Massachusetts Lawmakers Create DEI Hiring Program to Give Muslims Priority for State Jobs

Liberal lawmakers in true-blue Massachusetts are creating a new commission which is essentially a DEI hiring program that will benefit Muslims looking for state jobs.

When did it even become the job of lawmakers to do anything like this? And why do it specifically for Muslims? It doesn’t even sound legal.

It’s just another reminder of what comes with one-party rule.

FOX News reports:

DEI hiring boost for one blue state’s Muslim commission initiative flies in face of Trump’s anti-woke push

Massachusetts lawmakers are taking steps toward prioritizing the hiring of American Muslims for state government positions under a permanent so-called Muslim commission.

The group would help recommend Americans who practice Islam to appointed government positions in the New England state at the same time the Trump administration is moving to dismantle such diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs nationwide — teeing-up a standoff between local leaders and the president.

A proposed bill would create a panel of 11 Muslims appointed by Democratic Gov. Maura Healey and other state officials to represent the Islamic faith on issues such as business, economy, healthcare and other concerns.

The Muslim commission would influence government recruiting and, “Identify and recommend qualified American Muslims for appointive positions at all levels of government, including boards and commissions, as the commission considers necessary and appropriate,” according to language in the bill.

“Massachusetts has always prided itself on being a leader in equality and civil rights, a legacy this bill builds upon,” said Democratic state Sen. Jamie Eldridge, the bill’s primary sponsor.


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DEI Fraud and Cover-Up at Cambridge

“Wouldn’t it be the most ridiculous story ever told, if the boy who couldn’t read and write at 18 gets a PhD before he’s 30?”

Those are the words of Jason Arday—the 2002 Professorial Chair in the Sociology of Education at Cambridge University. Indeed, the story of his metamorphosis from arguably the most disadvantaged person in the UK to elite scholar-athlete-philanthropist would make even Walt Disney raise an eyebrow.

Born to Ghanaian parents, Arday grew up on a council estate (the British equivalent of Section 8 housing) in south London. At age three he was diagnosed with global development delay and autism. Therapists said he would be confined to an assisted living facility. Miraculously, at 11 years old, he spoke his first word (“hello”). When he was 18, he learned to read and write.

Under the influence of a white high school teacher who “gave [him] agency,” Arday pursued higher education. After receiving a PhD from Liverpool John Moores University, he rocketed up the academic ladder as a scholar of racism, education, and inequality. In three years he went from senior lecturer at Roehampton (2018) to associate professor at Durham (2019) to professor at Glasgow (2021). Ivy League universities (plural) tried to recruit him, but he had his heart set on Oxford or Cambridge. In 2023, at age 37, he became the youngest black full professor in the history of Cambridge. He is one of the youngest people of any race to ever hold a chair professorship at Oxbridge.

In his spare time, Arday ran 30 marathons in 35 days and 300 miles in three days.

As of 2023, he had worked with “more than 70” charities and raised more than £5 million.

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Sesame Street accelerates white kids’ racism, University of Illinois professor says

Could “Doc McStuffins” and “Dora the Explorer” be turning white kids into racists? 

A professor from the University of Illinois thinks so. 

“White children in the United States begin developing racial biases in early childhood that threaten the well-being of children of color and serve as the developmental roots for racial prejudices that persist into adulthood,” a new Psycnet study from Professor Michael Rizzo says.

The study reviewed the TV watching patterns of white kids as young as four and asked them about their willingness to play with a hypothetical person who was white, black, Asian, or Hispanic. 

“With age, children whose favorite media portrayed fewer Black characters—and especially in high-status contexts and roles—were less likely to choose to play with a Black child, held less positive attitudes toward Black children, and were more likely to attribute Black–White racial inequalities to intrinsic racial differences,” the study found.

Watching “Sesame Street” or “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood” may accelerate the latent racism brewing with white children.

“By their 4th birthday, many White children in the United States have already begun developing racial biases that privilege their White peers, threaten the health and well-being of children of color, and serve as the developmental roots for racial prejudices that persist into adulthood,” the researchers allege. (Lead author Michael Rizzo cites one of his other studies to back up this claim).

