Authored by Brett Wilkins

While media coverage of Israel’s war on Lebanon mainly focuses on the slaughter of hundreds of Lebanese civilians and destruction of entire villages, Israel Defense Forces commanders are tacitly condoning widespread looting by their troops in Lebanon, according to reporting Thursday.

Haaretz, Israel’s oldest daily newspaper, interviewed a number of IDF personnel who described routine theft of items including motorcycles, televisions, paintings, sofas, and rugs from the homes and businesses of some of the more than 1 million Lebanese forcibly displaced by Israel’s assault on its northern neighbor.

Vandalized house, with Hebrew graffiti, in Lebanese village of Alma al-Shaab, vai L’Orient-Le Jour.

Israel has seized control of more than 50 villages in southern Lebanon as part of its expanding so-called “Yellow Line,” with residents who cross it risking their lives. Their absence offers IDF troops the opportunity to loot with no Lebanese resistance.

The looting of civilian homes and businesses is formally known as “pillage” and is strictly prohibited under numerous Israeli and international laws and conventions. However, according to the IDF soldiers and officers interviewed by Haaretz, senior and junior commanders know about the pillaging but are not punishing offending soldiers.

“It’s on a crazy scale,” one soldier said. “Anyone who takes something – televisions, cigarettes, tools, whatever – immediately puts it in their vehicle or leaves it off to the side, not inside the army base, but it’s not hidden. Everyone sees it and understands.”

Soldiers interviewed said commanders’ responses range from turning a blind eye to prohibiting looting but not punishing offenders. “In our unit, they don’t even comment or get angry,” one soldier claimed. “The battalion and brigade commanders know everything.”

Another said that “battalion and brigade commanders do speak up and get angry, but without action, those are empty words.” Some IDF soldiers have even posted videos of their looting on social media – usually with no consequences.

Responding to the Haartez report, the IDF claimed:

The military views any harm to civilian property and acts of looting with utmost severity and unequivocally prohibits them. Any allegation or suspicion of such acts is thoroughly examined and addressed with the full weight of the law. In cases where sufficient evidence is established, disciplinary and criminal measures are taken, including prosecution. The Military Police Corps conducts inspections at the northern border crossing as forces exit Lebanon.

However, some military police checkpoints along the border have been removed, and in some locations there have never been any checkpoints at all.

🇮🇱🇱🇧IDF soldiers reportedly filmed looting homes in southern Lebanon.

The video shows troops taking belongings from civilian houses during the ground operations.

Israel’s campaign has displaced over 1 million Lebanese in under three weeks…pic.twitter.com/RRgjX8T9Rb https://t.co/iGcjA9NbXt

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) March 20, 2026

Widespread looting by IDF soldiers has previously been documented in Gaza and the illegally occupied West Bank, sometimes by the perpetrators themselves.

IDF looting has also been reported in Syria, where Israel has seized as many as 200 square miles of additional territory in 2024, including dozens of border villages, under cover of the Gaza genocide. Israel already conquered and occupied much of the Syrian Golan Heights in 1967.

Israeli forces also allegedly backed Palestinians who looted Gaza aid convoys in order to boost the narrative that it’s Hamas, not Israel, thatof is preventing humanitarian aid from reaching starving Gazans.

Looting of Palestinian property was particularly rampant during the Nakba, or “catastrophe,” when more than 750,000 Palestinian Arabs were ethnically cleansed to make way for the establishment of Israel.

The systematic theft of Palestinian land, homes, and property – which continued with the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and Golan Heights in 1967 – is accelerating today, and can be witnessed in videos of settler pogroms in the West Bank and infamous footage of an American-born settler colonist telling a Palestinian family whose home he’s trying to steal that “if I don’t steal it, someone else is going to.”

Lebanese media reports Israeli airstrikes in the southern Lebanon town of Deir Aames.

The IDF warned residents of the town earlier to evacuate after it said Hezbollah had launched rockets from the area. pic.twitter.com/FQVwrwwmPh

— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) April 24, 2026

Such unchecked usurpation emboldens further thievery. One soldier interviewed by Haaretz for Thursday’s article said the pillage would effectively end if there were serious consequences for offenders, pointing to units in which commanders took a tough stance against looting, resulting in negligible levels of the crime.

