It’s not a universal syndrome. Republican Ronald Reagan maintained his popularity, so much so that five years after departing in 1975, California voters strongly endorsed his challenge to Democratic President Jimmy Carter.

The arc of Reagan’s successor, Democrat Jerry Brown, was very different. He enjoyed strong support in the early stages, but two failed efforts to become president and other miscues dragged down his popularity and voters rejected his bid for the U.S. Senate in 1982.

It mirrored the experience of Brown’s father, Pat Brown, who had overstayed his welcome, tried to win a third term in 1966 and lost to Reagan.

“I believe the people of California would like a respite from me and in some ways I would like a respite from them,” Jerry Brown said after his Senate defeat. Decades later, he won two more terms as governor and retired in 2019 with his legacy and popularity intact.

The difference between Brown’s two stints as governor illustrates why some holders of the office leave on high notes and some do not.

Brown 1.0’s constant yearning to abandon the governorship for higher office, when coupled with a lackluster record, simply turned people off. Brown 2.0 made few promises, kept those he made and demonstrated engagement in the job to which he was elected.

The flip side of the popularity coin is a governor who doesn’t over-promise and under-deliver, but shies away from doing the job. Democrat Gray Davis won the office in 1998 on his credentials, which included a term as lieutenant governor. But once he was inaugurated, he indicated by word and deed that he was risk-averse and didn’t intend to do very much.

Davis let two crises fester – one in state finances and the other in electrical energy – and barely won re-election in 2002 against a very weak Republican challenger. A year later voters recalled him and replaced him with action movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Schwarzenegger initially enjoyed strong public support with his promises to overhaul a bloated state government and won a full term in 2006, but left behind a string of failed efforts to win voter support for reform measures and was very unpopular, having naively made promises he was incapable of keeping.

That brings us to Gavin Newsom, who has three years remaining in his governorship but is beginning to resemble Jerry Brown 1.0, implying to voters that his real interest lies in building national political standing rather than governing California.

“He’s kind of taking on a new persona,” Mark DiCamillo, director of the Berkeley-IGS poll, told the Times. “He’s no longer just the governor of California. He’s a spokesperson for the national party and basically voters are being asked to react to that.”

Newsom’s dip is exacerbated by two other factors: a growing malaise among Californians about rising crime rates, homelessness and economic disparity, and Newsom’s failure to deliver on the big promises he made to win election in 2018, such as single-payer health care and 3.5 million new housing units.

While Newsom has launched some potentially transformative changes in medical care for the poor and mental health, neither has borne fruit yet. It’s not surprising that a governor with a thin record of achievement and a wandering attention span is losing support.

Dan Walters is a CalMatters columnist.

The central government can’t be a benign policeman, even if its intentions were as stated (which they may be): international rules-based order and economic stability. But it can wreak havoc by trying. We know this because it already has. Pick your start date, but the last 30 years present evidence beyond a reasonable doubt of what U.S.-sponsored “order” really looks like, thanks to an unbroken bipartisan chain of presidents and a bunch of presumptuous bumblers who wear weighty political titles from the executive and legislative branches. (The judiciary isn’t off the hook either.)

The U.S. government’s inherent ineptness speaks volumes. “Ought” implies “can,” and the policy mavens cannot. Wishful thinking is no substitute for real thinking. Each new crisis is not so different from previous ones as to make it unique. We can and must learn from the past, even the past that is so recent it’s still the present.

Government “crisis management” is a contradiction in terms. War typically has calamitous results, however optimistic the prognostications and later assessments. Helping a belligerent bloodies the hands of the helper, even if only metaphorically. Fighting proxy wars, which the policymakers might prefer to direct war these days, or engaging in covert operations is no moral shield. The horrendous consequences are foreseeable. Pleading that “We didn’t intend the bad stuff” does not wash. Call it “collateral damage,” whatever the policymakers call it, they enable the ruin of innocent lives and entire societies. We should have no part of it.