The study’s authors explain why they focused on white kids, presupposing that they are already growing up in racist homes.

The paper states:

We focused on White, U.S. children because White children are the dominant and majority group in the United States and are the most likely to develop racial biases…Moreover, White children often live in racially segregated neighborhoods with parents who take color-evasive (i.e., ignoring or denying the importance of racial group membership) and power-evasive (i.e., ignoring or denying the reality of structural racism) approaches to racial socialization, leaving these children with little guidance on how to interpret the segregation and inequality they observe in the world.

The handpicked TV and movies curiously show that black characters are actually overrepresented by what children watch.

While the study sought to understand how children’s TV watching influenced their racial behaviors, the researchers did not similarly look at how black children might be influenced.

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Former Dem Operative’s New Book Details the ‘Systemic Racism Against White People in the Highest Corners of the Democrat Party’

The Gateway Pundit reported on Evan Barker, a former Obama intern and lifelong Democrat, who left the party after what she saw as a volunteer at the Democratic National Convention.

In 2024, in an op-ed for Newsweek, she expanded on why she became so “disenchanted” with Democrat leadership despite raising “tens of millions of dollars” for them and why she left the party.

Next week, Baker’s memoir, “Nothing Left: Confessions of a Democratic Operative,” is set to drop.

The Wall Street Journal’s Barton Swaim previewed the book noting:

Ms. Barker’s chronicle teems with people I would gently describe as not normal. One fellow consultant hires a “resistance artist” to paint a mural of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s face on the roof of his Washington condominium. Ms. Barker’s associates, including white men, vilify whiteness and maleness as a kind of daily religious ritual.

Most men in progressive circles participated in the bashing,” Ms. Barker writes. “They’d virtue-signal their disdain for their own gender by saying things like I want to elect more people who look like you, and less people who look like me!” The self-flagellation served mainly as self-protection.”

“People would confide in me, ‘I employ a lot of annoying m— f—’ and ‘No wonder the establishment thinks we are insane,’ ” Ms. Barker recalls, “right before hopping on a Zoom meeting to say their pronouns and bash white men.”

She doesn’t exempt herself from censure. Scanning the résumés of job applicants, she would search candidates’ names on the internet and discard the ones from white men. “I knew it was wrong,” she says, “but I had to do it.”

In an interview on Real America’s Voice, Barker shared, “This is not something that was ever publicly announced, right? So the general public doesn’t even know about this.”

“But like George Soros’s organization, for instance, they put out a pledge to only fund organizations in the Democratic Party that were led by people of color for 5 years, which is, I mean, I saw personally people that were turned down for jobs because the organization realized they needed to have the right identity leading their organization or they could be denied funding.”

“And it just, it had a real systemic effect.”

“I myself, I was pressured at times, there was a lot of social and peer pressure to not hire white men especially.”

“I feel very bad about this, but this book is called ‘Confessions of a Democratic Operative,’ so I have to confess my own sins too, right?”

“I, um, you know, I was in positions of hiring, and when I would get resumes, the very first thing I did is Google their names on the internet to see what their race was, to see if they were a man.”

“And if they were, I didn’t set up interviews with them. And this happened all throughout the Democratic Party.”

“There was a systemic push in the party to discriminate against white people.”

“And it was, it came down on high from the very highest levels of the party.”

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Smithsonian Smackdown: Trump orders signs outside American History museum warning of woke exhibits

President Donald Trump escalated his battle against wokeness at the Smithsonian Institution on Friday, ordering his administration to place signs outside the National Museum of American History to warn visitors that some of its exhibits have been made “inaccurate.”

The signs would even redirect potential visitors to places where American history is more accurately presented, according to the order, though the order did not give examples of what those locations and resources would be.

“Because the museum has failed to appropriately honor the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence during this 250th anniversary year of the founding of our country,” the order reads, government agencies “shall install temporary exhibits or signage on N.P.S.-maintained sidewalks, walkways, and land used by the public that corrects inaccurate information presented in the museum.”

