May 3, 2025

JUST ASK BOB JONES UNIVERSITY: Trump Might Have a Strong Case in His Attack on Harvard’s Nonprofit Status. “When I started reporting for this column, I thought this was a direct threat to the First Amendment. That’s what the folks at The Wall Street Journal editorial page found. But I am not so sure anymore. After I talked to several lawyers, I found that the case for Trump’s approach is better than I thought. It all goes back to 1983 and an 8-1 Supreme Court decision called Bob Jones University v. the United States. Back then, the Christian university didn’t allow interracial dating, which it considered a violation of biblical values. The IRS decided that since the United States was firmly opposed to racial discrimination as “public policy,” the school should lose its nonprofit status. The Supremes overwhelmingly agreed. You might have noticed that 40 years later, the Supreme Court ruled that Harvard unconstitutionally discriminated by race in its admissions.”

Posted at 8:00 am by Glenn Reynolds 32

FLOOR OR CEILING? Good question, especially in the context of how President Donald Trump’s 2026 budget proposal is viewed, says OpenTheBooks CEO John Hart. As an “opening bid” in the congressional budget struggle, Trump has put down a marker in what should become a genuine negotiation about the future size and power of the federal government.

And as if to demonstrate just how serious he is about this, Hart offers this gem of a recommendation:

“My recommendation would be to reduce the number of agencies by 437 so we end up with four – the Departments of Defense, State, Treasury and Justice – just as Milton Friedman famously prescribed a quarter century ago. As a compromise, Congress could consolidate everything else into a Department of Interstate Commerce.”

Posted at 7:46 am by Mark Tapscott 9

IT’S COME TO THIS:

Posted at 7:30 am by Glenn Reynolds 53

May 2, 2025

OPEN THREAD: Ring in the weekend.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds 1370

WORDS MEAN WHAT THE AUTHORITIES SAY THEY MEAN, COMRADE:

Don’t ask me, ask the Stasi who run Germany now.

Posted at 7:41 pm by Glenn Reynolds 305

SCIENCE: Texas Attorney General launches investigation into companies illegally marketing toothpaste. “The investigation was launched amid a growing body of scientific evidence demonstrating that excessive fluoride exposure is not safe for children. For example, in August 2024, the Department of Health and Human Services’ National Toxicology Program released a meta-analysis that found a statistically significant association between fluoride exposure and lower IQ scores in children. The CDC states that parents should only put a rice-sized “smear” of toothpaste on the brush until the child turns three years old. . . .However, despite both these and additional guidelines, toothpaste manufacturers continue to flavor their products and deceptively market them in ways that encourage kids to ingest fluoride toothpaste and mislead their parents to use far more than the safe and recommended amount of fluoride toothpaste.”

Posted at 7:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds 54

100 DAYS AND TRUMP SUPPORTERS ARE GLOATING: Michael Walsh writes: “Stock market up big, inflation down, jobs good, NPR defunded, Poison Ivy rackets soon to be stripped of their tax exemptions, China reeling from tariffs. What’s not to like?”

Lots more work to do, though. But good news. Still, beware:

Posted at 6:38 pm by Glenn Reynolds 160

I RECOMMEND A CAN OPENER, TOO:

Also guns and ammo.

Posted at 6:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds 348

THE SONG REMAINS THE SAME:

Shot:  California’s high-speed rail leaders sound alarm over project’s financial future.

As California’s High-Speed Rail Authority awaits word from the Trump administration over its future support for the train, leaders who oversee the project sounded the alarm about its financial viability.

The authority’s board of directors voted Thursday to approve contracts for the development of Central Valley station designs and to solicit and approve construction bids for the Fresno station. Ahead of the votes, board member James Ghielmetti raised concerns over the potential loss of funds from the Department of Transportation and the risk of moving forward on payment commitments when federal funding is in jeopardy.

“I’m very nervous about receiving the federal funding,” Ghielmetti said. “I want to make sure my fellow board members are aware that if the federal money does not come through, somebody’s got to backstop these contracts.”

—The L.A. Times, yesterday.

Chaser:

Posted at 5:41 pm by Ed Driscoll 139

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: College students don’t spend much time studying.

They’re not more likely to have paying jobs than earlier generations, research shows. In 2024, the average first-year student reported spending 5.3 hours per week in campus activities and clubs, 9.3 hours working for pay and 11.9 hours relaxing and socializing.

Yet most think they’re working hard. “Sixty-four percent of four-year college students say that they put ‘a lot’ of effort into schoolwork, yet only 6 percent report spending more than 20 hours per week studying and doing homework,” Hess and Fournier write. As a result of the low-expectations culture, “students are not getting the opportunity to master the work habits, knowledge, or skills that a college education is supposed to provide.”

Professors complain that students complain about what used to be a normal reading load and normal writing assignments. Everything’s too hard, they say. But used to inflated grades in high school in college, they expect to get A’s.

Replacing “gentleman’s C’s” with “warm-body A’s” was not an improvement.

Posted at 4:54 pm by Stephen Green 95

SPRINGTIME FOR THE BEEB: ‘We’ll burn Jews like Hitler did:’ BBC contributor in Gaza celebrates Jewish civilian death.

BBC Arabic journalist Samer Elzaenen has called for Jews to be burned “as Hitler did,” The Telegraph quoted him as saying in a Saturday report.

Elzaenen, 33, who has been reporting from Gaza, has been posting a series of statements on social media that condemns Jewish people, and has also called for violence against them, the Telegraph added, noting that his social media activity in the past 10 years has endorsed and celebrated more than 30 attacks on Israeli Jewish civilians. The social media posts were originally unearthed by The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA).

He has appeared on the Arabic-language branch of the UK public broadcaster more than a dozen times since Hamas’s terrorist attacks on October 7, 2023. He called the Hamas terrorists who entered Israel that day “resistance fighters.”

Well, somebody’s auditioning for a sweet gig with Reuters: “Stephen Jukes, global news editor for Reuters, the British wire service, has ordered his scribes not to use the word terror to refer to the Sept. 11 atrocity, the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz reports (second item). ‘We all know that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter and that Reuters upholds the principle that we do not use the word terrorist,’ Jukes writes in an internal memo. ‘To be frank, it adds little to call the attack on the World Trade Center a terrorist attack.’”

Posted at 4:30 pm by Ed Driscoll 45

FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY [VIP]: ‘This Is the Symbol of America, Man.’ “It’s time for your much-needed break from the serious news, and this week, we learn why Disney World is the most magical place on Earth, how to rescue a bald eagle, and what not to do with a corpse on a New York City subway car.”

Posted at 3:21 pm by Stephen Green 6