Latest news with #neo-Marxist
Sky News AU
28-05-2025
- Politics
- Sky News AU
‘Neo-Marxist Kool-Aid': Southern Poverty Law Center puts youth group on hate map
Newsweek Senior Editor-at-Large Josh Hammer reacts to the Southern Poverty Law Center putting conservative youth group Turning Point USA on their hate map. 'They've paid up a lot of money in defamation lawsuits over the years for things exactly like that,' Mr Hammer told Sky News host Rita Panahi. 'This organisation, to put it mildly, they have lost their way. 'The problem is that, like so many once liberal institutions, they drank the woke identitarian identity politics neo-Marxist Kool-Aid with every ounce of their being. 'They have turned into the very monsters that once upon a time, very long ago, they opposed.'
Yahoo
26-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
OSU researcher: $700K grant canceled when DOGE misunderstood use of ‘climate'
COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — An Ohio State University researcher is left without funding after DOGE canceled it over what she said is a misinterpreted word. In November 2022, OSU Engineering Education Research Assistant Professor Julie Aldridge was awarded $713,155 in funding from the National Science Foundation to be paid over four years. Less than three years later, her grant was canceled because it was titled 'The Organizational Climate Challenge: Promoting the retention of students from underrepresented groups in doctoral engineering programs.' Aldridge said she was out of state at an academic conference when the Sponsored Project Office at OSU received word of the cancelation on April 25. The office received an emailed list of terminated awards, leaving a colleague from the Sponsored Project Office to break the news to Aldridge. Former Ohio State wide receiver seriously injured, girlfriend killed in ATV accident 'Can you imagine having to do that — and on a Friday afternoon? That's another thing, these actions tend to take place late on Fridays,' Aldridge said. Aldridge said she and her colleagues knew it might be coming. Her project had been included under the environmental justice category in Ted Cruz's list of 'promoting neo-Marxist propaganda.' Aldridge said it was flagged because her award included the term 'climate,' used in this case to describe the environment of an organization. 'We learned that keyword searches are being used to identify awards for termination and 'climate' is a trigger word,' Aldridge said. 'The searches are automated, which means the keyword's context is lost.' At the time she was awarded the grant, Aldridge told OSU's College of Engineering communications team that the NSF asked her to expand the project's scope to also focus on LGBTQ+ retention in doctoral engineering programs. She said the research had looked into an NSF priority area, expanding STEM participation, which was set by Congress. Highly toxic plant spreading in Ohio now in bloom The grant still had $423,599.71 unpaid. In the first two years of research, Aldridge and co-researchers from UNC, the University of Cincinnati and the American Society for Engineering Education used data to develop a survey to best gage why retention rates are low. In the third and fourth years, which Aldridge was currently working on, the survey was supposed to be distributed to current doctoral engineering students. Now, Aldridge is left without funding or the data she'd hoped to collect. 'Awards that are not aligned with NSF's priorities have been terminated, including but not limited to those on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and misinformation/disinformation,' The NSF said. According to the NSF, any awards terminated because they 'no longer (effectuate) the program goals or agency priorities' are final decisions and cannot be appealed. Under new guidelines, researchers are not allowed to focus on broadening STEM opportunities for protected identities. 'Prior research indicates women enter engineering graduate programs but leave before completing their doctoral degrees. They aren't leaving due to a lack of knowledge, skill or ability,' Aldridge said. 'The conditions in their doctoral programs drive them out. That's where understanding organizational climate comes in.' Aldridge said although women make up 51% of the U.S. population, only around 13% of engineering doctorates are earned by women. She said that statistic only dwindles when you consider other factors like race, sexuality or disability. Bill would ban some people from buying land in Ohio Aldridge said after the grant cancelation, it's difficult to know where to go next. She said earning a federal grant for research is a very competitive process, and cuts have disproportionately affected social science and education research, making her field even more difficult to win funding. 'Before the DOGE takeover, my plan was to follow up my current research with a new study focusing on engineering doctoral students with a disability,' Aldridge said. 'That's off the table because 'disability' is another trigger word.' Aldridge had another National Science Foundation grant proposal recommended for funding, but she said the status is now pending. She said DOGE is trying to eliminate the National Science Foundation division that would fund the award. Aldridge said a court order stopped its elimination, but the program does not seem to be actively approving or working through any pending or new awards. The National Science Foundation termination is not appealable, but Aldridge said she is still appealing it 'based on procedural grounds.' She warned that more research cuts come every week, and implored people to be aware about the effects on American science and research aws it becomes 'endangered.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Sky News AU
04-05-2025
- Politics
- Sky News AU
The Coalition can ‘win back' younger voters by making their ‘lives better'
Sky News host Rita Panahi says the Coalition needs to give younger voters 'something to back' in order to win them back. This comes after the Liberal Party suffered a devastating loss at the 2025 federal election. 'Something that's been talked about a lot, again by the pundits … is that the Liberals need to go left because the demographic changes and the young voters,' Ms Panahi said. 'Now, again, look at other countries that are like us; for example, you can win back, or you can win young voters, but you have to give them something to back. 'You have to actually give them policies that speak to them, that aren't necessarily hard left neo-Marxist policies, but actually policies that will make their lives better.'