“Lenient enforcement sends a clear message. If someone were dismissed or jailed, or if military police were stationed at the border, it would stop almost immediately,” they said. “But when there is no punishment, the message is obvious.”

Authored by Lawrence Kadish via The Gatestone Institute,

For decades, fusion energy has been the great scientific pursuit – clean, limitless power drawn from the same physics that powers the sun. Enormous progress has been made in the technology required to harness nuclear fusion and significant investment is now being made by private companies and President Donald J. Trump’s White House.

As we advance on fusion success, however, there is a danger of progress being halted by an enormous challenge: the supply chain. Without an American-based industrial infrastructure to source, manufacture, and deliver the materials fusion energy requires, our nation’s dominance in this crucial field is at risk.

Consider the “shopping list” needed to create a viable fusion reactor.

Start with its fuel, tritium, a rare hydrogen isotope. There are not a lot of tritium supplies anywhere in the world.

Accordingly, you need to manufacture them – an enormous challenge before you even get to sustaining the actual fusion reaction.

The same issue applies to magnets needed to keep the fusion reaction contained and running.

The list goes on.

It is not a secret for those advancing our nation’s energy independence through fusion.

David Kirtley, CEO of Helion Energy, a major leader in the field, has stated that supply chain challenges could put fusion’s future here in America at risk.

As a result, they have moved some key technology manufacturing in-house.

In testimony before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, Jackie Siebens, Helion Energy’s Director of Public Affairs, stated that building the supply chain and infrastructure necessary to scale fusion is “chief among” the company’s challenges.

She warned that fusion power plants will rely on key components including semiconductors, capacitors, high-quality metals, and magnets —and that the manufacturing of those key items is currently concentrated in a few countries, chiefly China. Why are we not surprised?

The geopolitical stakes could not be higher. Helion Energy correctly argues that without a strong domestic supply chain, the U.S. risks losing its strategic energy dominance even as it advances on fusion energy success

Our nation’s leaders must treat protecting the supply chain with the same urgency as research funding to achieve fusion energy breakthroughs.

Washington needs to recognize the challenge and encourage the creation of an “American made” network of fusion technology suppliers that will protect our future.

It is a race where second best will leave a nation in the dark.

U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) is facing fresh accusations after Republicans flagged her reported push to direct more than $1 million in federal taxpayer funds to a small Somali-led nonprofit whose listed project address matches a Minneapolis restaurant.

The nonprofit, Generation Hope MN, describes itself as providing addiction recovery services, peer support, job training, and mental health support for the East African community. The address tied to Omar’s earmark request – 326 Cedar Ave S / 411 Cedar Ave S – matches Sagal Restaurant and Coffee, a Somali eatery. Conservative investigator Angela Rose documented the site in a video, using Google Street View archives and on-site footage to show minimal or no clinic signage over years, with the building primarily operating as a restaurant. The owner has confirmed Generation Hope uses upstairs space in the multi-tenant property, but critics highlighted the optics amid Minnesota’s fraud history.

Minnesota Rep Ilhan Omar attempted to send $1.46 million dollars in funding to an address for a nonprofit called “Generation Hope”

The address to receive the money isn’t a treatment facility, it’s a restaurant

After this was discovered House Republicans stripped the earmarked… pic.twitter.com/iwwSZMi75H

— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) April 24, 2026

Omar, joined by Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, had requested approximately $1.031 million (with some reports citing up to $1.46 million in initial figures) through the Department of Justice’s Byrne Justice Assistance Grant program for the group’s “Justice Empowerment Initiative.” Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) and other Republicans flagged multiple concerns: the restaurant address, three directors listing the same residential home address in filings, and the organization’s limited demonstrated capacity for large-scale treatment services. House Republicans stripped the earmark from a FY2026 spending package in January 2026. GOP senators later requested a formal DOJ fraud investigation into Generation Hope MN.

