Columbia Just Gave Trump a Truly Terrifying Amount of Power

Columbia University has handed the reins of its admission process to the White House.

One of the oldest educational institutions in the country agreed Wednesday to pay the Trump administration $200 million to settle multiple investigations and reinstate billions of dollars’ worth of federal grants.

But the agreement comes with an alarming clause that will deliver granular admissions data on every Columbia applicant to the Trump administration, effectively allowing the White House to decide if the school has admitted enough historically advantaged demographics—or needs to face further investigations.

The school, according to the settlement, must provide admissions data “consistent with 34 C.F.R. § 100.6 and similar regulations” to an independently appointed resolution monitor, alongside analysis of which students were rejected or admitted on the basis of their “race, color, national origin, grade point average” and test performance. The form will be due to the White House by October 1 of each year.

That data will also, subsequently, be made public, according to the settlement details.

But even abiding by the new system won’t save Columbia from future power trips by the White House.

“Nothing in this Agreement prevents the United States (even during the period of the Agreement) from conducting subsequent compliance reviews, investigations, or litigation into Columbia’s future admissions practices to ensure that those practices are in full compliance with all applicable laws and not a proxy for prohibited discrimination,” the settlement reads.

The university, however, did not interpret the contents of the agreement the same way, minimizing the impact of sharing applicants’ sensitive details with the government.

“Critically, Columbia retains control over its academic and operational decisions,” the school wrote in an email blast to students. “As part of the settlement, the University has not admitted wrongdoing and does not agree with the government’s conclusion that it violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.”

Columbia has kowtowed and bowed its head repeatedly to the White House since the Trump administration made an example of it earlier this year, repeatedly attacking the institution over its response to a pro-Palestine protest that took place on campus in 2024. The Trump administration has accused Columbia of engaging in antisemitism for apparently failing to subdue the protests as aggressively as Trump would have liked.

On Tuesday, Columbia said it would be disciplining dozens of pro-Palestine protesters who participated in the occupation of Butler Library in May, which saw multiple arrests at the time. A pro-Palestine group on campus, Columbia for Palestine, said that 80 students had been informed of their punishments, and noted that the move marked “the most suspensions for a single political protest in Columbia campus history.”

Last week, Columbia further capitulated to the Trump administration, adopting a new campus-wide definition of antisemitism that conflates hatred of the Jewish people with general opposition to Zionism. It has also said it would no longer engage with the pro-Palestinian group Columbia University Apartheid Divest, permitted federal immigration officials into its buildings, and allowed the administration to attempt to deport foreign students who support the free state of Palestine, though those cases have encountered judicial roadblocks.

As per the terms of the settlement arrangement, Columbia will also institute a new liaison to the Jewish community in University Life.

South Park used its first new episode in two years to openly ridicule President Trump and Paramount, its own parent company. The episode, titled “Sermon on the Mount,” parodies much of the president’s first six months, portraying him literally in bed with Satan.  

In the episode, the parents of South Park protest against Trump’s insertion of prayer into their schools, and Trump threatens to sue them for $5 billion. Jesus himself then appears and asks the parents to simply capitulate.

 “I didn’t want to come back and be in the school, but I had to because it was part of a lawsuit and the agreement with Paramount,” Jesus says. “You guys saw what happened to CBS? Well, guess who owns CBS? Paramount. You really want to end up like Colbert? You guys got to stop being stupid.… He also has the power to sue and take bribes, and he can do anything to anyone. It’s the fucking president, dude.… South Park is over.”

The episode also depicts Trump with an abnormally small penis, which he harasses Satan with while they’re in bed together. 

This episode is particularly audacious, as it comes after Paramount made two major concessions to Trump by ending The Late Show With Stephen Colbert and settling for $16 million because he didn’t like the way 60 Minutes edited an episode with Kamala Harris during the 2024 campaign. This also comes as South Park Digital Studios announced its own $1.5 billion licensing deal with Paramount. 

“Hard to think of anything more defiant in media & entertainment recently than Trey Parker & Matt Stone going scorched earth on Paramount in a South Park season premiere on the heels of netting a $1.5 billion deal with the very same company,” Puck senior correspondent Dyland Byers wrote on X. 

Bradley Edwards, who’s represented hundreds of survivors of sexual abuse by notorious sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein, affirmed that Epstein’s 50th birthday book—which, The Wall Street Journal reported, includes a lewd message from Donald Trump—exists. He also shared exactly where one can find it.

Asked about the book by MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell Wednesday night, Edwards replied, “Yes, I know that the executors of [Epstein’s] estate are in possession of that book, and I think that after they turn it over, it should probably be set in the Smithsonian as an artifact at this point in time.”

