On the first day of his second term, Donald Trump issued an executive order directing all federal agencies to terminate “equity-related” grants. Institutions of higher education will now suffer the fallout.

The Department of Education on Friday scrapped $15 million in federal grants for diversity programs at California State University, Los Angeles, Virginia Commonwealth University, and the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, reports the Free Beacon‘s Aaron Sibarium. Their education schools received taxpayer funding ostensibly meant for teacher training and development. It was used “to support courses and workshops that drilled students on DEI concepts, including ‘white privilege,’ ‘systemic racism,’ and ‘linguistic supremacy,'” Sibarium writes.

At the University of St. Thomas, one course graded students on the results of a “racial autobiography” test. At Virginia Commonwealth University, the education school hosted workshops on “Decolonizing the curriculum” and “Becoming an antiracist educator.”

The grants were also funding the development of an “Equity and Social Justice Center” at California State University, the education department official said. It is not clear exactly how much money went to each school.

The terminations come as the Trump administration is canceling scores of contracts related to DEI as part of the government-wide audit conducted by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Elon Musk’s task force on federal waste. DOGE said last Friday that it had canceled $1 billion in DEI contracts across 25 federal agencies. Additional contracts were canceled this week, including one for a “Gender X initiative marker” at the Social Security Administration.

Read more here.

When we reported on the Newsom administration’s decision to shut down the volunteer firefighting force known as “Team Blaze” a year before deadly wildfires ripped through Los Angeles, Newsom’s press office responded by disparaging the unit as a “small, inadequately trained volunteer reserve component.” Military records obtained by our Andrew Kerr undermine that claim.

They show that the Newsom administration awarded Team Blaze and its firefighters with an Outstanding Unit Citation in November 2021, the highest possible honor for a California State Guard unit. The award recognized Team Blaze’s “reputation of outstanding performance” and lauded the unit’s firefighters for completing “such advanced and diverse fire curriculum prior to activation that 100% of all members passed CAL FIRE wildland firefighting training.”

Naturally, the unit’s former members—who helped fight the 2021 Dixie Fire, the largest wildfire in California state history—aren’t happy with the Newsom administration’s heel turn. “How can they justify saying anything bad?” one former Team Blaze firefighter told Kerr. “They literally gave them a medal for being the best unit in the California State Guard.”

“Newsom convened an emergency meeting on Jan. 19 with Adjutant General Matthew Beevers, his appointed head of the California National Guard, to discuss why the Guard shut down Team Blaze in 2024, according to a source briefed on the meeting,” writes Kerr. One day later, information about Team Blaze was taken down from California government sites and social media pages. Four days after that, Newsom’s press team launched its attack on the unit.

The Newsom administration did not get back to us on the military records. Huh.

In the wake of Oct. 7, Columbia University suspended its chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace for engaging in pro-Hamas activism. That might explain why the group’s associates are trying to keep quiet about a $200k ad they plan to run in the New York Times.

Anti-Israel organizations like the In Our Name Coalition, Artists4Ceasefire, and Rabbis for Ceasefire “are privately organizing a full-page ad in the New York Times intended to showcase the Jewish community’s alleged opposition to President Donald Trump’s plan for an American takeover of Gaza, describing it as ‘ethnic cleansing,'” our Alana Goodman reports. But they aren’t putting their names behind the effort, according to a Google form being used to collect signatures from rabbis and Jewish celebrities, which states that the “unbranded ad” will include no mention of “organizational affiliations.”

Were the groups to reveal their involvement with the ad, organizer Becky Silverstein of left-wing nonprofit T’ruah argued in a message we obtained, it would not be “possible to say the thing we believe is essential and urgent to say in this moment.” Rabbis for Ceasefire was founded after the Oct. 7 attacks by Alissa Wise, a former JVP exec who worked for the group for 10 years, including as its co-executive director. Wise still serves on JVP’s rabbinical council, and Israel barred her from entering the country in 2017 over her support for BDS.

“The news comes as anti-Israel activists grapple with how to respond to Trump’s groundbreaking plan for the United States to take over and rebuild Gaza as the ‘Riviera of the Middle East,'” writes Goodman. “The organizers’ decision to stay anonymous suggests that signatories could be reluctant to publicly associate with anti-Israel groups, many of which have been linked to anti-Semitic and pro-terrorist protests on college campuses.”

Away from the Beacon:

• USAID no longer has a headquarters, with a man on a boom lift removing a sign from the agency’s (former) office space at 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue on Friday afternoon. That building also houses U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, whose agents will now enjoy a bit more space.
• Donald Trump says he will sign an executive order next week “ending the ridiculous Biden push for Paper Straws, which don’t work. BACK TO PLASTIC!” Finally!
• Deputy Middle East Envoy Morgan Ortagus wore a Star of David ring while shaking hands with Lebanon’s president, and the Arab media didn’t appear to like it, with one journalist complaining that Ortagus is “more Zionist than her predecessors.” Correct!
• Bibi Netanyahu, during an appearance on Ted Cruz’s podcast, said he couldn’t reveal Israel’s awe-inspiring pager operation to the Biden administration ahead of time or “Hezbollah would be tipped off” and “dispose of the pagers.”