Washington Free Beacon

Over the course of 2024, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory laid off nearly 900 workers due to budget cuts at the agency. The cuts, which came amid delays on the Mars Sample Return program, a mission to collect dust and rocks from the red planet, reduced the lab’s headcount by 13 percent and impacted both technical and support staff.

But the jet propulsion laboratory’s chief inclusion officer, Neela Rajendra, survived the cuts. Rajendra, who helped organize a project to recruit women and minorities to the space industry, has argued that “extreme deadline[s]” are an obstacle to “inclusion,” stating on a 2022 podcast that “some people might be left behind” by the “super fast pace.”

The comment came two years before a pair of NASA astronauts were stranded on the International Space Station for nine months due to a faulty propulsion system, raising questions about why the agency had spent millions on DEI when it couldn’t even bring back space rocks from Mars or its own employees from orbit.

The cuts to the laboratory, which creates land rovers and re-entry systems, had not impacted Rajendra’s role. But by early March, it seemed like her number was finally up.

NASA had closed its central diversity office and fired 23 employees in response to President Donald Trump’s executive order banning DEI in the federal government. The jet propulsion lab, meanwhile, had begun to “alter, remove, or reroute” web pages related to DEI, lab director Laurie Leshin told staff in an email. Though the laboratory is administered by the California Institute of Technology, meaning its staff are not civil servants, it is still owned by NASA and funded by the federal government.

But rather than fire Rajendra, the lab created a new role for her—one with many of the same duties as the old one. Instead of chief inclusion officer, the lab explained in a March 10 email, Rajendra would henceforth serve as the “Chief of the Office of Team Excellence and Employee Success.” Ostensibly set up to “maximize our potential,” the office would oversee the lab’s “affinity groups”— including “B.E.S.T,” the Black Excellence Strategic Team—as well as “wellness” and “accessibility.”

“I believe this change is essential for JPL’s future success and aligns well with Neela’s strengths and focus over the past year,” Leshin, the lab director, wrote in an email obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. She added that a “small number” of human resources officers would be reassigned to the new office.

The title change provides one of the most clear cut examples yet of how institutions are seeking to circumvent Trump’s ban on DEI by renaming diversity offices and shuffling staff. At the University of Michigan School of Nursing, for example, the school’s diversity office was renamed “the office of community culture,” while at PBS, the network attempted to move two diversity officials to other departments so that they wouldn’t be fired.

Rajendra’s new role comes as NASA is under scrutiny for the sort of the diversity programs she helped organize, such as an industry pledge, “Space Workforce 2030,” to hire more women and minorities. She also ensured that the leaders of affinity groups were paid for their DEI work, according to a 2023 article in Physics World, and spoke of the “world reckoning” that followed the death of George Floyd.

It led to “awareness and willingness and commitment to change from the perspective of diversity, equity and inclusion,” she told the magazine.

A spokeswoman for the laboratory, Veronica McGregor, said that Rajendra’s new role would focus solely on “retaining our highly skilled workforce” in the wake of the budget cuts. But for more than two weeks after the title change, Rajendra’s bio on a NASA website continued to reference “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” The language was only scrubbed on March 27, the day after the Free Beacon asked the laboratory for comment.

The lab “launched the Office of Team Excellence and Employee Success to strengthen its potential, better leverage its extraordinary talent and cultivate an industry-leading workplace,” McGregor wrote in an email. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, she said, “continues to be committed to following all rules, laws, and regulations.”

The lab’s emphasis on diversity appears to have come from the top. Leshin, the laboratory’s director, wrote in a 2023 LinkedIn post that the lab had “made a commitment to increase the number of women in senior technical leadership roles, and to hire and retain more Black engineers.”

Those commitments were justified on the grounds that DEI improves employee retention. In a 2022 presentation on “DEIA in the NASA Family,” Rajendra suggested that the “failure to promote DEI” at SpaceX—”a fast paced, high innovation company”—was one reason why it had a higher attrition rate than Boeing, a “traditional corporate entity.”

In June 2024, two astronauts were stranded when the thrusters malfunctioned on a Boeing spaceship. They were only rescued nine months later, when a SpaceX capsule brought them back.