We know what war brings. It brings the death and dismemberment of innocents, always including children. It brings the utter destruction of the things that make life possible, such as food, water, homes, hospitals, and infrastructure. The chance of killing only bad guys is zero. I think the government’s own war simulations would agree. Hypothetical rosy scenarios offered in somber tones from secure stateside arms chairs don’t count. Even moves intended as defensive may understandably be perceived as aggressive, bringing snowballing countermoves that threaten more innocents and risk turning a local conflict into a big-power confrontation. The danger of nuclear war always looms.

Before considering joining in a war, assume the worst. Then don’t join. It’s the safe bet.

On top of that misery, intervening in wars sets the stage for terrible events to follow: revolution, dictatorship, government control of everyday life, atrocious recriminations, and plain chaos. That’s the safe bet too.

Intervention also sets the stage for aggrieved foreigners who want revenge against the country that is seen to have enabled their adversaries. If that is not the lesson of at least the last 30 years, what is? Direct and indirect participation in wars can come home to roost traumatically. Policing the world or arming one part against another is no recipe for security. And let’s not forget the excuse the U.S. government seizes to spy on and censor Americans in the name of national security.

Finally, there is the lack of consent. It would be bad enough if the arrogant policymakers sowed their destruction on their own dime and in their own name. But they don’t. They presume to speak for us and to make us pay for their adventures. I never signed that blank check, did you?

But they don’t need our consent. The game was rigged long ago. Hypothetical consent is good enough, and most people go along because they’re busy living and virtually powerless anyway. They also heard about it in the government’s schools.

Helping other governments fight wars is crazy. That’s not isolationism because the position embraces free trade with the world (unmanaged by governments) and the free movement of people. The word is nonintervention. When war breaks out, government personnel should be permitted to do only one thing: call for a cease-fire!

Sheldon Richman is the executive editor of The Libertarian Institute and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com. He is the former senior editor at the Cato Institute and Institute for Humane Studies; former editor of The Freeman, published by the Foundation for Economic Education; and former vice president at the Future of Freedom Foundation. His latest books are Coming to Palestine and What Social Animals Owe to Each Other. This commentary was originally published at Antiwar.com

I was reminded of this when I saw recently that the Biden administration’s Food and Drug Administration wants to ban menthol cigarettes. Menthol flavorings account for approximately 37% of cigarette sales. That demand will not disappear but it will be driven underground, creating more significant risks to consumers.

Ninety years after the failure of Prohibition, we are going to try it again with smokers. Ironically, many of the same liberals who campaigned for three decades for the legalization of marijuana and other soft drugs (something I generally support) now want to effectively ban smoking.

The FDA’s proposed rule would “prohibit menthol as a characterizing flavor in cigarettes and all characterizing flavors (other than tobacco) in cigars.” The government justifies its action because it has “the potential to significantly reduce disease and death from combusted tobacco product use.”

That sounds a lot like a reprise of what the temperance league told us about alcohol prohibition: “Alcohol prohibition will save lives, reduce crime, cure social ills, and improve the nation’s health.”

But even if all these virtuous results were true, since when is the United States government empowered to regulate the health and riskiness of America’s personal habits? Don’t we have a right as Americans to do things that are bad for us? Or do we slouch toward a nanny state?

There are a lot of dangerous activities that Americans take great pleasure in and choose to do even though they are risky — rock climbing, parachuting out of airplanes, driving a motorcycle and eating too much sugar (a sin that I am definitely guilty of) are prominent examples. Remember when New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg wanted to stop obesity by banning Big Gulps? Reading the misinformation in The New York Times is bad for you — but I wouldn’t ban the newspaper.

We should have learned from the mostly failed war on drugs that the main impact was to enrich drug dealers. Instead of the government getting funds by taxing pot (as many states do now), the money went to the drug cartels, crime syndicates and street corner drug dealers.