This development coincides with a separate but related state-level investigation. On April 22, 2026, Minnesota State Rep. Kristin Robbins (R), chair of the House Fraud Prevention & State Oversight Committee, publicly released a formal data request letter to Omar after the congresswoman reportedly declined multiple invitations to testify about her MEALS Act (H.R. 6187, 116th Congress). That 2020 legislation, incorporated into the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, expanded child nutrition programs and loosened some eligibility requirements during the pandemic—changes critics say contributed to conditions enabling the massive Feeding Our Future scandal, which allegedly defrauded taxpayers of more than $250 million. Court records and trials have implicated numerous individuals in Omar’s district, many from the Somali-American community, with some having ties to her orbit (including a former staffer who pled guilty and associates at sites like Safari Restaurant, where Omar appeared in a 2020 promotional video). Omar has distanced herself from the defend ants and called the fraud “reprehensible,” while urging the public not to broadly blame the Somali community.

Robbins’ letter demands detailed records of Omar’s communications with key players, her office staff, and the Minnesota Department of Education by May 5. Omar has not publicly responded to the latest demand.

Additional layer of recent scrutiny: Omar’s amended financial disclosures and dissolved winery Compounding questions about oversight of public funds, Omar is also facing intense Republican-led scrutiny over her personal finances. In her 2024 disclosure (filed in 2025), she and husband Tim Mynett reported combined assets valued between $6 million and $30 million – a dramatic increase from prior years – largely tied to two companies Mynett co-owns: eStCru LLC (a California winery) and Rose Lake Capital (a venture capital firm). After inquiries from the Office of Congressional Conduct and House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY), who requested records citing “serious public concerns,” Omar amended the filing in mid-April 2026. The new version lists joint assets at just $18,004 to $95,000, with the companies now valued at “none.” Her office blamed an “accounting error” in which liabilities were not properly subtracted and stated she is “not a millionaire.”

Notably, the eStCru winery LLC was officially terminated (dissolved) on April 4, 2026 – days before the amendment became public. Independent investigator Angela Rose (who also produced the Generation Hope video) previously visited the listed address and described the operation as a “phantom” or shell business: no active wine production, no tastings, no product available for purchase, and a facility sign confirming it had “ceased operation.” ZeroHedge and other outlets have reported on suspicions of inflated valuations and potential shell-company activity.

No criminal charges have been filed against Omar personally in any of these matters. Her office has defended the MEALS Act as emergency pandemic aid, distanced her from Feeding Our Future defendants, and called the disclosure revisions voluntary and accurate. Generation Hope’s supporters maintain it is a legitimate community organization operating within available space. Rose Lake Capital and eStCru have faced prior investor disputes, but Mynett has denied wrongdoing.

Still, the overlapping controversies – the earmark red flags, the state records demand, deep ties to individuals later implicated in fraud schemes, and the sudden financial disclosure swing followed by a business dissolution – have fueled outrage among critics who argue they reflect insufficient transparency around public funds and personal finances in Omar’s district. With the May 5 deadline approaching, lawmakers, watchdogs, and taxpayers are watching closely for any response.

We can’t wait for absolutely nothing to happen to her. 

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Federal regulators on Thursday approved the first gene therapy to restore hearing, just two months after the therapy’s maker formally requested a license.

Dr. Marty Makary, the Food and Drug Administration’s commissioner, in an undated file photograph. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

The Food and Drug Administration approved the Regeneron therapy, Otarmeni, for children and adults with severe or profound hearing loss associated with OTOF gene variants.

The approval came 61 days after Regeneron filed for a biologics license, under a new effort known as the Commissioner’s National Priority Voucher Program that emphasizes quickly reviewing applications for products that address unmet needs.

“Today’s approval is a significant milestone in the treatment of genetic hearing loss,” Dr. Marty Makary, the FDA’s commissioner, said in a statement.

“Through the national priority voucher pilot program, the agency is accelerating therapies for rare diseases with unmet medical needs while proving we can successfully review even the most complex submissions—such as novel dual vector gene therapies and combination products requiring coordination across multiple offices and centers—in significantly shortened timeframes.”

