Jul 1, 2025 | Harvard in violation, Alligator Alcatraz open for business, dad jumps overboard to save 5-year-old girl

Hi everyone!
 

Harvard has been found to be in violation of civil rights law by the Trump administration and could lose the rest of their federal funding. Allowing all of those student protesters and agitators to spit on, scream at, and harass Jewish students in the wake of the 2023 Hamas terror attack against Israel was not legal, turns out. Similar protests took place at other schools, some 60 of which are still under investigation by the Trump administration.

The issue with Harvard is that this is our flagship university. It would be a stretch to say that as goes Harvard goes the nation, but it's the oldest American university, founded in 1636, and has educated eight of our presidents, which is more than Yale's five, and the rest of the Ivy League. No other school can boast as many presidents as Harvard has produced. It has global name recognition for excellence, and its failure to maintain it is a blight on American academia writ large—which let's face it, was already in trouble.

It may seem like selective enforcement on Harvard by Trump, but with being the leading school comes responsibility to y'know, not allow religious harassment on school grounds. And this religious harassment was organized and seemingly sanctioned by the school. What was amazing was that now-deposed school president Claudine Gay was all about free speech and 1A when asked about the protests and harassment, saying that students had a right to free speech. But they'd had the lowest free speech rankings of any school in the country, so that protest from Ms. Gay was pretty hollow.

Trump is heading down to Florida today to check out Ron DeSantis' new Alligator Alcatraz, the Ron DeSantis built detention facility for illegal immigrants. He took off this morning from the White House, speaking a little to reporters ahead of time. When asked about it, he gave some alligator survival tips, saying "Don't run in a straight line... and you know what? Your chances go up by about one percent. Not a good thing."

I watched the keynote speech given by Zohran Mamdani to the organization of student socialists back in 2021, and it turns out that, in addition to being in favor of the workers rising up and "seizing the means of production" ala Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, he joined the socialist party to fight in the Palestinian cause against Israel. This guy, who grew up privileged with a film director mom and a professor dad, who attended elite American schools from Bank Street to Bronx Science to Bowdoin, got into politics to fight for the cause of a foreign group of people against another foreign nation.

What use is that to America? What good is that for the people of New York? People should not get into American politics to further their stance on overseas conflicts and ancient gripes that have nothing to do with us. Get into politics to fix potholes and help your neighbors, to do right by America, not all this other madness. Sure, the Israel conflict is important to lots of people, they are a strong ally, the only Democracy in the Middle East, a noble nation and all the rest of it, but fighting for the extermination of their nation, or for its furtherance as motivates Ted Cruz apparently, should not be the driver of American political ambition.

I saw a clip of rapper J French last week who spoke about Americanness, and what we are as Americans. It was pretty amazing. He said being American "is our ethnicity." French noted that it was a "new ethnicity," but that all this talk about our ancestors is just that: we're not African, we're not Irish, we're not Italian—we are Americans. This crosses racial and religious lines. Culture, values, and the mix of genealogies that come with being American make us what we are. Our country and our people are exactly that: ours. And we should be our priority.

A 5-year-old girl went overboard on a Disney cruise ship and her dad went straight into the drink after her. He had to tread water for 20 minutes while the rescue boat was launched and they came to get them. "On the last day of our Dream voyage and it is an At Sea Day," said a cruise-goer on Facebook. "A girl fell overboard from the 4th deck & her dad went in after her. Right after the incident we heard on the loudspeaker MOB Port side!! Thankfully the DCL rescue team was on it immediately and both were saved!" The video of the rescue is below, or you can check it out here.