I’m not a smoker; I don’t smoke; and I don’t like it when people smoke around me and I have to inhale and smell the cigar or cigarette smoke. I taught my kids not to smoke or use drugs, and smoking cessation programs in schools make a lot of sense. I have friends who died far too young because of their chain-smoking habits. On the other hand, I do on rare occasions smoke cigarettes, especially when stressed out. It relaxes me, just as I sometimes take chewables at night when I am having trouble falling asleep. I don’t want a government official yanking the cigarette out of my mouth.

An FDA prohibition could backfire by making smoking “cool” and “sexy” again. When I was in high school and my friends and I would occasionally head to the beach and puff on marijuana joints, part of the thrill was precisely that it was verboten. We were teenage rebels without a cause, and we were acting like James Dean.

We should also consider that the government is also collecting billions of dollars of tax revenues from smokers. Driving cigarette sales underground puts the money into the hands of the criminals.

Yes, keep cigarettes out of the hands of kids. But let adults, not the government regulators, make their own decisions about the risks of smoking.

Stephen Moore is a syndicated columnist.

Two women, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, captured the two seats 31 years ago and held them for decades. Republicans haven’t mounted a serious Senate drive for a quarter-century, and the state’s current senators, Democrats Alex Padilla and Laphonza Butler, were appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Republicans are still frozen out by their retreat into irrelevancy and a very lopsided Democratic voter majority. However, a year from now California voters will be electing a new senator, almost certainly another Democrat, and the contest is likely to become heated.

Butler’s decision not to run for the Senate after filling out the brief remainder of the recently deceased Feinstein’s final term solidified what could have been a truly chaotic scenario should she have made a bid.

Her decision left three Democratic members of Congress vying to finish Nos. 1-2 in the March primary election and thus qualify for the November runoff. At the moment, Orange County’s Katie Porter and Adam Schiff of Burbank are running neck-and-neck in the polls while Oakland’s Barbara Lee is trailing in both moneyand support.

However, a recent UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll found that none of the three has been able to crack 20% support, which means there are a lot of undecided California voters with the initial decision point fewer than four months away.

Porter scores the highest at 17% in the IGS poll, followed closely by Schiff at 16% and Lee at 9%. Republican Steve Garvey, a former professional baseball player who recently declared his candidacy, actually shades Lee at 10%.

Despite their current low levels of support, as the March primary draws closer, Porter and Schiff seem most likely to finish in the top two and duke it out for the seat eight months later. Had Butler mounted a campaign run and divided the Democratic vote even more, it might have given Garvey or some other Republican an outside chance of making the runoff.

As it is, however, it’s very likely to be a Democrat vs. Democrat finale.

“Porter holds big leads among voters under age 50 while Schiff is the clear favorite of voters ages 65 or older,” IGS says in its analysis of the poll. “Lee dominates among the state’s Black voters and runs competitively among voters in the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area and the state’s North Coast/Sierras region.”

If anything, a recent New York Times poll showing Trump leading President Joe Biden in the 2024 presidential contest, despite Trump’s extensive exposure in criminal and civil cases, gives Schiff another bump.

Schiff can legitimately claim to be Trump’s bête noire, which is catnip for Trump-hating Democratic voters. Neither Porter, who has specialized in populist economic issues during her brief congressional career, nor Lee, who hews to the left of both rivals, has the gut-level images and issues that Schiff can muster.

One can expect, therefore, that Porter and Lee will go negative to undermine Schiff. A hint of that was a CNN report last week that Schiff has been listing both a condo in Burbank and a large home in Maryland as his primary residences on mortgage and tax forms. It had all the earmarks of something that originated in another candidate’s opposition research.

Dan Walters is a CalMatters columnist.

So “Project Ukraine” is not really about foreign welfare, but rather domestic corporate welfare for the military-industrial complex. Should that make us feel any better?

There is no denying that this nearly two-year Ukraine/Russia war has been a boon for the US weapons industry. Profits at the military-industrial complex are back to record highs after a brief slump during the Covid scare. And the money that goes to the weapons manufactures also saturates Washington, DC: a little of it goes to the think-tanks promoting war, another little bit goes to the political campaigns of candidates who promote war, and so on.