Edwards had said moments earlier that anyone interested in seeing the book could simply reach out to Epstein’s executors, Darren Indyke and Richard Kahn, and, “If they didn’t just voluntarily turn over the book out of fear of reprisal, Congress could issue a subpoena to their attorneys at Patterson or at Troutman—those are the two law firms. I know those attorneys. They would turn the book over immediately. Nobody would have to guess. There wouldn’t need to be a lawsuit. There wouldn’t have [to be a] wait to [do] discovery. You would immediately have the answers. You could flip to the page. Is there a letter, is there not a letter?”

O’Donnell observed that the House Oversight Committee, which on Wednesday voted to subpoena the Justice Department for the Epstein files, might be interested in acting on Edwards’s tip. With confidence, Bradley said the lawyers of Epstein’s executors would comply “immediately,” citing his close working relationship with them.

Democratic Representative Rho Khanna, a member of the Oversight Committee who has led charges to force the Epstein files’ release, told MSNBC shortly thereafter that Edwards’s revelation is a “bombshell.” He indicated that the House Oversight Committee would look to subpoena Epstein’s estate for the birthday book, which, he added, would be much easier than subpoenaing the DOJ.

If Epstein’s birthday book is shared with the public, and it indeed includes Trump’s letter as reported by the WSJ (complete with its cryptic message and sketch of a naked woman), it would be a massive embarrassment for the president, who is currently suing the Journal for defamation over the story, which he asserts is “a fake thing.”

And such embarrassments are piling up for Trump in recent days, as his former friendship with Epstein is coming more clearly into view amid his administration’s scandalous lack of transparency on the deceased financier. On Wednesday, the Journal dropped another whopper, reporting that Trump’s Justice Department informed the president in May that his name is in the Epstein files—seemingly explaining the president’s outbursts and his team’s foot-dragging over the Epstein affair.

President Donald Trump loves artificial intelligence, calling it “one of the most important technological revolutions in the history of the world” at an AI summit in Washington Wednesday.

But he’s got one big problem with the so-called revolutionary tech: its name.

“Everyone around the globe is talking about artificial intelligence…. ‘Artificial,’ I can’t stand it. I don’t even like the name,” he said. “You know, I don’t like anything that’s artificial. So could we straighten that out please? We should change the name.”

Over laughter, he clarified: “I actually mean that.”

Perhaps the president is taking a page out of naturopathic health crusader and vaccine-denier Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s book. The health secretary too has a noted dislike of anything artificial, and has mandated that companies remove chemical food dyes from their products as part of his Make America Healthy Again initiative. (Though interestingly, Kennedy has displayed a disturbing willingness to rely on shoddy AI slop at the Department of Health and Human Services.)

Later Wednesday, Trump signed a trio of executive orders that would deregulate the AI industry and “[get] rid of woke,” as he said in his remarks. One order would ban federal agencies from contracting with AI companies that have so-called “ideological biases.”

We’ve been down this road before: After Elon Musk’s xAI chatbot Grok partly blamed Musk and Trump for deaths in the aftermath of the Texas floods, X updated the chatbot to “not shy away from making claims which are politically incorrect.” This resulted in a chatbot that spewed antisemitic dogwhistles and white supremacy and started calling itself “MechaHitler.”

Not quite at Grok level, the president has different nomenclature in mind for the tech.

“I don’t like the name ‘artificial’ anything because it’s not ‘artificial,’ it’s genius. It’s pure genius,” Trump said.

Trump’s choice of name isn’t surprising. The president has long had an affinity for the word genius, calling himself a “very stable genius” in a 2018 tweet about his mental capacities. He also just signed the GENIUS Act, the first major cryptocurrency legislation.

If only he were still in cahoots with former buddy Musk, we could perhaps expect to see the debut of Grok 5: Stable Genius Intelligence.

Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein had a personal relationship, in Epstein’s own words.

In resurfaced footage of the pedophilic sex trafficker’s 2010 deposition, Epstein confesses to socializing with Trump—but refuses to answer whether or not they spent time with children.

“Have you ever had a personal relationship with Donald Trump?” the interviewer asked.

“What do you mean by ‘personal relationship,’ sir?” Epstein responded.

“Have you socialized with him?” the interviewer clarified, to which Epstein said, “Yes, sir.”

“Yes?” the interviewer pressed.

“Yes, sir,” Epstein repeated.

But Epstein wasn’t able to answer with such clarity when it came to darker topics.

“Have you ever socialized with Donald Trump in the presence of females under the age of 18?” the interviewer asked.

After a brief pause, Epstein failed to answer in the negative, notably under the threat of perjury. Instead, he sidestepped the question completely.

“Though l’d like to answer that question, at least today l’m going to have to assert my Fifth, Sixth, and 14th Amendment rights, sir,” he said.

