Worth Knowing, Probably Not Quite Threadworthy 1/29

[SVPete]

Twin Cities Police Union Chief: These Deaths Are On Walz, Frey

https://hotair.com/ed-morrissey/2026/01/29/twin-cities-police-union-chief-these-deaths-are-on-walz-frey-n3811330

The New York Post ran this yesterday morning as an "exclusive." It's so exclusive that few if any media outlets bothered to note this accusation from St. Paul Police Federation president Mark Ross.

The issue isn't sanctuary city policy per se, Ross tells the Post. Local police don't need to conduct immigration raids, as Jacob Frey and Tim Walz have declared. However, both the governor and the mayor, as well as commanders in the police departments, have ordered these departments to provide no cooperation with ICE and Border Patrol, even just for crowd control – and that has proven to be a deadly choice:

“Since the Republican National Convention was held in St. Paul back in 2008, Minnesota law enforcement has undergone extensive training in mobile field force configurations and crowd management for major events. And because of that, I think we’re in the best position to deal with that,” Ross said.

“Unfortunately, our local politicians would not allow us to do that,” he added. ...

“Had we been allowed just a little bit of coordination –  not in terms of what ICE is doing, but if they say, ‘Hey, we need to go to this place to serve a warrant, we’re going to be out there a couple hours. We’re nervous that crowds are going to form and give us trouble. Can you come out and help?’ That’s something we can easily coordinate with a little bit of notice, and sometimes with hardly any notice, we can get out there quickly,” Ross said.

“I believe, had we been able to do that, that there would be no loss of life at this point,” he said.

Frankly, while I do not know the gooberment-police relationship details in Minneapolis, I still think this was overdue. Maybe the union guy tried to work out something behind the scenes,, but that police officers had been ordered not to do basic crowd control needed to be made public weeks ago. That's critical context for ICE/CBP operations and for what city gooberment has been doing.

[SVPete]

Biologist Sues Cornell Claiming Racial Discrimination

https://hotair.com/john-s-2/2026/01/28/biologist-sues-cornell-claiming-racial-discrimination-n3811323

Colin Wright is an evolutionary biologist who now works for the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. This week he filed a racial discrimination lawsuit against Cornell University. Wright, who is white, claims he was discriminated against in a hiring process which was focused on making a "diversity hire." In fact, he didn't know at the time that the job was even available because it was never posted publicly.

The lawsuit, filed Monday in federal district court in New York, claims the university violated federal law when it sought to fill a faculty position several years ago. It cites emails from the ecology and evolutionary biology department in December 2020 that allegedly said that to make a “diversity hire” the department would invite candidates from a list of “underrepresented minority scholars” and avoid having the candidate compete with others.

Colin Wright, the plaintiff, was a postdoctoral researcher in that field at Pennsylvania State University at the time. He said he was seeking an academic job and was well qualified for the tenure-track position that Cornell allegedly filled without ever posting the job publicly, as was required by university policy.

Attorneys for the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), a conservative think tank with close ties to the Trump administration that brought the case, contend that internal documents classified a list of candidates by race, ethnicity, disability status and sexual orientation. Emails allegedly indicated that the department intentionally avoided a competitive search and planned to approach candidates one at a time until one accepted.

I've long viewed government agency jobs as "Whites need not apply", and don't. That's my choice. When government and "educational" institutions operate that way, it is illegal, and that's what Cornell appears to have done. The LIEden MalAdministration was unsurprisingly incurious, and civil rights agencies and courts knew which way the wind blew.

[SVPete]

NYPD opens hate crime investigation after car rams into Chabad headquarters building

https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/29/us/chabad-lubavitch-headquarters-car-ramming-hnk

A driver rammed a car repeatedly into the Chabad Lubavitch World Headquarters building in Brooklyn, New York, Wednesday, prompting a hate crime investigation and additional security at places of worship throughout the city, officials said.

The driver was quickly arrested and there were no reported injuries, New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said at a news conference.

The suspect is being treated as an emotionally disturbed person, CNN affiliate WABC reported, citing authorities.

Shortly before 9 p.m., a gray Honda sedan entered the driveway of the Hasidic Jewish site in the Crown Heights neighborhood, crashed into the doorway, backed up and crashed into it again several times, a law enforcement official told CNN.
...
Shortly before 9 p.m., a gray Honda sedan entered the driveway of the Hasidic Jewish site in the Crown Heights neighborhood, crashed into the doorway, backed up and crashed into it again several times, a law enforcement official told CNN.

Video from the scene shows the car crashing into a set of doors at the end of the driveway. As bystanders watched the incident unfold, the car rammed the doors repeatedly until one came off its hinges.

I'm such an A-hole that I doubt the assessment I highlighted. Some antisemitism is violent; some antisemitism refuses to see and act against the violence.

[SVPete]

FCC Chief Brendan Carr Moves to Curb Fraud as Agency Program Subsidized Phone, Internet Service for 116,000 Dead People

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2026/01/27/fcc-chief-brendan-carr-moves-curb-fraud-as-agency-program-subsidized-phone-internet-service-116000-dead-people/

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr announced Tuesday that the agency will vote next month on proposals to remove fraud from the Lifeline program, which provided taxpayer dollars to pay for phone and internet services for more than 116,000 dead people.

“If the government is going to spend your hard earned dollars, it must ensure that they go only to living and lawful Americans,” Carr wrote on X.

Carr’s announcement followed a report from the Federal Communications Commission Office of Inspector General (FCC OIG), which found startling levels of fraud in the program. Congress and the FCC established the Lifeline program to help low-income Americans receive affordable communications service, which may include voice and broadband services and is paid out of the Universal Service Fund (USF).

The fraud includes “at least 16,774, and potentially as many as 39,362, deceased people, [who] were first enrolled and then claimed by a provider after they died (i.e. they were deceased at the time of enrollment.)”

1. A new Inspector General advisory found that providers took nearly $5 million in federal dollars to provide phone and Internet service to over 116,000 dead people.  And this IG advisory looked at just three states.

2. Gavin Newsom’s California was by far the worst offender of these opt-out states. On Governor Newsom’s watch, California allowed over 94,000 dead people to be used to obtain federal dollars for phone and Internet service.  The FCC recently revoked California’s authority to run its own verification process.

My emphasis. BTW, the Lifeline program was started in 1985, so while the program probably includes "Obama Phones", it may include other services. I'm curious who the other two states looked at were. My WAG is that they were not NY, IL, OR, WA, and CO