As Connor O’Keeffe reminds us in a recent article at the Mises Institute, the arguments that more war spending is good for the economy ignore the “broken window fallacy” as first explained by French economist Frédéric Bastiat in his essay, “That Which Is Seen and That Which Is Not Seen.” In the tale, a shopkeeper has a window broken and must pay to have it replaced. The locals view the mishap favorably, as they see the $50 for a new window to be a benefit to the glazier which he will then spend, thus improving the economy as a whole. What is not seen, however, is what the shopkeeper might have done with that same $50 had he not been forced to replace a broken window. Perhaps he would have invested it in a way that created far more wealth and more jobs.

Unfortunately, Biden is not alone in coming up with new gimmicks to enable Washington to operate in a “business as usual” manner.

Said Johnson, “Instead of printing new dollars or borrowing it from another nation to send over to fulfill our obligations and help our ally, we want to pay for it, what a concept, we are trying to change how Washington works.”

See the trick here? They are not “paying for it” by sending the money overseas, and they are not “changing how Washington works” by doing the exact same thing they always do: stealing from the poor at home to send to the rich in foreign countries.

Instead of trying to trick Americans into thinking that foreign aid and corporate welfare are good for our economy, why not just stop breaking all of our windows? Just end all foreign aid and corporate welfare.

Dr. Ron Paul is a former member of the House of Representatives. This article was written for and published by the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity. 

That move sparked widespread outrage despite the fact that it simply brought back the light-touch regulatory framework the internet was built on and has thrived under over the last 30 years. One result of the net neutrality hysteria was passage of the California Internet Consumer Protection and Net Neutrality Act of 2018.

This may all sound like ancient history. As we know, rather than loading one word at a time, the internet has thrived. Speeds increased dramatically while costs decreased. Networks also demonstrated their resiliency, especially during the pandemic. While our European counterparts struggled to manage the massive increase in traffic and usage throughout COVID, the United States was able to avoid the reduction in service and throttling that many European countries faced. Yet despite that, the net neutrality debate has been rekindled by the FCC’s Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel.

In a recent announcement, the agency proposed a new rule to re-impose outdated, utility-style regulation on internet service providers (ISPs) – and California’s net neutrality law was at the center of the argument. During her speech, Rosenworcel pointed to the proliferation of state-level laws like the one in California as the reason that the most outlandish predictions about the internet’s demise have not come to pass. But the truth is that net neutrality laws seem effective only because they attempt to solve a problem that never existed.

Despite Rosenworcel’s assertion that “we have open internet policies that providers are abiding by right now, they are just coming from Sacramento and places like it,” there is no evidence to suggest that California’s net neutrality law has had any impact on ISP conduct. Even before the enactment of the law, we did not see the blocking and throttling that net neutrality advocates theorized. Nor have we seen ISPs being taken to task for violations of the California law in the five years since it was implemented.

Rosenworcel has argued that the federal government should adopt the net neutrality laws of states like California. But the FCC lacks authority to implement rules like net neutrality, and Congress is best suited to address the issue through legislation. But even if lawmakers were to grapple with such rules, there is little evidence to support them. Congress has rightly focused on increasing access to broadband instead.

In fact, the bipartisan infrastructure law passed in the last Congress contained the single largest investment in both broadband infrastructure and affordability to date. Yet the administration, through the FCC, is working against its own self-interest by erecting regulatory barriers that will impair broadband deployment. As the official FCC report shows, broadband deployments dropped by 55 percent after implementation of the 2015 Open Internet Order.

Rosenworcel did note in her announcement that “almost half of us lack high-speed service with 100 megabit-per-second download speeds or can only get it from a single provider.” Yet this is a broadband deployment issue, not a net neutrality issue. And Rosenworcel failed to add that this misguided regulatory change will have the opposite of its intended effect and is more likely to reduce speed and competition among internet providers.