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In her first public message as Columbia University’s acting president, Claire Shipman offered a vague promise to “build on” the “plan outlined to move our community forward” amid the Ivy League school’s ongoing battle with the Trump administration.

Shipman, a former ABC and CNN journalist, assumed her position on Friday after Katrina Armstrong stepped down as interim president. Shipman said Monday that she plans to “continue to build on the significant progress we’ve made, and the plan outlined to move our community forward.” She did not provide additional details about what that plan entails. Asked if the line referenced the series of reforms Armstrong announced earlier this month to jump-start negotiations with Trump officials to restore more than $430 million in lost federal grant money, a Columbia spokeswoman responded “yes.”

Shimpman’s pledge also provided little clarity on how she intends to navigate Columbia’s mounting challenges—or how she’ll handle the predicament her predecessor left her surrounding the reforms. A day after announcing the measures, Armstrong held a private Zoom call with approximately 75 faculty members and downplayed or denied that change was underway. After her comments were reported, she said they lacked “full context” and committed “to seeing these changes implemented.”

Armstrong left her post days later. She was the second president to step down since August 2024, when Minouche Shafik resigned amid criticism of her handling of anti-Semitic protests that gripped the campus in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, terror attack.

Shipman in her Monday message thanked Armstrong for “heroic efforts over the past seven months.”

“Ornamental language can’t disguise the fact that this is a precarious moment for Columbia University,” Shipman wrote. “In serving our community and navigating what’s to come, I pledge to be as transparent as possible, and to work as hard as I can to do right by a place that is so critical to all of us, and to the world.”

Shipman testified before the House Education Committee alongside Shafik last April. Several months earlier, in a Dec. 28, 2023, text message to Shafik, Shipman called Republican-led congressional hearings on anti-Semitism “nonsense.” In the same text message, obtained by the House Education Committee, she suggested reinstating student groups that had participated in illegal anti-Israel campus protests.

“I do think we should think about how to unsuspend the groups before semester starts to take the wind out of that,” she wrote to Shafik.

The former journalist was married to former Obama press secretary Jay Carney until March 13 of this year, according to divorce records obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. Carney left Time magazine in 2008 to serve as Joe Biden’s communications director. He became Barack Obama’s second press secretary three years later and left the White House for CNN in 2014. He now serves as Airbnb’s global head of communications.

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Iran says it has readied “a significant number” of advanced missiles capable of striking American bases and military outposts in the Middle East, drawing a sharp warning from the Trump administration.

Iran’s “armed forces have readied missiles with the capability to strike U.S.-related positions,” the Tehran Times, a state-controlled newspaper, reported on Monday. “A significant number of these launch-ready missiles are located in underground facilities scattered across the country, designed to withstand airstrikes.”

The announcement came in response to President Donald Trump’s threat over the weekend to bomb the country if it does not enter into negotiations over its contested nuclear weapons program. But Trump is not backing down—the White House, in response to Tehran’s war preparations, told the Washington Free Beacon it does “not take kindly to military threats.”

“President Trump and his administration do not take kindly to military threats,” said White House National Security Council communications director James Hewitt. “The President has made clear he prefers direct diplomatic channels with Tehran, or they will face serious consequences if they do not end their work to obtain nuclear weapons.”

Iran’s missile activity was accompanied by a series of threats from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who promised a “strong counter strike” against the United States if Trump follows through with his threat to bomb the country. While the Trump administration and Iran have been trading sharp war rhetoric for weeks, it is the first time Tehran has announced firm military preparations for a potential conflict with America, signaling that the prospects for diplomacy are growing dim.

Iran’s armed forces also announced Monday that they are readying a “harsh and strong reaction to any threat” posed by the United States, warning that an “invasion of Iran’s territory will be met with a severe and strong response with an aggressive approach.”

The flurry of war moves was sparked by Trump’s vow on Sunday to bomb the country if it continues to reject diplomacy surrounding its nuclear program, which progressed rapidly during the Biden-Harris administration and remains on the cusp of fully producing a nuclear bomb.

“If they don’t make a deal, there will be bombing,” Trump said during an interview with NBC News. Though the president has repeatedly emphasized his desire to ink a fresh nuclear bargain with Iran, he has made clear that war plans remain on the table.

