly Reads.

Subscribe to our daily email list and get the best of Broad + Liberty delivered straight to your inbox.

1. Are Soros-funded campus protest groups colluding with progressive prosecutors?

By Ben Mannes
 

Many locations where organizations linked to George Soros have funded a national wave of anti-Israel protests on college campuses which directly correlate to prosecutors whose elections were also funded by Soros. This week, Philadelphia joined this unfortunate group with encampments appearing at the University of Pennsylvania.

Soros-funded prosecutors have dropped or refused charges against protesters who have been arrested for a myriad of offenses related to the antisemitic occupations on American college campuses. The correlation in funding between groups committing intimidation, harassment, and assaults toward Jews and the elected law enforcement officials refusing to prosecute them raises uncomfortable questions of conflict and corruption.
 

Why It Matters. As noted in a new report from New York Post, the National Students for Justice for Palestine organization is funded by a number of nonprofits that themselves are funded by Soros and others. At three colleges, US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR), a Soros-funded group, pays “fellows” who start protests on campus. The Post reports that the USCPR pays up to $7,800 to community-based fellows and between $2,880 and $3,660 for campus-based “fellows” who are expected to spend eight hours per week organizing “campaigns led by Palestinian organizations,” and are trained to “rise up, to revolution.”

Since 2017, the USCPR has received at least $300,000 from Soros’ Open Society Foundations. The group has also received $355,000 in funds from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund since 2019.

Quotable. “The conflict issue requires an analysis of the closeness of the relationship,” said former federal prosecutor and Chester County DA Thomas Hogan. “I never recused myself from prosecuting an official from my own political party, having prosecuted the close friend of my own campaign finance director. Of course, since I was prosecuting, not declining to prosecute, the dynamics were different.”

Continue Reading

2. From The Editors: The $67 court fee we refuse to pay

From the Editors
 

Pennsylvania is better than most states when it comes to open records requests.

When a citizen is denied a request, he or she may appeal to the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records. The OOR is a quasi-judicial agency that reviews the request, reviews the government’s response, and issues a legal judgment on the merits.

If, after this ruling, the citizen is disappointed, they may still elevate the matter to court on their own behalf, but at least they’ve had the chance for an outside body to review. The OOR is incredibly successful in carrying out its mission, and we believe it does an extraordinary job of weighing the legal issues of each appeal.
 

Why It Matters. But once the appeals start, court fees make the process more onerous, and let the government push individuals around in a way the law doesn’t intend.

"Broad + Liberty’s reporter, Todd Shepherd, filed an RTK with the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office back in 2021. The appeal at the OOR was in his favor. The city decided to take the matter to court.

The case has been stalled for a variety of reasons, but recently Shepherd intended to file a Motion of Nonparticipation. This motion would keep the court case going, but would signal to the court that Shepherd did not intend to appear at any hearings related to the case. In other words, Shepherd was going to let the OOR’s final determination be his legal argument, and there was nothing left for him to do but let a judge decide if the OOR was correct.

The only way Shepherd could file this motion in Philadelphia court is to pay a $67 filing fee.”
 

Quotable. “If a government can herd or guide a citizen into a situation in which they will face death by a thousand cuts — or perhaps better to say death by a thousand fees — then the government will start to take that choice more and more over time.

The answer here is for fees to be waived in RTK matters in which the requester was not the appellant. Or, at the very least, a citizen should be able to file a motion for nonparticipation free of charge in matters they did not instigate.”

Continue Reading

3. Podcast

4. Lightning Round

• Guy Ciarrocchi: Rest in peace, Earl M. Baker

• Christine Flowers: God made dogs to keep us humble

• Pennsylvania Prison Society visit to Delco prison presents mixed bag of findings

• Thom Nickels: Health and wellness in the Holy Land

• Beth Ann Rosica: Should taxpayer-funded organizations be subject to the state Right to Know Law?

• Gregory Wrightstone: Gov. Shapiro’s misguided attempt to cure a very healthy climate

5. What we're reading

It’s always hilarious to hear Democratic politicians complain that the mainstream press isn’t treating them fairly. Their Republican opponents would have a lot to say about that, we’re sure. This week at POLITICO, Jack Shafer pushes back on President Biden’s whining about the press, noting that the commander-in-chief “is so press averse that members of his own party have begged him to spend more time with reporters.” Meanwhile, former President Trump is happy to sit a long, fairly contentious interview with TIME magazine, despite their long-standing animosity to him. You can’t complain about the press if you’re afraid to talk to them!