August 14, 2025

Now, on to the news…

Last month, a pro-North Korean group called Nodutdol held an event in New York City for government officials and activist groups involved in left-wing politics. The event, the People’s Summit for Korea, hosted workshops like “Surviving Sanctions: Resisting the Imperial Agenda” and “People to People: Reflections from Delegations to North Korea.” It featured academics calling on attendees to “apply our Juche spirit”—Juche is North Korea’s official Communist ideology—and claiming that the Soviet Union and China had defeated the Axis Powers during World War II.

“Ostensibly there to defend ‘Korean independence,’” Stuart Smith writes, the attendees’ “real purpose was to spread anti-American propaganda and justify the crimes of Pyongyang and other totalitarian regimes.”

Read more about the influential organization here, and how it’s working inside the United States to rehabilitate North Korea’s image.

President Trump said earlier this week that he might switch marijuana to a less restrictive classification under federal law. Such a move “would be disastrous for public health and orderliness,” Charles Fain Lehman argues. Instead, Trump should expedite medical marijuana research. “Doing so would give Trump the political victory he wants, without making pot more accessible and incurring any of the associated consequences,” Lehman writes. Read his take on how Trump should proceed.

Last week, President Trump announced in a memo that universities receiving federal financial assistance would be required to report admissions data to the National Center for Education Statistics. As Renu Mukherjee notes, it’s the administration’s “latest and most comprehensive effort to enforce Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, a 2023 Supreme Court decision that banned the use of racial preferences in university admissions.” Indeed, American families will now be able to point to the data to show evidence of potential discrimination.

A recent study found that the Orthodox make up about 20 percent of New York City’s 1 million Jews, making them a potentially decisive player in the mayoral race. But earning their support will mean understanding how they differ. They’re not a monolithic voting bloc, after all—they have divergent religious and political beliefs. Read Josh Appel’s take on what their vote could mean for the election in November.

Higher education accreditation used to be an important way for parents and students to assess the value of a college degree. But today, “it has been reduced to a political weapon wielded against those who deviate from progressive orthodoxy,” Vilda Westh Blanc writes. So it’s welcome news that six public universities joined forces this year to create the Commission for Public Higher Education. “By focusing on real student achievement, job readiness, and research productivity,” Blanc writes, “these universities aim to make accreditation a tool for competitive enhancement, not a bureaucratic straitjacket.”

Read more about CPHE here.

“Colleges are getting the comeuppance they rightfully deserve.”

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Bernardo, commenting on the DOJ’s letter to federal grant recipients 

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