“President Trump said it clearly that there are two ways Iran can be handled: militarily or by making a deal,” White House National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes told the Free Beacon earlier this month, when Iran rejected diplomatic overtures from the United States. “We hope the Iran Regime puts its people and best interests ahead of terror.”

Tehran has ruled out direct talks with the Trump administration but said amid its war threats that the possibility of indirect talks remains plausible.

Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian confirmed after a Sunday cabinet meeting that “the door to holding indirect [talks] with Washington remains open,” the country’s state-controlled press reported.

“As we have stated before, Iran has never closed the channels of indirect communication,” Pezeshkian said while noting that “Iran has explicitly rejected the possibility of direct negotiations.”

The Iranian president’s remarks were the first direct response by Iran to a letter sent earlier this month by Trump requesting diplomatic talks. In separate comments, Khamenei adviser Ali Shamkhani claimed that Tehran’s response reiterated its “readiness for such discussions under specific conditions,” though he did not detail what they might be.

As Tehran leaves the door to indirect diplomacy open, it has continued to fortify its missile program and produce advanced weapons capable of hitting U.S. outposts and targets in Israel.

Tehran unveiled a “missile megacity” last week, saying it is just one of “hundreds-strong such facilities.”

The Islamic Republic also says it is still planning a new military operation against Israel. Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naghdi, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps deputy coordinator, said over the weekend that his nation “must prepare for a major operation that will bring the enemy to an end.”

“We must be ready for a grand operation,” Naghdi added. “Know this: the Zionist regime’s time is up.”

Both the United States and Israel are already conducting operations to weaken Iran’s top terror proxies, including Hamas and the Houthi rebels in Yemen. Trump redesignated the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization upon taking office and has since authorized several military operations against the terror group, which has been attacking international maritime routes for more than a year.

Trump, in a Monday missive on his Truth Social platform, said the Houthis have been “decimated by the relentless strikes over the last two weeks. Many of their fighters and leaders are no longer with us.”

“Stop shooting at U.S. ships and we will stop shooting at you,” he wrote. “Otherwise, we have only just begun, and the real pain is yet to come, for both the Houthis and their supporters in Iran.”

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The Trump administration is launching a review of Harvard University’s grants and contracts, citing the school’s “failure to protect students on campus from anti-Semitic discrimination” and its promotion of “divisive ideologies over free inquiry.” If Harvard fails to take “meaningful actions” on those issues as early as this week, the administration will “not hesitate” to terminate funds, a source familiar with the probe told the Washington Free Beacon.

The move is the first step in a regulatory fight between the Trump administration and Harvard that is almost certain to escalate.

A source familiar with the probe said the anti-Semtisim task force is “laser focused on Harvard” and will be “equally aggressive” with the school as it was with Columbia University. In that case, the administration launched an identical funding review on March 3, slashed $400 million in federal funding on March 7, and sent a list of policy demands that it called “preconditions” for “formal negotiations regarding Columbia University’s continued financial relationship with the United States government” on March 13.

Harvard agreed to make some changes aimed at curbing anti-Semitism in January, when it settled a lawsuit with a group of Jewish students. Though the Trump administration’s press release announcing the funding review cites those “recent actions” as “welcome,” it also makes clear that the school must do “much more” to “retain the privilege of receiving federal taxpayers’ hard earned dollars.”

Indeed, the source familiar with the probe said Harvard “has to take meaningful actions this week” to avoid the prompt termination of federal funds.

The Department of Education, Department of Health and Human Services, and General Services Administration—all members of the administration’s Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism—unveiled the probe Monday afternoon. The agencies “will review the more than $255.6 million in contracts” and “more than $8.7 billion in multi-year grant commitments,” according to their press release.

“Harvard has served as a symbol of the American Dream for generations—the pinnacle aspiration for students all over the world to work hard and earn admission to the storied institution,” said Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. “Harvard’s failure to protect students on campus from anti-Semitic discrimination—all while promoting divisive ideologies over free inquiry—has put its reputation in serious jeopardy.”