Genetic mutations account for about half of cases of inherited hearing loss. Variants in the OTOF gene account for 2 to 8 percent of those cases.

To treat deafness, Otarmeni is administered to each ear using a syringe and catheter provided in the accompanying kit.

Regulators approved Regeneron’s therapy after reviewing data from a clinical trial involving 24 patients aged 10 months to 16 years. Of the 20 patients included in the efficacy analysis, 80 percent experienced improvement in hearing after receiving Otarmeni.

Common side effects of the drug included ear infection, nausea, and dizziness.

Dr. A. Eliot Shearer, an otolaryngologist at Boston Children’s Hospital and an investigator in the trial, said in a statement released by Regeneron that the one-time therapy provides “remarkable hearing improvements.”

“I’ve witnessed firsthand my trial participant responding to their mother’s voice, dancing to music and interacting with the world, and these moments are now possible for more children born with this specific form of hearing loss,” he said.

Dr. Marty Makary, the Food and Drug Administration’s commissioner, in an undated file photograph. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

Regeneron said it will provide the therapy free of charge to patients in the United States as part of a deal struck with President Donald Trump and announced on Thursday.

Dr. George D. Yancopoulos, president and chief scientific officer of Regeneron, said in a statement that Otarmeni was an “unprecedented breakthrough” in gene therapy.

“Otarmeni is a huge scientific leap and is representative of Regeneron’s approaches to continually push the boundaries of science to benefit humanity,” he said.

“This unprecedented breakthrough in gene therapy has already proven to be life-changing for many of the children in our clinical trial and their families. We are honored to be in the position to be the first company to ever offer such a gene therapy advance for free to those in the U.S. and serves to highlight our belief that the biopharmaceutical industry can be a genuine force for good in the world.”

The U.S. military’s 55-day war with Iran has alarmingly drawn down several categories of high-end air-delivered munitions, forcing the Department of War to draw from critical stockpiles in Asia and Europe. The drawdown of these weapons only suggests a possible readiness problem and helps explain why President Trump’s war economy is set to accelerate, with expected increases in munitions production. 

The New York Times has released a report that says since the US-Iran conflict began in late February, the US military has burned through roughly 1,100 JASSM-ER long-range stealth cruise missiles, more than 1,000 Tomahawk cruise missiles, over 1,200 Patriot interceptors, and more than 1,000 Precision Strike and ATACMS missiles.

“The Iran war has significantly drained much of the U.S. military’s global supply of munitions, and forced the Pentagon to rush bombs, missiles and other hardware to the Middle East from commands in Asia and Europe,” the outlet said, citing internal Defense Department estimates and congressional officials.

The report continued, “The drawdowns have left these regional commands less ready to confront potential adversaries like Russia and China, and it has forced the United States to find ways to scale up production to address the depletions, Trump administration and congressional officials say.” 

Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, stated earlier this week, “At current production rates, reconstituting what we have expended could take years.” 

One of the first major signals that the DoW was set to call on private industry to begin ramping up Trump’s war economy was a report earlier this month that said the Trump administration was exploring whether U.S. manufacturers, including GM, Ford, GE Aerospace, and Oshkosh, could convert civilian industrial capacity into weapons production as multiple conflict areas across Eurasia drag on and deplete critical weapons stockpiles.

The historical precedent is that America converted its automotive base during World War II to produce record numbers of main battle tanks, bombers, and fighter planes to win the war.

“The United States has many munitions with adequate inventories, but some critical ground-attack and missile-defense munitions were short before the war and are even shorter now,” Mark F. Cancian, a retired Marine Corps colonel and a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the outlet. He recently published a study estimating US weapons stockpiles.

Evidence of converting underused civilian industrial capacity has recently emerged, with the German automaker Volkswagen set to transform its Lower Saxony factory from producing T-Roc Cabriolets to manufacturing parts for the Iron Dome missile interceptor system.

The important signal we are gathering here is that the US may have to convert underutilized civilian industrial capacity, including truck and auto production lines, to weapons output.