Daily Mail
28-04-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
Why even Keir Starmer's inner circle want to see Wes Streeting in Number 10, writes LORD ASHCROFT
Keir Starmer is undeniably a member of the Establishment. He attended a fee-paying school, studied at Oxford, became a successful barrister, was appointed Director of Public Prosecutions, accepted a knighthood, entered the Commons and has now become Prime Minister. And yet despite having succeeded in life thanks to his own hard work, he seems always to be at pains to distance himself from the Establishment by speaking so often of his 'working-class' roots and his socialism. The perception remains of him being a man of contradictions, someone who faces in two directions at once. It makes him hard to fathom. Where exactly does he fit on the political spectrum? When he was elected as leader of the Labour Party, it was on a prospectus that paid tribute to the Left-wing policies of his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn. Then over the next four years he seemed to renounce Corbynism by tacking towards the centre; under him Labour was rebuilt by those on the party's Right. But as soon as power was secured and he fulfilled his dream of becoming prime minister, his administration pursued policies of which Corbyn would be far more likely to approve than would a centrist like Tony Blair. Within the first month, nearly £10 billion was lavished on public-sector pay rises, without any conditions. Since then there have been: A further £40 billion of tax rises; £70 billion of public spending announcements ranging from railway re-nationalisation to green energy; The imposition of VAT on private school fees; The promotion of workers' rights at an estimated cost to businesses of £5 billion per year; The reversal of changes made by New Labour and later the Tories to the education system; A foreign policy programme that appear to put international court rulings above British interests. As I have watched this unfold, it has been impossible not to conclude that this government is ideologically extreme. But how many voters who backed Labour knew what to expect from Starmer's supposedly moderate administration? And how many feel duped? They can be forgiven for any confusion they have experienced. And yet for those on the Left, what Starmer is doing is not extreme enough. They see him as an opportunist without an ounce of real principle – 'lacking an essential political identity and little in the way of an intellectual paper trail', in the words of Jon Cruddas, a Labour MP until the last election. Left-winger Diane Abbott has taken to reminding voters that he has not been a member of the Labour Party for very long and 'doesn't have a feel for it'. Some, such as Starmer's erstwhile friend Benjamin Schoendorff, feel not just let down but betrayed. Back in the 1980s, Schoendorff was a fellow student radical at Oxford University and the editor of a hard-Left, neo-Marxist magazine called Socialist Alternatives that Starmer wrote for and was deeply involved in. These days he is withering about his one-time comrade. 'I don't get a sense of intellectual evolution. I think he's just an empty suit, a puppet, saying whatever he's been told to say. Every day he insults our intelligence and morals in new ways beyond comprehension.' This notion is given credence by a former barrister colleague of Starmer's who doubts that he ever had the ability to be anything other than a follower. 'The best evidence of his weak personality,' this person says, 'is the way he would argue cases in court. 'He'd make concessions that were completely wrong just because he thought that was the way the court was thinking. That's the man through and through. Keir can't speak with conviction because he has no convictions. The thing he's most scared of is being found out for being a mediocre individual. He's the same in politics as he was as a lawyer.' Another barrister who saw him in action as an advocate commented bluntly: 'He's dull as hell. His submissions were timid. He was reluctant to take a difficult point that might be very significant. He tended to go down the path of least resistance. It was compromise rather than confrontation. It was all derivative and regurgitated. It was an attempt to make a virtue out of blandness. 'I have a horrible feeling part of his success was based on the idea that he looks the part subliminally. That's one of the tricks of the light with Keir. He looks like a matinee idol with that coiffed hair, but in reality he's like the deputy manager of the local branch of Barclays Bank.' Another legal figure who worked with him recalls: 'I always thought he was just a political wet.' Starmer's supporters would contest such charges, arguing that he does have sound political instincts and ideas. How could a man who converted the Labour Party from a Corbynite sect into an election-winning machine be devoid of any political touch? They may have a point. However, to voters he tends to comes across as more of a bureaucrat than a politician – 'a lawyer not a leader' in the words of Boris Johnson, or 'a political robot' as one member of a TV audience accused him of being. This is a fear shared in Starmer's own party. 'My concern is that Keir hasn't been able to set out any narrative,' says a senior Labour figure. 'Yes, he inherited an unstable underlying situation from the Conservatives, but he did so with great parliamentary strength. Yet he doesn't know how to handle it. 