There is mounting evidence that Trump and Epstein had a remarkably close relationship, though the president has vehemently denied any such connection since his administration became consumed by an internal scandal over Epstein’s alleged “client list.” A Quinnipiac poll published last week found that 63 percent of voters disapprove of the way the Trump administration has handled the Epstein case, which has so far included the Justice Department backtracking on the existence of certain documents and the president chalking up Epstein’s notoriety to a Democrat-invented “hoax.”

Prior to his death, Epstein described himself as one of Trump’s “closest friends.” The socialites were named and photographed together several times, Trump allegedly penned a salacious letter to Epstein for the pedophile’s 50th birthday, the real estate mogul reportedly flew on Epstein’s jets between Palm Beach and New York at least seven times, and the first time that Trump slept with his now-wife Melania was reportedly aboard Epstein’s plane, nicknamed the “Lolita Express.”

In a 2002 New York magazine profile of Epstein, Trump said he had known Epstein for 15 years and referred to him as a “terrific guy.”

“It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side,” Trump said at the time.

A new report pokes gaping holes in the Trump administration’s already unconvincing assurances that no classified information was disclosed during the March “Signalgate” fiasco.

The Washington Post reports that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s infamous Signal messages regarding strikes on Yemen—which were shared in a group chat that inadvertently included Atlantic editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg—derived from a classified email from General Michael Kurilla, according to evidence obtained by the Pentagon inspector general’s office.

Notably, Kurilla’s email was classified as “SECRET/NOFORN,” with the “SECRET” label indicating material whose unauthorized disclosure “could be expected to cause serious damage to the national security,” and “NOFORN” (for “No Foreign Dissemination”) denoting information that is not to be disseminated to non–U.S. citizens or foreign governments, nationals, or international organizations.

Trump officials have, time and again, insisted that nothing classified was shared during the debacle. Hegseth, for his part, dodged questions about the classification level of the information he shared during a June congressional hearing.

During an exchange with U.S. Representative and Marine veteran Seth Moulton, Hegseth claimed that whether the information was classified was not something “that would be disclosed in a public forum.”

Moulton pushed back, observing, “You can very well disclose whether or not it was classified. It’s not classified to disclose whether or not it was classified. And in fact, DOD regulations state that any classified information has to be labeled with its classification—was it classified ‘secret’ or ‘top secret.’”

“What’s not classified is that it was an incredibly successful mission against the Houthis,” Hegseth replied, leading Moulton to conclude, “OK, so it was classified,” before asking, once more, if the defense secretary was “trying to say that the information was unclassified.”

“I’m not trying to say anything,” Hegseth said.

A federal judge has barred ICE from detaining Kilmar Abrego Garcia should he be released from custody in Tennessee, ordering Wednesday that he be returned to Maryland to “ensure that his case is handled as it would have been before he was wrongly sent to El Salvador,” in accordance with the Supreme Court’s prior ruling.  

U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis issued a memorandum prohibiting the Department of Homeland Security from “taking Abrego Garcia into immediate ICE custody in Tennessee.” The judge added that Abrego Garcia must be restored to his ICE Order of Supervision in Baltimore.

The judge also ordered that if the government were to initiate proceedings to remove Abrego Garcia to a third country, as they’d previously threatened to do, they would need to provide 72 business hours’ notice to the plaintiff and his counsel. 

“Defendants have done little to assure the Court that absent intervention, Abrego Garcia’s due process rights will be protected,” she wrote.

Abrego Garcia’s attorneys had previously requested a 30-day stay on his release from pretrial detention, claiming that he feared immigration authorities would immediately deport him again. DHS officials confirmed this was their plan but were unable to offer any details as to where they hoped to send him. 

Meanwhile, it seems that after months away from home, Abrego Garcia may finally be headed back to Maryland. 

U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw in Tennessee denied a motion from the government to revoke a magistrate judge’s order for Abrego Garcia’s release Wednesday, ruling that the government had failed to meet the burden to prove Abrego Garcia was a flight risk or danger to the community. The judge said Abrego Garcia could be released on bond with conditions.

Crenshaw found there was evidence that Abrego Garcia had smuggled individuals from the border but not that he was a member of or affiliated with any gang, as the government claims. Crenshaw referred to testimony provided by a Homeland Security agent who said that Abrego Garcia transported Barrio 18 and MS-13 gang members, claiming it “cuts against the already slim evidence demonstrating Abrego is a member of MS-13.”

“For the court to find that Abrego is a member of or in affiliation with MS-13, it would have to make so many inferences from the Government’s proffered evidence in its favor that such conclusion would border on fanciful,” Crenshaw said. 

Well, The Wall Street Journal has confirmed what has been apparent for quite some time: President Donald Trump’s name is in the Epstein files multiple times.