To be frank, this is no longer peacetime procurement. It is wartime industrial mobilization, with Washington now being forced to confront the gap between the weapons it burns in the Middle East and the weapons its defense base can actually replace.

Authored by Steve Watson via modernity.news,

Rep. Andy Ogles was adamant when asked if the Southern Poverty Law Center bears responsibility for the assassination of Charlie Kirk. The Tennessee Republican connected the dots between the SPLC’s long-running smear campaign against conservatives and the fresh Trump DOJ indictment exposing the group’s fraudulent operation funding the very extremists it claimed to oppose.

In a bombshell interview on The Benny Show, Ogles laid out the case plainly, tying the SPLC’s “heat map” of supposed hate groups directly to the violence that claimed Kirk’s life. 

The timing couldn’t be more damning: just one day after the DOJ dropped its 11-count indictment against the SPLC for wire fraud, bank fraud, and money laundering tied to over $3 million in donor funds secretly funneled to KKK leaders, National Socialist Movement members, and other violent extremists.

Congressman Says SPLC Is ‘Absolutely’ Culpable in the Assassination of Charlie Kirk

The SPLC’s disgusting “Hate Map” didn’t just smear conservatives like Charlie as racists and Nazis — it incited violence against them.

I asked Rep. Andy Ogles if he believes the SPLC bears… pic.twitter.com/fVFqX3meFd

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) April 22, 2026

As we highlighted, the Trump DOJ’s action exposed the SPLC’s decade-long scheme. 

The group raised millions by promising donors it would dismantle racist hate groups—then turned around and paid their leaders to stage activities the SPLC could report on, all while branding mainstream conservatives as the real threat. 

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche put it bluntly: “The SPLC is manufacturing racism to justify its existence.”

Ogles made the direct link to Kirk’s murder crystal clear.

“Absolutely, if you and I did that, they would be coming after us. They threw everything at us that they could… just follow the facts… If the right was doing this to the left, I mean, we all would have been in jail,” Ogles stated.

He continued: “Kudos to the DOJ for going after this. It can’t be lost, ladies and gentlemen, when you think about the murder of Charlie Kirk, when you think about some of these hate crimes that have happened across this country, would they have happened had it not been for this vile rhetoric from the left?”

Ogles didn’t stop there. He zeroed in on the SPLC’s infamous “heat map” that painted Kirk and Turning Point USA as dangerous extremists right up until the activist’s assassination.

“People need to understand that this conspiracy that was built by the left to paint the right as racist and Nazi and violent is totally fabricated!” he declared.

“So that begs the question, this HEAT MAP that they created, this vile contempt for Republicans, how did that play into Charlie Kirk’s murder?”

“Were they there on January 6th? You have millions upon millions of dollars. I mean, even in Nashville, you had the Patriot Front, they were posing as Nazis, marching in Nashville, right? You have a conservative organization, several in my district that are on this heat map of being the alt-right hate groups.”

The SPLC’s pattern is now impossible to ignore. For years the group has wielded its “hate map” like a weapon, smearing pro-life organizations, border security advocates, and America First voices as domestic threats. Kirk called them out repeatedly—exposing the fraud before his death. The SPLC kept attacking anyway.

The Trump DOJ’s indictment confirms what Kirk and countless others warned about: the SPLC wasn’t fighting hate. It was profiting from it, using donor cash to prop up the very groups it listed while targeting conservatives who dared push back against open borders, woke indoctrination, and deep state overreach.

The SPLC’s rhetoric helped create the toxic environment where political violence against figures like Kirk became thinkable. Ogles is right to demand real consequences. When the left’s smear machine gets exposed funding actual extremists, the same rules they demand for everyone else must finally apply.

The broader picture shows a pattern of leftist hypocrisy now unraveling under Trump’s DOJ. Multiple outlets have covered the indictment, confirming the SPLC secretly paid informants inside the Ku Klux Klan, United Klans of America, Aryan Nations, and National Socialist groups from 2014 to 2023.

The group deceived donors, hid payments through shell companies, and used the resulting “reporting” to justify its bloated budget and political hit lists.

