We’re all familiar with the time-honored creed, “Snitches get stitches.” In states like Oregon, it turns out they get taxpayer-funded therapy.
That’s according to the Free Beacon‘s Aaron Sibarium, who investigated the “bias response hotlines” popping up in states and cities across the country. In Oregon, for example, “trauma-informed operators” overseen by the state’s justice department field calls outlining “bias incidents”—cases of “non-criminal” speech allegedly motivated by prejudice or hate, like “racist images” or “offensive ‘jokes’ about someone’s identity.”
Sibarium called the Oregon hotline to report a fictitious incident in which he said he was a Muslim concerned about the “genocide” in Gaza and felt “targeted” by an Israeli flag on his neighbor’s front door. It took just 20 minutes for an operator to log the incident in a state database as a “warning sign.” The operator went on to suggest installing security cameras. “He also informed this reporter that, ‘as a victim of a bias incident,’ he could apply for taxpayer-funded therapy through the state’s Crime Victims Compensation Program, which covers counseling costs for bias incidents as well as crimes,” Sibarium writes.
Similar reporting systems are up and running in Connecticut, Vermont, Philadelphia, and Maryland. In the City of Brotherly Love, residents can fill out an online form that asks for the “exact address,” name, and gender identity of the alleged offender. The city uses that information to “contact the offending party and try to do training so that it doesn’t happen again,” according to a spokeswoman for the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations.
“The systems, which include hotlines and online portals, resemble the bias response teams commonplace on college campuses, which allow students to report each other, anonymously and without verification, for ideological faux pas,” Sibarium notes. “What sets the state-run systems apart are their ties to law enforcement.”
Columbia students went back to class for the start of the spring semester on Tuesday. You’ll never guess what happened next: Keffiyeh-clad student radicals stormed an Israeli history class to pass out flyers that glorified Hamas, threatened violence, and depicted a crushed Star of David.
The radicals, our Jessica Costescu and Jessica Schwalb report, filmed themselves as they “passed out propaganda and harassed enrolled students, many of whom are Jewish.” One flyer read, “THE ENEMY WILL NOT SEE TOMORROW,” and included an image of Hamas terrorists brandishing rocket launchers and machine guns. Another showed the Star of David underneath a boot with the caption, “CRUSH ZIONISM.” A third depicted a flaming Israeli flag and threatened to “BURN ZIONISM TO THE GROUND.” Just another day in the Ivy League.
The history class explores the complexity of Israeli politics from its 1948 establishment to the present day. The course description focuses on the various demographics that “create the fabric of Israeli politics and society,” including the “Palestinian citizens of Israel.”
Lishi Baker, a Middle Eastern history major who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon, said the ordeal left him “extremely disturbed.” He pledged to continue taking the course, saying, “Protesters can’t stop us from an entire semester of learning.”
“Not only am I paying a lot of money to be here, but I actually want to engage in the class, and it’s really frustrating when there’s students at this school who don’t care about learning, don’t care about class, and are intentionally disruptive and intimidating inside of a classroom,” he added.
Columbia’s interim president, Katrina Armstrong, responded to the event by pledging to “move quickly to investigate.”
Over on Capitol Hill, Elise Stefanik made a name for herself by grilling Ivy League presidents who came before the House Education Committee. On Tuesday, it was her turn in the hot seat.
Stefanik, our Alana Goodman reports, testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as part of her bid to become Trump’s U.N. ambassador. Stefanik is widely expected to receive the backing of lawmakers from both parties, and her confirmation hearing was mostly smooth sailing, with the New York Republican pledging to combat anti-Israel bias and defund the Hamas-linked UNRWA.
Still, there were some contentious moments. Maryland’s Chris Van Hollen, who long positioned himself as a defender of Israel’s security before he soured on the Jewish state, “pressed Stefanik over whether she believes Israel has a ‘biblical right to the entire West Bank,'” writes Goodman. “When Stefanik responded ‘yes,’ Van Hollen argued that her view would make it ‘very difficult’ to bring ‘peace and stability to the Middle East.'”
He didn’t stop there, pressing Stefanik on whether she believed Palestinians have a “right to self-determination.” Stefanik put him in his place: “I support human rights for all, and I think it’s a disgrace that Hamas and Hezbollah have stripped human rights of the Palestinian people,” she said. “And we need to ensure that we are standing up for human rights, and Israel is standing up for human rights. It is a beacon of human rights in the region.” Expect to hear similar rhetoric coming from Turtle Bay soon.
Away from the Beacon:
- NBC News is out with a report detailing claims leveled by Pete Hegseth’s former sister-in-law that the defense secretary nominee “caused his second wife to fear for her safety.” Buried nine paragraphs down is a response from Hegseth’s second wife herself, who wrote, “I do not believe your information to be accurate, and I have cc’d my lawyer.”
- Resistance hero Alexander Vindman, who helped blow the whistle on the Trump-Ukraine call that led to the Don’s first impeachment, didn’t get a preemptive pardon from Joe Biden, and his wife Rachel isn’t happy. “I cannot begin to describe the level of betrayal and hurt I feel,” she wrote on Bluesky. When a follower suggested she “should have asked,” Rachel replied, “Have you thought of shutting the fuck up and not talking about things you know nothing about?” Seems like a nice lady.
- A left-wing Episcopal bishop, delivering a sermon to a crowd that included Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, asked the newly sworn-in leaders to protect “gay, lesbian, and transgender children”—and Vance gave the cameras a reaction straight out of The Office.
- Former FBI director Chris Wray wrote his boss, Joe Biden, to advise against a potential commutation for Leonard Peltier, who killed two FBI agents in the 70s. Commuting his sentence, Wray wrote, “would be shattering to the victims’ loved ones and undermine the principles of justice and accountability.” Biden ignored him. Turn on your television, though, and you’ll hear a whole lot about Trump’s pardons for folks who roughed up law enforcement officials—and not so much about this Biden pardon.
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