March 24, 2025

Now, on to the news…

A North Dakota jury has found Greenpeace liable for defamation and civil conspiracy related to its support of violent protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline. The court awarded $667 million in damages. As James B. Meigs observes, the case could mark a turning point for progressive NGOs that quietly fund or enable radical activism under the cover of their nonprofit status. If the verdict stands, it will send a clear signal: groups that cross the line from protest to disruption of lawful projects cannot shield themselves behind the First Amendment. The ruling may set a precedent—one that challenges the assumption that even extreme activism is beyond legal reproach.

The Trump administration has withdrawn $400 million in federal grants from Columbia University, citing the school’s failure to address rising anti-Semitism on campus. Yet instead of taking meaningful steps to combat discrimination against Jewish students, Columbia appears to have launched “a campaign to turn public opinion against the administration,” write Tal Fortgang of the Manhattan Institute and Jason Bedrick of the Heritage Foundation.

The administration should not take the bait, they argue. Rather than get drawn into a media-driven narrative, it should stay focused on its core priorities: upholding the law and confronting virulent anti-Semitism. The controversy now pits university spin against a federal demand for accountability.

Eighteen months after wildfires devastated Lahaina, only six homes have been rebuilt. Bureaucratic red tape, sluggish debris removal, and political dysfunction have slowed recovery to a crawl. As Alex Hu explains, Maui’s failure to rebuild is a stark warning for other American localities about the costs of ineffective leadership and excessive bureaucracy.

“Governments have launched a wide array of prevention and intervention efforts to steer kids away from gang life. These programs try to dissuade youth from joining gangs or encourage them to leave,” writes Joshua Crawford, director of Criminal Justice Initiatives at the Georgia Center for Opportunity. But despite good intentions, most of these initiatives have produced mixed results. The programs that do show promise often struggle to reach the young people who need them most. Crawford argues that lasting change will require more than slogans and pilot projects—it will take sustained engagement, community trust, and a clear-eyed look at why past efforts have fallen short.

Housing is too expensive because development is overregulated, observe Christopher S. Elmendorf, a professor of law at the University of California, Davis, and Alex Armlovich, a senior housing policy analyst at the Niskanen Center. Congress, they argue, should “reallocate federal affordable-housing tax credits—a roughly $15 billion subsidy—away from the nation’s biggest, most expensive cities unless they adopt a basic set of pro-housing reforms.” Read their proposal here.

“Great essay, and shared, though I feel this misses something even more obvious: ‘Our society’s failure to provide appealing masculine archetypes created the vacuum that Tate filled.’

There is no new fault in our society, just the same ancient evil. Men have always wanted to dominate women and impress other men, to indulge the flesh without accountability. We offer no fewer masculine archetypes than previous societies, we just made it easier (via social media) for otherwise disconnected men to organize around a man like him to create their own society that gives them a pass for their boorish behavior.”

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Ryan Szrama, commenting on Andrew Tate’s influence on young men

Photo credits: Stephen Yang / Stringer / Getty Images News via Getty Images