Charlie Kirk was right about the SPLC all along. His murder demands more than thoughts and prayers—it demands justice. The Trump administration’s move to hold these frauds accountable is a vital first step in restoring sanity and protecting free speech from the real inciters..

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) demanded that states across the nation take action to crack down on fraud in Medicaid, one of the federal government’s health insurance programs.

Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, speaks during an interview with EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” in Washington on Jan. 16, 2026. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times

In letters to state Medicaid directors, CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz said they should develop and file with his agency a comprehensive strategy to ensure that Medicaid providers are legitimate.

“Corrupt individuals and organizations masquerading as health care providers are defrauding Medicaid, and American taxpayers, of billions of dollars each year, placing valuable resources out of reach for those the program was intended to serve: low-income senior citizens, children, and disabled individuals,” Oz wrote.

Oz had recently previewed the effort, saying it would involve proving whether the providers “actually exist.”

“I love Medicaid; I cannot say that more fervently,” Oz said at a summit held by Politico. “If you love something, you protect it. You don’t let it get defrauded. You don’t let it get taken advantage of.”

If states do not take action, then audits may be an option, he said.

CMS has been investigating Medicaid and Medicare, and officials have said they have identified billions in fraudulent or potentially fraudulent spending, leading to actions such as deferring $259 million in payments to Minnesota. They have had to clarify some claims, including acknowledging an error in calculations regarding New York.

The new letters said CMS is acting under its responsibilities outlined in federal law, including the Social Security Act, and that CMS understands that states face challenges administering the complex Medicaid program. Oz said in the letters that CMS analyses are suggesting “a persistent and growing Medicaid threat posed by sophisticated actors knowingly exploiting these complex systems for financial gains.”

“A foundational element of Medicaid program integrity is ensuring that only legitimate, qualified providers are enrolled and participating in the program,” Oz said. “Confirming that each state maintains accurate and regularly updated provider enrollment information is a critical foundation of CMS’ efforts to safeguard Medicaid program integrity, as it supports effective screening, monitoring, and oversight of participating providers.”

States were instructed to notify CMS of revalidation plans within 10 days and to follow up within 30 days with the strategy to make sure that providers are valid. It did not include any audit threats for noncompliance.

CMS declined to comment on the letters.

Oz added in a video statement that criminals are costing billions in taxpayer funds each year, and taking resources away from the needy.

“Here’s the bottom line: It’s time to make sure that providers of high-risk services are valid and meet all the requirements to deliver care to Medicaid beneficiaries,” Oz said in the video.

States have the ability to define which providers are high-risk, which might include providers without national identifiers, according to Oz.

“These are the gaps that criminals, including foreign nationals, exploit,” he said. “Revalidation works. It forces accountability, it removes bad actors, and it sends a clear message that the Medicaid system is not an unguarded piggy bank.”

Authored by Aaron Gifford via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Requests related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) for faculty job candidates in higher education have decreased dramatically – at least on paper – since President Donald Trump began his second term, a new report from Heterodox Academy says.

University of Michigan students pass signage on campus displaying the university’s Core Values in Ann Arbor, Mich., on April 3, 2025. Bill Pugliano/Getty Images

This includes the removal of required pledges in cover letters or standalone essays regarding a commitment to DEI. Eleven percent of college and university faculty job listings specified such requirements between August and December of 2025, a decline from 25 percent the previous year, the April 21 report said.

Heterodox Academy, a nonprofit that advocates viewpoint diversity in higher education, analyzed advertisements for more than 20,000 faculty positions posted on HigherEdJobs.com between August and December in the last two years. The website compiles job openings from colleges and universities in every state.

All told, 37 percent of faculty job ads during the fall 2025 semester did not specifically address DEI regarding application materials, but still “signaled that a commitment to DEI will be valued,” the report said.

Additionally, Heterodox Academy researchers found that DEI statements are more likely to be required at schools in the northeast or near the West Coast. The mandate is also more likely at private institutions than public ones, though it has decreased at both since 2024, and is more common found in the humanities disciplines than in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) majors, the report said.