Despite overwhelming evidence that supports maintaining the light-touch regulatory framework that has been in place since the Restoring Internet Freedom Order was issued in 2017, the FCC has reignited a fierce battle over who should regulate the internet. Yet even the agency itself seems to sense that it’s on shaky ground.

The FCC stands at a crossroads. It can pursue bipartisan priorities and work to bridge the digital divide, or chase ghosts by threatening to implement a federal version of California’s unnecessary net neutrality law – imperiling future broadband deployments. Continued fixation on an unnecessary partisan project when the real need is getting Americans connected benefits neither the FCC, the Biden administration, nor the people whose access to broadband hangs in the balance.

Jonathan Cannon is policy counsel for the R Street Institute’s technology and innovation team. Canyon Brimhall is the senior manager of federal government affairs at the R Street Institute

Getting at the full truth of what is happening in any war is impossible. Aside from the limited access reporters have to wartime operations, there is the expanse of the geography that precludes reporters having first-hand access to some events. Seeking to get the truth to pass along to readers and viewers, skilled reporters are trained to be skeptical of news sources. Reporters know that advocates for one side or the other will lie to them, no doubt justifying some greater good, particularly in war time.

So, what’s a reporter to do when he or she can’t independently verify what a source is saying? Often, they rely on sources with whom they have a past relationship and a proven history of accuracy. That’s no guarantee they’re not being lied to, but, until proven otherwise, reporters usually trust those sources. When I was a reporter I would tell a source, “Lie to me once and I will never trust what you say again.”

When Israel said 1,400 people were massacred on Oct. 7 by Hamas terrorists who crossed the border into Israel, there were few who questioned the number. There were bodies witnessed by reporters, such as at the music festival where several hundred were shot and killed.  Did Israel release a list of names or otherwise back up the reported number? I don’t know, but I’d be surprised if the number wasn’t questioned.

Now, with the counterattack by Israel from the air and on the ground in Gaza, Hamas is releasing body counts daily, asserting that many if not most are children. We’ve seen video of injured and dead children. But does anyone really know the numbers?  Israel does not deny that civilians have been killed in its effort to “destroy” Hamas and its leadership. I argue we should not trust Hamas figures because Hamas has proven repeatedly it is willing to lie. However, neither should the media ignore what they say.

The New York Times and others were properly criticized when they seemed to accept without qualification or verification that Israel had bombed a Gaza hospital, killing 500 civilians. It turned out that Israel and the U.S. independently released information proving that an errant Islamic Jihad rocket was the cause of the deaths.  The errant rocket also hit next to the hospital, not the hospital itself, and maybe fewer than 100 were killed.  Any loss of life is tragic, particularly of innocent civilians, but there is a significant and qualitative difference between the Oct. 7 slaughter by Hamas and civilians killed by an errant rocket or Israeli missiles in wartime.

The New York Times corrected its original account as to the source of the explosion and the body count, but it was too late. From the start the paper needed to immediately qualify what Hamas said, or at a minimum state the information could not be verified.

The media should report what Hamas says but should not accept statements as fact without proof. Reporters commonly use adjectives like claimed, reportedly and allegedly when writing about someone accused of a crime. Why aren’t they using those terms more often when quoting unverifiable statements from Hamas, a recognized terrorist organization?

During the Vietnam War, I asked a friend who served as a public information office for the U.S. Army in Vietnam how the U.S. determined the weekly count of enemy troops killed.  He responded, “We take whatever our losses are and multiply by 10.” I was never entirely sure if he was totally serious, but things like body counts dramatically affect the narrative in this dispute.

We need to be holding our most important news outlets to the highest possible standards because they shape our views of a seemingly growing war.

Bob Rawitch spent 28 years as a reporter and editor at the L.A. Times. 

