North Carolina Becomes the Latest Victim of a Far-Right Scam

Handing a major win to a manufactured conservative campaign to dismantle safeguards for equality, the governing board of North Carolina’s 17 public university systems on Thursday banned its diversity, equity, and inclusion policy.

The move follows a last-minute plea from lawmakers, students, and business leaders who gathered at the state legislature on Wednesday to urge against the ban and extol the virtues of DEI programs.

“Our world has become so different, and it’s changing so rapidly, and North Carolina is evolving alongside these global changes,” state Representative Maria Cervania said during the last-minute meeting on Wednesday. “Our businesses know this. They’ve told us they want a workforce that can keep up with our new, globalized world. DEI is actually the best program that’s helping equip our students for that.”

The Board of Governors for the UNC system unanimously approved the university DEI policy in 2019, according to local news outlet WRAL. Following the anti-racism and anti-police brutality protests of 2020, conservatives have sharpened their knives to dismantle hallmarks of racial progress. Those attacks resulted in a manufactured crisis over critical race theory, arguing it’s bad to teach college students factual—but ugly—U.S. history. Soon after, the same people targeted DEI by arguing it’s “reverse discrimination,” a concept that does not exist.

UNC’s board—which initially approved its DEI policy unanimously—plans to replace DEI with a new policy that prohibits universities from “endorsing pro-diversity views—or any other social or political messaging,” WRAL reported Wednesday, an all-or-nothing claim that, if precedent is any indicator, will more than likely only be enforced in one direction.

The Speaker of the House just echoed a racist conspiracy theory—one that has inspired mass shooters and hate crimes.

On Fox News Thursday morning, Mike Johnson expounded on the “great replacement” theory—the idea that Democrats and other elites are allowing mass illegal immigration to displace white people and create a loyal voting base.

“Why would the president allow this? Because they wanted to turn these people into voters. That’s plain. And they want to change the outcome of the Census in six years. It sounds sinister, and it is, and they’ve exacted untold damage on the country,” Johnson said.

The theory has been cited by several mass shooters, notably the man who murdered 10 people at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, two years ago and a shooter who killed 20 at an El Paso Walmart in 2019. And Johnson is not the first conservative to parrot this kind of bigotry. Every so often, right-wing influencers like to bring it up, particularly during election years, causing like-minded politicians to quickly repost it. TV host Tucker Carlson has helped fuel it, and members of Congress like Representatives Elise Stefanik and Matt Gaetz, as well as Senator J.D. Vance, have all repeated it. Recently, Elon Musk has amplified the theory to his millions of followers on X (formerly Twitter).

As the man third in line to the presidency, Johnson should know better than to push this racist ideology, but he’s alluded to undocumented immigrants voting before, despite having no proof. Leaving aside the moral issues with the theory, the Biden administration has also deported many undocumented immigrants, with his immigration policies even being attacked from the left.

It’s telling that Johnson has mentioned this theory at a time when his party is in disarray and as he’s trying to shore up support from the far right with an eye on November. Today’s leaders of the Republican Party think that racist immigration stances are the way to political victory, even though that’s been thoroughly disproven.

Donald Trump believes that his close relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin would lead to the freedom of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who has been imprisoned in the country for over a year—but he’s apparently not willing to use that power unless he wins another term.

“Evan Gershkovich, the Reporter from The Wall Street Journal, who is being held by Russia, will be released almost immediately after the Election, but definitely before I assume Office,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Thursday. “He will be HOME, SAFE, AND WITH HIS FAMILY. Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, will do that for me, but not for anyone else, and WE WILL BE PAYING NOTHING!”

To an extent, Trump’s approach is nothing new: Republicans have been interfering in diplomatic efforts undertaken by Democratic presidents for decades to bolster their electoral chances. What is novel, however, is that Trump is openly sabotaging President Joe Biden’s efforts to bring a wrongly detained American journalist home.  

In 1968, then–presidential candidate Richard Nixon employed Anna Chennault to undermine Vietnam peace talks that were taking place in Paris, delaying the end of the war and bolstering the former vice president’s chances of taking the White House. Twelve years later, in a successful bid to dampen President Jimmy Carter’s chances for reelection, former Texas Governor John Connally met with Middle Eastern leaders in 1980 to strategically delay the release of American hostages being held in Iran until after the presidential election. Doing so practically helped contribute to Ronald Reagan’s landslide victory and ushered in a new era of conservatism under President Ronald Reagan.