The order comes after the White House Domestic Policy Council released a 162-page report on the museum, accusing its director of using the museum as a “political instrument” to accomplish her own ideological goals at the expense of the museum’s original mission.

The museum was first approved by Congress in 1955 to tell the national story of the United States, to “place before” visitors “a stimulating permanent exposition that commemorates our heritage of freedom and highlights the basic elements of our way of life.”

The museum’s director, Anthea Hartig, defended the museum’s changes to American history, stating in a congressional hearing this week that the museum was representing history in all of its complexity, according to the New York Times.

“When historians talk about reframing a traditional narrative, we don’t mean erasing it,” she said in her testimony. “We mean adding the evidence, the voices, the objects that earlier tellings left out so that more Americans can see themselves reflected in the national story.”

House Republicans, however, accused her of hijacking history with woke ideology to suggest even Mickey Mouse was racist.

The order also follows Trump’s March 27, 2025, executive order aimed at purging “revisionist” and ideological materials from U.S. history references and exhibits at federally funded museums and sites. 

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The University of Minnesota is Paying ‘Diversity’ Staffers Almost $1.5 Million Annually

The University of Minnesota is paying ‘diversity staffers’ almost a million and a half dollars every year. And people still wonder how college has gotten so expensive.

What exactly do diversity staffers even do? Does anyone know?

Parents and students must understand that when they take out massive government loans to pay for college, this is part of what they are paying for. The exorbitant salaries of these pointless employees.

Campus Reform reports:

University of Minnesota pays DEI staff nearly $1.5 million annually

The University of Minnesota pays its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) staff members more than $1.4 million annually, according to publicly available state payroll records.

Despite federal executive orders restricting DEI offices and activities, the University of Minnesota maintains an Office for Equity and Diversity, which consists “of over 15 offices and major initiatives.”

“Equity and diversity is fundamental to everything we do at the University of Minnesota,” the office’s website says.

The central office employs four leadership staff and five administrative staff. Five of those staff members are receiving six-figure salaries, according to OpenPayrolls.

Record from 2025 list Vice President for Equity and Diversity Mercedes Ramírez Fernández ($391,759), Associate Vice President for Equity and Diversity and Faculty Development Keisha Varma ($238,540), Associate Vice Presidents Tina Marisam ($230,444) and Malinda Lindquist ($196,267), and Chief of Staff Elizabeth Martinez-Podolsky ($164,800).

The payroll data also lists Kate Klosterman ($74,298), John Michael Bradshaw ($50,086.40), Jenna Olien ($47,237), and Tia Phan ($99,194).

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B.C. municipality considers recognizing legal rights for trees

A councillor in Saanich, B.C., is asking the municipality to recognize what supporters describe as the “rights of trees” by endorsing the Universal Declaration of the Rights of the Tree.

The motion, introduced this week, would have Saanich formally implement the declaration, which sets out three core principles. It states that trees are living beings and a common good shared by humanity, that all life on Earth depends on their existence, and that people have a responsibility to act toward trees in “fraternity and solidarity.”

The proposal is intended to guide the municipality’s approach to protecting urban forests and recognizing the ecological importance of trees. Supporters argue the declaration reinforces the role trees play in biodiversity, climate resilience and public health.

If adopted, Saanich would join a growing movement to incorporate broader environmental rights into local government policies. The declaration itself is not legally binding, but supporters say it provides an ethical framework for municipal decision-making involving forests and green spaces.

Council is expected to consider the proposal as part of its ongoing discussions on environmental and urban forest policy.

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California’s Civil Rights Mafia

In 2018, two women filed a class-action suit against Riot Games, the video-game colossus responsible for League of Legends, Valorant, and other popular titles. They claimed that the company had denied them and other female employees “equal pay,” favored men for promotions, and created a “hostile work environment.” The women wanted Riot Games to pay out and to “cause social change.”

One year later, the parties agreed to a $10 million settlement. It was a massive sum, but not enough for California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing, which intervened to block the agreement and claim that Riot Games could be on the hook for a staggering $400 million. Facing a court battle against a deep-pocketed state agency, Riot Games later agreed to a $100 million settlement, about ten times the original amount.

