Posts on Friday, May 1, 2026

When Stanford Law School students shut down a Federalist Society chapter event with a conservative federal appeals judge, aided by a diversity, equity and inclusion dean, and circulated a "headshots" poster identifying chapter board members, the school did not punish deplatformers and censored the event video so they couldn't be identified. Though the law school suspended DEI dean Tirien Steinbach, who left months later, and the university pledged to add free speech and academic freedom to admissions, student orientation and staff training, the damage had been done: Federal appeals judges blacklisted Stanford Law students from clerkships and congressional Republicans targeted its accreditation.

(The Center Square) — New York Gov. Kathy Hochul is being urged to veto a bill that would require food manufacturers to ban several additives in products they sell in the state, which industry officials say will drive up grocery prices. Lawmakers last week approved a bill that would ban three toxic chemicals — red dye 3, potassium bromate, and propylparaben — from food sold in the state, while requiring manufacturers to disclose other additives. Backers of the so-called Food Safety and Chemical Disclosure Act, which is Hochul's desk now awaiting action, said it is focused on boosting transparency and protecting consumers from harmful food additives.

The United Arab Emirates' decision this week to leave the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is just the latest departure and yet another sign that the cartel’s decades-long grip over global energy markets is drifting further into the history books. The UAE has ambitions to increase its oil and gas production, and this has brought it into conflict with other members of the cartel, primarily Saudi Arabia. The production quotas the group set were aimed at keeping prices higher, and that worked well when the Middle East was the primary energy producer in the world.

A Biden-appointed federal judge in Rhode Island has ordered the release of a Dominican illegal alien who is the subject of an Interpol Red Notice for murder in his home country. The criminal illegal alien, Bryan Rafael Gomez, was arrested by ICE Boston in Worcester, Massachusetts on April 4th. He had just been picked up locally for domestic abuse when a background check revealed Dominican authorities issued a criminal arrest warrant against him for homicide in 2023. He is also the subject of an active Interpol Red Notice, an international arrest warrant for murder.

The body of a missing Republican Oklahoma state Senate candidate was found inside a truck in a rural area, according to authorities and reports. Barry Christian, a 54-year-old candidate for District 38 in western Oklahoma, was discovered dead on Thursday after he mysteriously vanished just two days prior, his campaign said in a news release obtained by KOCO. The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation confirmed to the outlet that Christian’s 2024 charcoal gray Ram truck was found just off Highway 30, south of Erick, with a body inside. The truck was located by a ravine near the Sandy Sanders Wildlife Management Area. Because of where the vehicle is located,

Blow the whistle, get paid. A Justice Department bounty program that incentivizes employees to blow the whistle on their employers could lead to more whistleblowing as the Trump administration intensifies its crackdown on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. The Trump administration is investigating major companies under the False Claims Act — a federal law the Justice Department uses to take action against contractors alleged to have defrauded the government and recoup substantial damages. Last year, the Justice Department established a task force to investigate federal contractors for alleged violations of the False Claims Act. It said this week it has seen a "rapid increase" in whistleblower complaints filed in recent years.

A new report released Thursday by the Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias reveals what investigators describe as a "stark contrast" and a systemic double standard in how the Biden Internal Revenue Service policed American churches. “The Biden IRS … [opened] multiple investigations into Christian churches focused on the content of their sermons. The IRS asked these churches for detailed information about their operations, not just about the alleged violations,” the task force wrote.