But beyond actions needed to respond to—and avert—crises, lawmakers should not lose sight of other meaningful policy reforms that are brewing. Notably, a plethora of bi-partisan bills are being considered in Congress that would foster transparency, increase oversight, and create accountability within the prescription drug arena.

The reforms are sorely needed as Americans and businesses prepare to navigate increasing healthcare costs in the new year. Prices are set to increase by up to 8.5 percent in 2024, which as a recent Reuters headline alarmingly notes is the “biggest healthcare cost jump in a decade.” And given that spending on medicine in the U.S. has increased by nearly 90 percent over the past decade, it’s clear that patients are feeling an intense financial squeeze from this jump.

Compromised family budgets aren’t the only consequence of ballooning costs. Rising prices are jeopardizing health.

One survey finds that nearly 40 percent of Americans don’t take medications as prescribed because of cost. Some patients are going so far as to ration dosages by cutting pills in half, delaying refills, or even not taking prescribed medication altogether. These types of behaviors have been linked to half of treatment failures, roughly 125,000 fatalities, and up to one-quarter of hospitalizations annually in the U.S.

Fortunately, lawmakers are well poised to take concrete action that will help rein-in the prices patients pay for prescription drugs. More specifically, policymakers are taking aim at the middlemen of the drug supply chain called Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs). These entities act as intermediaries between drugmakers and the consumer market and are responsible for a large part of the ballooning drug costs.

Left with few guardrails and a system that is in desperate need of transparency, a handful of PBMs have taken control of the vast majority of the drug market in the U.S. As a result, they are able to game the system.

Among their schemes, these middlemen leverage their doorkeeper role to the consumer market to pocket manufacturer-provided discounts that should be passed on to patients at the pharmacy counter as financial savings. How much is siphoned off? It’s an estimated $200 billion annually in discounts—costing Americans struggling to afford prescription drugs big time.

A flurry of legislation moving through Congress would help to address this PBM tactic—efforts that are gaining traction.

The DRUG Act, for example, would restructure payments for PBMs to a flat fee rather than being based on the price of a prescription—stripping the middlemen of incentives to steer patients towards more expensive drugs. The Protecting Patients Against PBM Abuses Act would foster transparency and accountability within the drug supply chain. And the Pharmacy Benefit Manager Reform Act is a good first step towards delivering drugmaker rebates to patients as financial savings.

Over the past few weeks, Congress has been paralyzed by infighting in the U.S. House of Representatives. But now with the speakership battle concluded, policymakers can get on with conducting the people’s business. Getting incremental healthcare reform efforts across the finish line should be among their top priorities.

Dr. Tom Price served as the 23rd U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services. He is a senior healthcare policy fellow at the Job Creators Network.

Things often get lost in translation and this challenge affects millions of Americans. Telehealth for example, is a phenomenal resource that continues improving health care access not just by lowering costs but by removing the temporal and geographical barriers to care. Unfortunately, not all Americans have been able to benefit.

Patients with limited English proficiency are significantly less likely than other Americans to make use of telehealth. The demand for these services is present in communities with limited English proficiency, but to solve this problem it will require a bipartisan effort. That is why it is so important to find common ground in Congress to help break down language barriers in this country to improve access to our health care system. The introduction of the Supporting Patient Education and Knowledge (SPEAK) Act marks an important step toward assuring that all Americans have access to the care they need. 

The SPEAK Act would create a taskforce to identify how best to support the over 25 million people in the U.S. with limited English proficiency and ensure that they can also benefit from new health care services. Health care affects all of us and a language barrier is not just a treatment barrier, but it is also expensive. Not only does limited language access keep individuals from receiving proper care or even pursuing it, but unclear communication can result in real harm to patients and providers.  

The numbers themselves speak volumes—patients with limited English proficiency face an elevated risk of medical errors, and a staggering $1.7 billion in medical malpractice costs over five years could have been averted with improved patient communication. It’s more than just policy; it’s about drastically improving and even saving lives. The SPEAK act is more than a message, it’s a commitment to making healthcare services accessible to all Americans.