California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing, now called the Civil Rights Department, has turned the Riot Games strategy into an entire playbook. For years, the state’s civil rights apparatus has enabled nonprofits and lawyers to shake down major companies, spinning small-dollar claims into massive, multimillion-dollar settlements.

The system operates like a mafia. Its “don,” Governor Gavin Newsom, sits at the top. His capo, CRD director Kevin Kish, runs the shakedown campaigns. And the state advances the interests of the entire Democratic apparatus: the Civil Rights Department secures settlement cash for radical NGOs, labor leaders can use the cases to create pressure for unionization, and left-wing lawyers “cause social change” at scale. For the first time, we are revealing the inner workings of California’s civil rights mafia – and exposing the corruption of state government.

California’s Civil Rights Department was created in 1980 as the Department of Fair Employment and Housing. The department was initially tasked with enforcing nondiscrimination law, but in the wake of the #MeToo and George Floyd social movements, the state’s power structure saw an opportunity to turn the agency into a powerhouse. They rebranded the organization as the Civil Rights Department in 2022, in keeping with the agency’s focus on shaking down companies for “civil rights violations.”

The shakedown campaigns have been remarkably successful. In the last four years alone, the CRD has coerced corporations like Microsoft ($14 million), Snap Inc. ($15 million), and Riot Games ($100 million) to shell out eight- and nine-figure payments. These settlements have variously included provisions for class members, interest groups, and the CRD itself, which is allowed by state law to recoup fees associated with its prosecutions.

The CRD’s enforcement actions often include one or more predictable features. First, the CRD finds a handful of women or minorities who claim that a large corporation has mistreated them. Then the agency initiates or intervenes in an action against that corporation. Finally, to spin small-dollar claims into massive payouts, the CRD generates outrageous liability estimates, which goad the company to the negotiating table.

The point man on this scheme is Kevin Kish, a Yale Law School graduate and the CRD’s director. On its website, the agency notes Kish’s reputation for taking “a creative approach to advocacy,” which involves “collaborations” with nonprofits and “organizing campaigns” – in other words, using the department to advance the interests of unions, nonprofits, and other left-wing groups.

Kish mastered this approach during his time in the progressive legal movement. Before starting in state government, he worked as director of the Employment Rights Project for Bet Tzedek Legal Service, where, in one instance, he helped turn a small-time wage-and-hour case into a multimillion settlement against Walmart and one of its contractors.

Apparently pleased with Kish’s efforts, then-Governor Jerry Brown appointed him to lead the Department of Fair Employment and Housing in late 2014. Gay activists celebrated his appointment, with one LGBT group calling Kish a “strong and passionate legal champion.”

In his first few years at the DFEH, Kish oversaw several small-time suits: in 2015, he got a Mexican restaurant chain to cough up $130,000; in 2017, he induced a rural welfare nonprofit to shell out $152,000. Then, in 2019, he intervened in the Riot Games case, which later delivered a nine-figure payout and apparently encouraged him to expand his ambitions. For Kish, who has argued that “there is almost no [adult] transgender person who has not experienced . . . some form of discrimination,” the role represented an opportunity to enforce his broad understanding of “hate.”

By 2021, Kish had perfected the shakedown model and picked a new target: Activision Blizzard, the video-game giant that owns titles like World of Warcraft and Call of Duty. The CRD sued the company, alleging, among other things, that it had discriminated against female employees and cultivated a “frat boy” culture. According to a criminal referral that we obtained, which was filed by a group tied to former Activision CEO Robert Kotick, the pretext for the department’s action was an earlier federal complaint, which concluded that charging Activision would “send a message to the industry as a whole.”

The original class-action suit included just ten of Activision’s more than 9,000 employees. The complaint claimed, among other things, that “only about 20 percent” of the company’s employees were female, that some of its employees riffed “about their sexual encounters,” and that a female employee had committed suicide, potentially in connection with an alleged relationship with a supervisor.

