In the buildup to the House's recent recess, the left-wing groups Indivisible and MoveOn touted their plans to organize DOGE protests at GOP town halls and congressional offices. In an Associated Press piece headlined, "The anti-Musk protest movement is expected to ramp up with Congress on recess," the groups took aim at Elon, with MoveOn executive director Rahna Epting saying "people are mad as hell" about the billionaire's efforts to slash government spending.
When some of those protests went viral days later, mainstream media outlets like the New York Times, Washington Post, and CBS News cited them as proof of broad bipartisan "backlash" against DOGE. None mentioned Indivisible or MoveOn.
The groups, both of which have received generous funding from George Soros over the years, "were at the center of the demonstrations," the Free Beacon's Collin Anderson reports. They launched "'national mobilization' efforts targeting the 'Trump-Musk agenda' and 'Trump-Musk coup' during the recess period." Indivisible issued a "Musk or Us Recess Toolkit" that showed members how to find local town halls and gave them talking points.
Those materials, like the Associated Press piece, were publicly available. They didn't end up in CBS, the Times, or the Post. CBS, for its part, did quote one organizer of a viral town hall protest targeting Georgia's Rich McCormick, describing the woman, Maggie Goldman, as a McCormick constituent. She's also a former campaign volunteer coordinator for Pete Buttigieg and a Democratic donor. She ran for her local county commission on an "inclusive policy agenda."
When it comes to states you'd expect champion race-conscious hiring policies at K-12 schools, Iowa probably isn't high on the list. But scores of public districts in the Hawkeye state have "affirmative action plans that encourage race-based hiring and other diversity initiatives," the Free Beacon's Aaron Sibarium reports, and for now, they haven't gotten rid of them.
The plans, which are required under state law, could imperil the districts' federal funding under new Trump administration guidance.
While the law requiring the plans does not instruct districts to use racial preferences, it does expect them to set "goals and timetables for reduction of underrepresentation." The result, in practice, has been a glut of race-conscious hiring initiatives across Iowa’s public school system, putting a state that Donald Trump won comfortably in 2024 on a collision course with his administration’s priorities.
The Department of Education said in a "Dear Colleague" letter this month that it would treat any form of race-based decision-making as a violation of federal law. The guidance, which takes effect on Feb. 28, even applies to programs that do not use race directly but are "motivated by racial considerations," such as trainings that traffic in "crude racial stereotypes" or decisions that rely on "non-racial information as a proxy for race."
That language could implicate a host of programs enshrined in the affirmative action plans. Des Moines Public Schools, for example, has a goal of increasing "the number of teachers of color in Kindergarten by 8%" and the "number of teachers of color in Third Grade by 5%." While those goals "are not to be treated or understood as rigid and inflexible quotas that must be met," according to the plan, race will "serve as a selection criteria" for any roles "where underrepresentation exists."
READ MORE: Affirmative Action Plans Remain in Iowa Public Schools Despite Trump Order
Over on MSNBC, Joy Reid concluded a lackluster career at the left-wing network, donning a company-branded tracksuit to rant about "how to defend democracy and defeat white supremacy."
That's according to our Andrew Stiles, who watched Reid's final episode so you wouldn't have to. Reid "discussed Trump's authoritarian assault on the Constitution with Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a so-called fascism expert and history professor at New York University, as well as Ben Rhodes, the former Obama speechwriter who spearheaded the Iran nuclear agreement, attended the funeral of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, and cried like a bitch when Hillary Clinton lost in 2016," writes Stiles. "They also discussed the importance of black women."
Speaking of crying like a bitch, Reid shed tears of her own while discussing MSNBC's decision to fire her for low ratings. Speaking to the podcast "Win With Black Women" via Zoom on Sunday, Reid "sobbed sloppy tears while she defiantly defended her show from critics, insisting she was 'not sorry' that she 'went hard on so many issues.'" She specifically referenced Nikole Hannah-Jones's historically inaccurate 1619 Project, saying Jones "put into our spirit that we need to understand 1619 as the real founding of this country."
Reid will be replaced by a trio of MSNBC weekend hosts: former Kamala Harris adviser Symone Sanders, anti-Trump "Republican" Michael Steele, and Alicia Menendez, the daughter of former Democratic senator and convicted felon Bob Menendez. Notorious anti-Semite Al Sharpton appears unaffected by the overhaul.
Reid is still searching for the culprit who hacked her blog and left homophobic posts.
READ MORE: Joy Reid Concludes Lackluster Career at MSNBC
Away from the Beacon:
- A top Hamas official who leads the terror group's foreign relations office expressed regret over Oct. 7, telling the New York Times that he wouldn't have supported the rampage "if he had known of the havoc it would wreak on Gaza." Oops! He backtracked after the Times published the interview, assuring his terrorist buddies that he supports the attack as "an expression of our people's right to resistance."
- Everybody hates Kathy: Antonio Delgado, New York's lieutenant governor, is ditching his reelection bid, saying he won't run alongside Gov. Kathy Hochul in 2026. Hochul fired back, saying she "had already begun taking steps to identify a new running mate for 2026."
- 81 percent of voters support "deporting immigrants who are here illegally and have committed crimes" and 76 percent support "undertaking a full-scale effort to find and eliminate fraud and waste in government expenditures," according to a new Harvard-Harris poll.