'He's very inexperienced in parliamentary and political terms. He doesn't have any history of political campaigning before he became an MP or of political management, and I think it shows in his record both as Leader of the Opposition and as Prime Minister. His political antennae are very weak, with the result that there has been a series of mistakes.' In the space of a few months, Labour made enemies of pensioners, farmers, small business owners, big business leaders, free speech advocates, female pensioners and parents who pay school fees, to name just some groups affected by their policies. And more self-imposed problem areas loom for him, such as his government's cripplingly expensive green agenda. Donald Trump's America has joined China in effectively abandoning climate change targets. If this is the attitude of the two biggest economies on the planet, many British voters will want to know why the UK economy is so heavily geared towards expensive environmental concerns given the country produces less than 1 per cent of the world's CO2 emissions. As for his relationship with the US president, this could well define Starmer's premiership. How will he remain on positive terms with Trump in the face of tariffs while simultaneously achieving his aim of moving Britain back into the orbit of the EU – Trump's least favourite trading bloc – in areas such as farming and goods standards? Trump is also tearing up the diversity, equality and inclusion philosophy, believing it to be a restriction of personal freedom and economic growth. Will Starmer have the courage to mirror the US president by re-examining whether these concepts have enhanced the productivity of the civil service, universities and businesses in Britain? Where Starmer positions himself politically will be vital as Britain faces the fascinating prospect of the traditional two-party system disintegrating. The rise of Reform UK has transformed UK politics into a three-horse race between itself, Labour and the Conservatives. And Labour is as much in the firing line of this mini political revolution as the Conservatives, perhaps more so. Large numbers of voters still believe that the last Tory government damaged the economy, unnecessarily pursued expensive net zero policies and facilitated high immigration long before Labour was in power. In many ways, Labour's stance in these three areas is seen merely as a continuation of the Tory years. 'We treat the Tories and Labour as the uniparty,' says Reform leader Nigel Farage. 'There's nothing between them. Should Labour be worried about us? They should be terrified.' Last July, Reform came second in 98 constituencies – 89 of which are held by Labour. As a new party, Reform UK has the reputation of being a 'clean skin'. With trust in both mainstream parties slipping, it has the potential to shake up the entire system. Internal rows last month may have done the new party some damage. Yet it is undeniable that, when compared with the traditional organisations, Reform UK has the aura of an exciting start-up business and, in Farage, the advantage of a household name running it. Farage says that Starmer will struggle because, as a member of the metropolitan elite, he does not connect with Labour's base. 'Because so many events are beyond a prime minister's control, the only way they can get through governing is by having some underlying ideology. But his is based around a vague world order, and the law, and this is part of his metropolitan outlook. He seems wholly unconcerned with the immigration issue. He's making a mistake. Ukip did far more harm to Labour in the 2015 General Election than it did to the Tories. Those who are the most patriotic, the most socially conservative and the most concerned about the effect of mass immigration are traditional Labour voters.' He predicts that one issue will soon tower above most others. 'Labour's energy policy is going to be the next Brexit,' says Farage. 'The public will wake up to how much they've been paying on their bills. We have the most expensive electricity in the world. Under Starmer, we're de-industrialising. Wait until people realise the only beneficiary is China.' The arrival of an insurgent political party in Britain leads to other, more fundamental questions. According to the French writer Michel Houellebecq, people no longer want to be represented by professional politicians. In the digital age, the leaders of established parties are being rejected in favour of those who seem less conventional. Donald Trump and Argentina's Javier Milei are examples of unorthodox figures who cater to the needs and wants of modern electorates. In Britain, Farage has built up a significant following by using the media to present himself as a political outsider who is ready to break the existing monopoly. So far, his approach has produced some remarkable results, with Reform surging in the polls and having a greater number of members than the Conservative Party. Elon Musk, though unelected, is the ultimate example of those who fit the 'unconventional' mould. As the owner of Twitter (now X), he has used that channel to further many of his aims – notably, in British politics, by tracking and attacking Starmer and sometimes humiliating him on to the back foot. By comparison, Starmer runs the risk of looking like a figure from another age. These days personality matters more than ever in politics. Yet his temperament does not lend itself to flamboyance, humour, exhibitionism, great flights of oratory or much else that is truly memorable. Rather, he is a man who likes to be in control, who doesn't like being thwarted, who can be stubborn. He also has to be scripted, as he struggles to speak off the cuff. This makes it difficult for him to emote. He comes across as rigid. His lack of warmth makes it hard for voters to relate to him Even if he is essentially decent, his path would be easier if he had a coherent political credo to sell – a set of ideas that could be called Starmerism. But if such a thing exists, most Labour parliamentarians have so far found defining it to be a challenge. There is no consensus on what it means beyond woolly talk of the centre-Left and social democracy, leading some to reason that he is a somewhat apolitical politician. Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch's view, according to an ally, is that he's odd – 'very partisan, more so than average', yet he doesn't seem to like politics at all. Facing him across the despatch box each week at Prime Minister's Questions in the Commons chamber, she is said to be unimpressed by his performance. 'He simply does not like answering questions. He feels he is being put on trial. But he comes across as dismissive and self-important. The lawyer in him is absolutely terrified of saying anything that could be prosecuted later. He prefers to be the prosecutor asking questions not answering them.' Badenoch thinks he may have ended up in politics simply because he wasn't sure what to do after being Director of Public Prosecutions. On that, it should also be said that he may have used up whatever human capital he has so far relied on as the former DPP – a fact that he referred to so often during the election campaign that, like his harping on about his father being a toolmaker, it became a standing joke. But his professed ignorance of two high-profile Crown Prosecution Service cases while in post – Jimmy Savile and Mohamed Al Fayed, both accused of sexual exploitation of women but never brought to trial – has come back to bite him. The grooming gang scandal involving groups of largely Pakistani men, which also surfaced during his time as DPP, remains a running sore. On a different front, since becoming prime minister, his judgment has come into question for allowing the convicted fraudster Louise Haigh into his Cabinet. Ten years earlier she had pleaded guilty to reporting the loss of her mobile phone in a mugging when in fact it was still in her possession. She was given a conditional discharge. When the incident resurfaced after Starmer appointed her his Transport Secretary, she resigned, the first minister to leave his Cabinet. But much about the story was odd. In her resignation letter, Haigh stated that Starmer knew of her fraud conviction when he appointed her. Downing Street's explanation was that 'new information' had come to light, yet when asked about this new information, Starmer stonewalled, saying: 'I'm not going to disclose private conversations.' All this begged the question: if he knew about her conviction, why appoint her? And if he did not know, why was he so surprisingly badly informed? Attebtion is already turning to who could succeed Starmer as Labour leader, whether via a coup (though this is far from straightforward under Labour Party rules) or in an orderly fashion. The two names mentioned most often are Labour's Deputy Leader, Angela Rayner, and the Health Secretary, Wes Streeting. Both are seen as good communicators who have made their way to the top table through talent, perseverance and luck. Rayner is politically to the Left of Morgan McSweeney, Starmer's hugely influential chief of staff, and therefore not part of his team, which puts a target on her back. But she's useful to Starmer. And necessary, in some respects. Who can say whether she could move against him one day? For now, the thinking seems to be that from his perspective it is safer to keep her on the front bench rather than the back benches. Streeting is seen as a more serious figure, although, as one of his friends tells me, his motivations may not be entirely altruistic. 'Wes's one ambition is for him and his boyfriend to be the first gay couple in No. 10,' reports this parliamentarian. Even if this is true, there is more to him than that, as a senior Labour figure explains, and the danger he poses to Starmer's leadership is significant. 'Starmer is in hock to a factional group in Labour which has a different agenda from his own,' says this person. 'So far, Starmer's been happy to use that. He positioned himself as centre-Left but I would say he's not very fixed in that at all, whereas McSweeney and his allies in the party are fixed in what they want. Their agenda is different and the candidate they'd like to roll it out is Streeting. He is the guy they want [as leader]. 'The Blairites were never keen on Keir to start with. They were always suspicious of him. Then, as far as they were concerned, he came good and they were very happy about that and came to love him dearly, but it was always a very transactional and conditional love. 'It would take a lot to dislodge Keir, but it's not just a question of personal ambition and individuals. It's also about the people like McSweeney who are currently running the Keir show. In the longer term, Wes is their guy, not Keir.' Another former colleague adds: 'Keir is brittle, literal, process-driven. He's very good at holding a line in public, but he can't do what Wes Streeting can do, which is to expand on a point off the cuff and jump back and forth. Keir can't go off his brief. He's very limited in that sense.' Assuming that Starmer wishes to lead the Labour Party into the next General Election, which must take place by the summer of 2029, two factors are in his favour: he has time and he has a parliamentary majority that should allow him a tremendous amount of latitude. This is a luxurious position for any premier to be in. And yet it's