Activision initially tried to placate the CRD. Kotick reportedly “pledged to add resources to ensure that Activision Blizzard’s hiring practices are more diverse.” The company’s then-president, J. Allen Brack, said that he “disdain[ed] ‘bro culture'” and had spent his “career fighting against it.” Activision apparently even offered paid time off to workers who wanted to participate in a staged “walk-out.”

It didn’t work. In fact, things got worse: later that year, sensing the company’s vulnerability, a labor union called the Communication Workers of America (CWA) filed a suit with the National Labor Relations Board. The union accused the company of trying to prevent workers from demanding a “more equitable, sustainable, and diverse workplace.”

The CRD and the CWA apparently had shared ambitions – to punish and to unionize Activision – and even hired the same law firm. Kish’s CRD hired the same firm (Outten & Golden) that represented the CWA in another suit. The firm’s lawyer said that he believed it was the “first time the State of California has retained a private firm to prosecute employment law claims in trial court.” (In response to a question about Outten & Golden, CRD pointed us to a ruling in California Attorneys, Administrative Law Judges and Hearing Officers in State Employment v. California State Personnel Board.)

In September, the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission brought its own misconduct suit against Activision. The agency claimed, among other things, that Activision had exposed “female employees to sexual harassment.” The two sides agreed to an $18 million settlement, but the CRD wasn’t satisfied.

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Rep. Brandon Gill Makes Head of American Bar Association Squirm by Asking Her Questions About DEI in Law Schools

Republican Rep. Brandon Gill grilled Michelle A. Behnke, the president of the American Bar Association this week about DEI policies in law schools, the future of the U.S. Supreme Court and more.

If you have ever seen Gill in this type of environment before, you know how good he is at this.

He asked this woman very simple questions but she kept falling back on answers that sounded like rehearsed legal responses.

Here’s a partial transcript:

GILL: According to the ABA’s website, quote, all of us have implicit biases, would you agree with that statement?

BEHNKE: The ABA believes that, uh, diversity, equity and inclusion, improves the lives of…

GILL: Would you agree with the statement? That, quote, all of us have implicit biases, from the ABA’s website?

BEHNKE: The ABA believes that diversity in all of its…

GILL: Is that a yes? Can I take that… It’s a yes or no question. Do you believe that all of us have implicit biases as your website says?

BEHNKE: The ABA looks to remove barriers and…

GILL: That’s not my question, ma’am. Do you believe that all of us have implicit biases?

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DOJ: UCSD med school favored black, Hispanic applicants over more qualified white, Asian ones

The University of California San Diego School of Medicine illegally used race in its admissions process to favor black and Hispanic applicants over more qualified white and Asian candidates, the Justice Department announced Monday.

The med school continued affirmative action in violation of civil rights laws and even after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which banned race discrimination in higher education.

The feds argued the med school uses “hardship” criteria to skirt the laws.

“To racially diversify its classes, San Diego Med created an evaluation process that uses ‘hardship’ as a racial proxy, specifically to achieve its diversity agenda,” according to an eight-page findings memo it sent to the school.

The memo stated:

The Department finds that San Diego Med discriminated against white and Asian applicants to benefit black and Hispanic applicants. This is evident from the data analysis and confirmed through the information provided by San Diego Med and publicly available data. The school intended to tinker with the racial representation of its incoming classes, even after SFF A was decided. The data shows a significant disparity in objective academic metrics between black and Hispanic applicants compared with applicants from other races. San Diego Med’ s internal documents, including communications among the admissions staff, confirm that San Diego Med intended to racially discriminate in favor of so-called underrepresented minorities, such as blacks and Hispanics. As a result of these practices, more qualified white and Asian students were denied admission to San Diego Med on the basis of their race.

A UC San Diego spokesperson told the Los Angeles Times the university is reviewing the findings.

The medical school “is proud to produce some of the highest-performing physicians and researchers in the nation,” the spokesperson said, adding all applicants “must meet strict academic thresholds, a requirement that is and was applied uniformly to all applicants.”

The university “remains committed to full compliance with federal law” and “welcomes the opportunity to work collaboratively and constructively with the federal government to affirm that commitment.”

The Hill reported that the department seeks a voluntary settlement with the university to correct its admissions practices or the department will file a lawsuit.

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