An exclusive Wednesday report in the Journal states that Attorney General Pam Bondi notified the president that his name was in the files back in May. The report directly contradicts Trump’s claim that Bondi told him he was not in the files, which he told reporters last week.

This revelation offers some explanation as to why the Trump administration, after years of promising to release the files, abruptly decided that there was no further work to be done on the matter. It also may explain why the president himself has been so quick to anger and defensiveness in recent days any time the subject of his friendship with the defamed sexual predator has come up. The confirmation of Trump’s presence in the infamous documents comes just as Speaker Mike Johnson ended a legislative session early just to avoid voting on whether to release more files.

All of the internal uproar over this, from FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino going AWOL at work, to Trump calling anyone who is still worried about this code red–level issue a “bad person” can be linked back to the fact that Trump does not want people to know that his name is in the files. If past is prologue, the administration will likely dismiss this report as “fake news” from a biased outlet. But those charges likely won’t stick with an issue of this magnitude. In fact, the president seems to only be driving attention to the story at this point, as each distraction Trump has brought up since he decided to close the case has only led to increased scrutiny from the press—as well as both his most vehement enemies and his most loyal supporters.

National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard went full Russian asset Wednesday during a wild White House press briefing. 

Standing behind a White House podium, Gabbard started quoting old Russian intelligence and claimed that Moscow’s foreign intelligence agency SVR was in possession of “high-level DNC emails that detailed evidence of Hillary’s ‘psycho-emotional problems, uncontrolled fits of anger, aggression, and cheerfulness.’ And that then-Secretary Clinton was allegedly on a daily regimen of heavy tranquilizers.”

That strange little detail came from the freshly declassified 2020 report by the House Intelligence Committee that Gabbard insists holds evidence that former President Barack Obama committed a so-called “coup” against Donald Trump by alleging Russian interference in the 2016 election. 

According to the report, ahead of Trump’s ascendance to the White House, Obama asked for an Intelligence Community Assessment to “review their work to date” on Russia’s influence campaign. Gabbard claims that issues with the production of that January 2017 report are evidence that the Obama administration plotted to spread a false narrative that Russian President Vladimir Putin aspired to see Trump in the White House—a preference that the foreign autocrat readily admitted.  

When asked about it Wednesday, Gabbard could not account for why Trump had not declassified these supposedly damning materials during his first term. 

She was also unable to provide any explanation for why Trump’s secretary of state, former Florida Senator Marco Rubio, had made opposite findings when he spearheaded a 2020 Senate Intelligence Committee report. That report found that Putin had directed an “aggressive, multifaceted effort to influence, or attempt to influence, the outcome of the 2016 presidential election” and had done so with the intent of weakening Clinton’s campaign and seeing Trump elected. 

It’s also probably worth remembering that Trump’s first-term White House was reportedly “awash in speed,” handing out powerful sedatives and stimulants like candy.

It should come as no surprise that Gabbard is already parroting Russian intelligence because it’s exactly the kind of thing that concerned critics of her nomination—and enthused Moscow. 

Gabbard has previously defended Russia’s incursion into Ukraine, claiming that the U.S. had provoked Russian aggression and that Ukraine housed U.S.-funded biolabs that were developing secret bioweapons—a piece of foreign state propaganda that earned her the reputation as a Russian asset. 

Former Virginia Representative Abigail Spanberger sounded the alarm about Gabbard on MSNBC in November, noting that, if confirmed, Gabbard would be responsible for putting together the president’s daily briefings and would likely include Russian propaganda. 

Outgoing Republican Senator Thom Tillis just wants President Trump to “release the damn files” in regard to Jeffrey Epstein, the deceased pedophile and Trump’s former friend.

“The promise to release the files during the campaign was either overplayed and we got a nothingburger if the files get released, or it’s something really disturbing and that’s actually an even more compelling reason to release it,” Tillis said at an Axios event on Wednesday.

Tillis, a North Carolinian who has said he will resign at the end of his third term next year, is one of the few Republicans in the Senate who has been consistent on this, as the rest of the party capitulates to Trump and attempts to distract the public by voting against further inquiries into the files’ release.

Tillis also noted that he doesn’t see this issue just going away during Congress’s summer recess, as House Speaker Mike Johnson hopes it will.

“I think the files should be released, let the light of day, let the sun shine through, and that’s the best way to get past it,” Tillis said. “Otherwise, if anybody thinks that this is going to go away because the House left a day early or something, it’s going to be like those zombies in The Walking Dead: Every time you think you’ve killed it, another one is just going to come running out of the closet after you.”

Tillis recently made waves for his spirited opposition to Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which the senator referred to as a betrayal of Republican promises.