Regardless of the precedent, Trump is employing Gershkovich in a cynical, disturbing, and dehumanizing manner. In the former president’s version of events, Gershkovich is not a man being wrongly held in prison by one of America’s adversaries, but a political prop being used to advertise Trump’s close relationship to Vladimir Putin. If Trump really can help free Gershkovich, he should do it now—not in six months. Or never. 

The Justice Department on Thursday filed a massive antitrust lawsuit against Ticketmaster and its parent company, Live Nation, accusing them of holding an illegal monopoly on live event tickets and driving up prices.

The suit comes after Ticketmaster crashed and prevented people from purchasing tickets to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour—inadvertently exposing the ticketing giant’s monopoly on the shows—and argues that Ticketmaster acted like a Mafia don for venues and artists alike by requiring lengthy exclusive contracts, threatening lost revenue if they use other ticket sellers, and preventing artists who don’t use Live Nation services from performing at venues with Live Nation contracts.

Attorneys general from 30 states filed the lawsuit in federal court in Manhattan on Wednesday, overseen by U.S. attorney general Merrick Garland, who released a statement announcing the lawsuit:

We allege that Live Nation relies on unlawful, anticompetitive conduct to exercise its monopolistic control over the live events industry in the United States at the cost of fans, artists, smaller promoters, and venue operators. The result is that fans pay more in fees, artists have fewer opportunities to play concerts, smaller promoters get squeezed out, and venues have fewer real choices for ticketing services. It is time to break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster.

Dan Wall, Live Nation’s executive vice president for corporate and regulatory affairs, refuted the suit’s premise, arguing Live Nation’s revenue has declined due to competition and that the suit will have no impact on ticket prices. He included a graph to belay his point, showing the ticket retailer’s revenue significantly lower than that of tech giants Apple, Meta, and Google.

“It was evident in our discussions with the DOJ Front Office that they just did not want to believe the numbers. The data conflicted too much with their preconception that Live Nation belongs in the ranks of the other “tech monopolists” they have targeted,” Wall wrote. “It is also clear that we are another casualty of this Administration’s decision to turn over antitrust enforcement to a populist urge that simply rejects how antitrust law works.”

The Justice Department allowed Live Nation and Ticketmaster to merge in 2010 despite bipartisan opposition to it—so long as they didn’t retaliate against venues for using other vendors for 10 years. A 2019 department investigation found Live Nation repeatedly violated that agreement.

Trump stooge and Republican Representative Andy Ogles has been caught in a major ethics scandal of his own making.

According to 11 amendments that he filed to his campaign finance reports on Wednesday, Ogles didn’t actually loan his campaign $320,000, as he previously claimed. That begs the question: Where did the money come from?

In November, the Tennessee congressman was found to have some irregularities in his campaign reports, thanks to an investigation by a Nashville TV station, NewsChannel 5. Among them was a $320,000 loan to his campaign from himself, even though his personal finance reports didn’t show a place where such a loan could have originated—not even a personal bank account.

In his amendments, Ogles says that his campaign loan was actually $20,000 instead of $320,000, a sizable oversight, and raises the question of what explains the inconsistencies. Former Representative George Santos is currently facing criminal charges for inflating campaign fundraising numbers—after also reporting he loaned himself a sizable amount of money. Santos was later found to have spent campaign dollars on casino trips, Botox treatments, and OnlyFans payments. Is Ogles hiding something like Santos?

It’s not an outlandish question, as the two have one glaring similarity: making up parts of their past. Ogles claimed to have studied policy and economics at Middle Tennessee State University and calls himself an economist, but only has one community college economics course under his belt, which he barely passed. He later claimed on a 2009 résumé to have a degree in international relations, but NewsChannel 5 found that his major was actually liberal studies—a hilarious degree for a Republican politician.

Although Ogles’s lies aren’t nearly as outrageous as Santos’s whoppers, he also has another possible financial crime on his résumé: $25,000 raised supposedly to build a garden in memory of his stillborn child. Except that the garden was never built, and Ogles refuses to say what happened with the money. With a history of lies piling up in his short congressional career, perhaps a criminal investigation of Ogles is necessary.