Only 13 percent of the faculty job ads reviewed mentioned viewpoint diversity, the report said, “suggesting that universities continue to emphasize demographic diversity rather than other potential dimensions of diversity such as intellectual heterogeneity.”

Heterodox Academy largely attributes the dramatic decline of DEI requirements for faculty candidates to Trump’s policies.

Early last year, the president issued an executive order prohibiting the use of DEI in student admissions and college and university hiring, in accordance with existing Civil Rights laws prohibiting discrimination based on race. The administration initiated investigations into the wealthiest higher education institutions and cautioned that violators could lose federal funding.

In the weeks that followed, the Department of Education sanctioned several schools accused of discriminatory practices in employment, student admissions, and maintaining DEI programs like mandatory training and affinity groups. Several of them paid tens of millions of dollars in penalties and agreed to conditions set by the federal government, while Harvard University pushed back and has litigation ongoing against the Trump administration.

Trump also asked university administrations to certify that they are not violating anti-discrimination laws, and some schools were offered a compact that promised preferred consideration for federal funding if they committed to ending any remaining DEI initiatives, required SAT scores from student applicants, limited undergraduate admission of foreign nationals to 15 percent, and pledged a policy of institutional neutrality.

Seventeen states, meanwhile, passed laws banning the use of diversity statements in hiring, the report said.

Colleges and universities across the country have scrubbed any mention of DEI from their websites, substituting terms like “office of belonging” or “campus culture.”

Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars and a former professor and administrator at Boston University, said he’s skeptical that higher education is ending its deep-rooted commitment to DEI.

He applauded Heterodox Academy for its research, calling this public acknowledgement a step in the right direction, and said the methodology is sound. Still, “counting mentions of DEI in job advertisements is a long way from what universities are actually doing.”

Removing the three letters or words from job ads, much like renaming DEI functions to something like the office of belonging, doesn’t make a dent in a decades-long, entrenched culture in so many university programs where racial preferences in hiring are still considered essential, and administrators and faculty committees presume that most of the applicants share their liberal, progressive ideology, Wood told The Epoch Times.

“There’s certainly a wink and a nudge that if you want a job here, you better make nice on this front,” he said. “I don’t think they’ve changed these jobs one iota. Senior administrators need to be really convinced that it [DEI] was a mistake and it’s time to move beyond it.”

Meta Platforms inked a multibillion-dollar agreement with Amazon to deploy tens of millions of AWS Graviton processor cores in support of its next-generation AI buildout. The deal makes Meta one of the largest Graviton customers globally and shows CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s willingness to spend aggressively on compute infrastructure as the AI arms race intensifies with Alphabet, Microsoft, and other tech giants.

The news that the social media giant would deploy hundreds of thousands of Amazon’s general-purpose chips to “support the company’s AI efforts” was first reported by Amazon News.

“The chips will power various workloads at Meta, including supporting the company’s AI efforts. That work requires infrastructure that can handle billions of interactions while coordinating complex, multi-step agent workflows—exactly the kind of CPU-intensive work Graviton is designed for,” the release stated.

The deal also expands Meta’s long-running AWS partnership and builds on its large-scale use of Amazon Bedrock. While GPUs remain essential for training large AI models, Amazon noted in the release that the “rise of agentic AI is creating massive demand for CPU-intensive workloads.”

The press release did not reveal the value of the Meta-Amazon deal on expanding compute. But in recent weeks, Zuckerberg has signed deals totaling $48 billion with CoreWeave and Nebius, both of which rent out access to Nvidia GPUs that run AI models.

To expand computing capacity, Meta has announced a workforce restructuring, with its latest plan calling for layoffs of around 8,000 employees, or about 10% of its workforce. Microsoft has done the same (read report).

“Meta has, as you can imagine, access to so many options from the supply side. But they chose Graviton5, our 3-nanometer chip, for price performance,” Nafea Bshara, an Amazon vice president and distinguished engineer, said, who was quoted by The Wall Street Journal. He said the length of the deal is between three and five years.

Meta shares are marginally higher in premarket trading, while Amazon trades up nearly 2% following the news.