Rich kid radicals: Several of the Columbia and Barnard students charged in the Butler Library takeover come from elite private schools and multimillion-dollar homes, reports our Jessica Schwalb, Jon Levine, and Jessica Costescu. Meet Emma Biswas, a former robotics team leader at the $65,000-a-year Harker School in California who grew up in a $5.8-million mansion—and whose father is a senior executive at a tech firm with ties to Israel, the very country the rioters were targeting.
Joining Biswas at the May 7 library raid was Luna Firefly Deerfield Cuming Shaw, granddaughter of JFK’s self-described “unofficial photographer”; Marisol Rojas-Cheatham, a Columbia pre-law student raised in a $1.8-million Berkeley home; and Ava Ambrose Tomasula y Garcia, a Yale graduate who previously attended Interlochen Center for the Arts, a private Michigan boarding school with tuition topping $78,000. Others include students from prep schools like Horace Mann, the Putney School, and MacDuffie—all places where tuition can exceed $60,000.
One student, Sophie Elizabeth Jones, even won an “International Friendship” medal before joining the riot that injured two campus security guards.
All in all, a Washington Free Beacon review found no less than eight students charged with trespassing had attended swanky private schools.
READ MORE: From Million-Dollar Homes to Radical Activism—These Posh Private School Alumni Were Among the Arrested Columbia and Barnard Students
Government funds, activist causes: Millions in taxpayer dollars are still flowing to professional associations promoting DEI, radical gender ideology, and anti-Israel activism—despite executive orders from the Trump administration meant to shut off the spigot. The fiscal watchdog Open the Books is sounding the alarm on a number of these groups, reports our Alana Goodman.
One such group, the Society of Health and Physical Educators (SHAPE) America, has raked in more than $2.5 million from the CDC and the Department of Defense’s education arm for children of American service members. SHAPE America helped draft national sex education standards that instruct teachers to introduce second graders to the “range of ways people express their gender” and, by the end of fifth grade, to teach students about hormone blockers and how to distinguish “between cisgender, transgender, gender nonbinary, gender expansive, and gender identity.”
Other associations flagged by OTB include the American Psychological Association, whose member listserv featured pro-Hamas rhetoric and calls for intifada, and the National Council for History Education, which hosted a speaker who called for tearing down a statue of Christopher Columbus as part of an effort to dismantle white supremacy.
While Americans have a First Amendment right to free assembly, that doesn’t mean professional associations are “entitled to tax dollars to grow their ranks,” OTB CEO John Hart told the Free Beacon. His group is urging the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to investigate.
READ MORE: Taxpayer-Funded Professional Associations Push Puberty Blockers, DEI, and Support for Hamas, Watchdog Finds
Away from the Beacon:
- Free Beacon Man of the Year Aidan Maese-Czeropski has made peace with the viral sex tape scandal that cost him his Capitol Hill job. Maese-Czeropski (a.k.a. the “Senate Twink”) told New York Magazine the “only person I negatively affected was myself. I bear those consequences. But I don’t regret fucking in the Senate.”
- Hunter Biden told Breaker that he threatened to “knock out” CNN anchor Jake Tapper during a confrontation at the 2018 Super Bowl. Tapper reportedly called Hunter Biden’s cellphone repeatedly in 2015 as his brother, Beau Biden, lay dying of brain cancer in an attempt to get the scoop on the time of death. Tapper has denied that. Who’s lying? Well, that’s a tough call.
- Democratic megadonors are weighing whether to spend tens of millions of dollars to “find a liberal Joe Rogan,” the New York Times reports. President Donald Trump’s unconventional 2024 media strategy—appearing on non-political podcasts popular with young men—is widely credited with helping him defeat Kamala Harris. Just one hitch: Joe Rogan was the liberal Joe Rogan until the Democratic Party’s lunacy turned him into a Trump voter. Maybe the grand poobahs of the party should address that problem first.
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