hard to ignore the fact that the 2024 election result was less a positive endorsement of him and the Labour Party and more an anti-Tory vote. The turnout was not quite 60 per cent and Labour's share of the vote was a mere 33.7 per cent, the lowest of any majority party on record. Put another way, 80 per cent of registered voters did not back Labour at the ballot box. The feeling has persisted ever since the General Election that Starmer is an accidental prime minister, a leader who is in power because of his opponents' weaknesses rather than as a result of his own strengths. It is not difficult to imagine confidence in him draining away rapidly should events overtake him and he falls victim to the curse of matters moving beyond his control. Lord Ashcroft KCMG PC is an international businessman, philanthropist, author and pollster. For more information on his work, visit Follow him on X/Facebook @LordAshcroft. © Michael Ashcroft 2025. To order a copy for £15.29 (offer valid to 10/05/25;UK P&P free on offers over £25) go to or call 020 3176 2937. 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Yahoo
12-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Opinion - Leland Vittert's War Notes: Betting Against America
NewsNation Chief Washington Anchor and On Balance host Leland Vittert was a foreign correspondent for four years in Jerusalem. He gives you an early look at tonight's 9 pm ET show. Subscribe to War Notes here. Editor's note: The week of the Masters – and certainly the Thursday and Friday of it – should be considered national holidays. But they are not – therefore, I offer you an abbreviated War Notes so you and I can get back to what we should be doing – eating pimento cheese sandwiches and watching golf. Reckoning: Finally, America's elite universities face a reckoning over: Their wildly illiberal neo-Marxist views and the pulling of federal funding. Listen to conservative activist Christopher Rufo on The New York Times' 'The Daily' podcast: 🎤 'And so look, reforming institutions, you have to deal with three things. The raw material of politics is money, power, and status. And so as I run campaigns, for example, the successful campaign to oust the president of Harvard University at the beginning of last year, that's what I'm thinking about. I'm thinking about how can we take away their money? How can we take away their power? How can we take away their status to the point that we're causing so much pain to the decision-makers, in this case, the members of the Harvard Corporation, so that they have to change?' Their insane endowments – some are the size of a small country's GDP – yet rising tuition on degrees with no ROI – think a Ph.D. for $300k in feminist poetry. Hear what Scott Galloway had to say: 'If you're in the top 1% income earning a kid in a top 1% household you're 77 times more likely to get into an elite school than the bottom 99. Is that what America's about? So I believe that if you are not growing your freshman class faster than population growth and you have an endowment over a billion dollars, I think you should lose your tax-free status because you're no longer a public servant. You're a hedge fund with classes.' The growing realization by much of America is that a 4-year degree is no longer the ticket to a better life than their parents. Watch tonight: Chris Cilliza on whether American universities are just another institution that President Trump will destroy or if they destroyed themselves. For the first time in a major financial crisis, people are betting against America. Typically, in a financial crisis, everyone buys U.S. Treasury bills because the safest bet is in the full faith and credit of the United States. The price of treasuries goes up with higher demand, and then the yield goes down. This has allowed the government (whichever party is in control) incredible flexibility in past crises. Think about all the debt issued during COVID at very low interest rates. People wanted security, and the United States provided that. For the first time, the opposite is happening. The yield on treasuries is going up, and the price is going down – more people are selling than buying. Yes, I know this is an overly simplistic view, but that doesn't mean it's wrong. The lack of demand for treasuries at a time of financial panic is different and dangerous. As Axios puts it, 'The world's hot new trade is 'sell America.'' As we told you when President Biden told everyone the economy was great, people don't need to be told how to feel – and right now, Americans are scared. So is the rest of the world. Consumer confidence is at its second lowest since 1952 – Trump must address this by something other than saying how many great deals he will do. The tariff policy is all over the place. Will tariffs pay off our national debt, or are they negotiating tools? They can't be both. Trump's goals appear ever-changing and ill-defined. Are we uniting the world against China, or is this about bringing iPhone manufacturing to America? The world no longer sees America as an honest friend and ally. This is the biggest problem: If America first becomes America alone, then China will fill the void. We have spent the past 10 days largely defending President Trump for a Ronald Reagan-like gamble to confront China and level the playing field. 💪 Trump and his team must figure out a way to do it that makes America stronger while taking this gamble. Yes, but China and the Democrats keep undermining him. Reality: He is the president – it's his job to figure it out, sell it to the American people and stay the course. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