The Asian and Hispanic communities to which we belong would benefit greatly from increased language access. Together these two communities represent 60 percent of California’s 45th district and 54 percent of the whole state. Many of us enjoy the rich diversity of our community: from the Vietnamese Night Market in Little Saigon to the culture celebrations in Buena Park, our district represents the best of America, and we should want all Americans, regardless of origin, to be able to receive services just like everyone else.

Being the children of immigrants, we both personally understand the challenges that can come from limited language access, especially in the realm of health care. We know well the look of relief from our own parents when they find a health care professional who speaks their language. We, like countless others, find ourselves in the doctor’s office translating for family members. Increasing language access doesn’t just benefit the single individual with limited English proficiency but also has positive effects on their caregivers and family unit. The SPEAK Act is a step toward a world where our families and neighbors could not only access the care and treatment they need, but also be able to fully understand their options. This act is a step towards ensuring dignity in health care access. 

As we look to the future, we know that now isn’t the time for division, we should all come to the table to work across the aisle to find solutions that help all Americans. To speak for those without a voice and bring everyone closer to achieving results and allowing everyone to pursue their American Dream.

Michelle Steel represents the 45th congressional district. Daniel Garza is president of The LIBRE Initiative.

The University of Pennsylvania has pushed Rowan to resign his chairmanship because Rowan does not like how the university has handled the rise of antisemitism on campus. He and other donors are unwilling to write large checks to a school that polices microaggressions but lets students call for eliminating Israel.

Jon Huntsman has notified the University of Pennsylvania that his family foundation will no longer send the millions of dollars the university came to expect.

Financier Bill Ackman wants to know the names of the students joining the antisemitic protests. All of these gentlemen are horrified by these Ivy League and elite institutions, which regularly denounce microaggressions, “anti-trans” speech and conservatives on campus but let antisemites chant “from river to sea” and “there is only one solution.”

I just went through our annual diversity training at my company. The lawyers helpfully told us that we do it not because it covers the company’s butt, but because it improves the company. We learned about sexual harassment. We learned about amplifying minority voices. We learned about tolerance, diversity, equity and inclusion.

Where was the training against antisemitism? These men and others have funded a bunch of academic institutions and then filled their ranks with the products of those institutions who we now see are fine with the genocide of the Jewish people.

Maybe spending less time telling us the Billy Graham rule is bad and more time telling us it’s bad to root for the genocide of the Jewish race might help ferret out the people already on the inside who should not be there.

But there’s something else worth noting here that I hope these men pay attention to.

Georgetown University may have mass pro-Hamas rallies, but the University of Georgia does not. Harvard might be seeing its professors and students chanting “Death to Israel,” but Mercer University (my alma mater) is not. The University of Pennsylvania may cheer on the murders of Jews, but the University of Florida does not. In fact, Ben Sasse, the president of the University of Florida, led that school’s study body in a pro-Israel rally.

Most Americans do not send their children to the institutions of the secular, progressive elite. They send their kids to Covenant College, Berry, Olivet, Texas A&M, LSU, Purdue, Oklahoma, Louisville, the University of Alabama, etc., etc., etc. Sure, there are some protesters and Hamas sympathizers at each of those, but most of the students are there to get a degree and a real job.

These institutions turn out fine financiers, economists, MBAs, doctors and lawyers. But they get overlooked by the upper echelons of society who have sent their money to train antisemites at Yale and genocide champions at Harvard. These guys are donating to the University of Pennsylvania, which in turn is producing the future donor class of Hezbollah.

The elite have demanded we give them our attention and respect. They have lost the former and never earned the latter. The donors to these institutions have contributed to the class and income gap while creating a group of indoctrinated, entitled credentialists who would send these same donors to their deaths.

The only way to stop it is to force change. The only way to force change is to take away the access, give up the Ivy-covered gatekeeping and look past the elites to the Americans.

Erick Erickson is a syndicated columnist and radio host.