“Harvard can right these wrongs and restore itself to a campus dedicated to academic excellence and truth-seeking, where all students feel safe on its campus.”

Harvard did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the review.

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The Israel Defense Forces on Monday ordered the mass evacuation of residents in the Gazan city of Rafah, citing the need to eliminate Hamas terrorists in the city after Israel restarted military operations in Gaza.

“The IDF is returning to intense operations to dismantle the capabilities of the terrorist organizations in these areas,” the IDF’s Arabic-language spokesman, Col. Avichay Adraee, wrote on X, according to a translation by Fox News. “For your safety, move immediately to the shelters in Al Mawasi.”

The evacuation order comes as Israeli forces move to retake control of Rafah, a city near the Egyptian border that Israel considers critical to stopping the smuggling of weapons to Hamas.

While the Israeli military had withdrawn from Rafah as part of January’s ceasefire agreement, Israel on March 18 resumed military operations in Gaza after Hamas failed to release 59 remaining hostages, including 24 who are believed to be alive.

The Trump administration has backed Israel’s offensive, with National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes saying that “Hamas could have released hostages to extend the ceasefire but instead chose refusal and war.”

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Former Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz in an interview reflected on why he and running mate Kamala Harris lost the 2024 election, saying the campaign wasn’t “bold” enough and calling himself a “train wreck.”

In a New York magazine interview published Monday, Walz said that “I won’t critique the campaign” but that “I don’t think Vice President Harris got to be bold.”

When the interviewer suggested that “it doesn’t feel like the party was very bold when you and Harris got on the ticket in the latter half of the 2024 campaign,” Walz appeared to agree.

“I told the vice president, I said I know my strengths and weaknesses,” he said. “I said about 90 percent of the time, I can be really good, but about 10 percent of the time, I can be a train wreck because I’m speaking from the heart.”

This is not the first time Walz has offered a negative assessment of his abilities. He admitted during a debate last year that he had falsely claimed to be in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square massacre, calling himself a “knucklehead” for making the claim.

Elon Musk last week called Walz, the governor of Minnesota, a “creep” and a “huge jerk” for mocking Tesla’s falling stock price. Walz, who did not mention that his state’s pension fund is a significant investor in the company, later walked back his comment, saying it was a joke.

“I have to be careful about being a smartass,” Walz said.

Walz, who is reportedly considering a run for the presidency in 2028, has spent recent weeks crisscrossing Republican congressional districts to make a case for his party, as polls show Democrats’ favorability ratings are underwater. CNN and NBC News surveys found that the party’s favorability has plunged to record lows of 29 percent and 27 percent, respectively. Nearly 70 percent of voters in swing districts see congressional Democrats as out of touch, according to a poll by the Democratic group Navigator Research.

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The Department of Transportation is ramping up its investigation into internal practices put in place years ago that allegedly prioritized DEI over merit when hiring air traffic controllers, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Monday that he retained the California-based white-shoe law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan to further review the allegations, which the Transportation Department said “raise serious concerns about fairness, integrity, and public safety in our air traffic control towers.” Duffy separately requested the agency’s top watchdog conduct its own investigation of the matter in a memo obtained by the Free Beacon.

The investigations represent a significant escalation in the Trump administration’s efforts to rescind DEI practices among air traffic controllers and gut existing DEI programs across the government. On his first day in office, President Donald Trump issued an executive order to remove DEI programs “in areas ranging from airline safety to the military.”

Duffy’s actions come two months after a regional jet approaching Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport collided with a military helicopter, killing dozens. Following the crash, Trump suggested the Federal Aviation Administration’s DEI hiring programs may have played a role.

“There is no place in air traffic control for box checker, DEI hires,” Duffy said in a statement Monday. “We owe it to the American people to ensure that only the best and brightest are in our towers—regardless of their race, gender, or sexual orientation. Too many lives are at stake.”

“These investigations will help the Department get to the bottom of these allegations,” he continued. “If true, I will carry out swift accountability. I will always put the safety of passengers and crews first.”

Earlier this month, a leaked recording indicated that FAA supervisor Shelton Snow, a former leader of the National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees, provided minority candidates with test answers in advance of a critical air traffic controller exam in 2014.

“I am about 99.99 percent sure that it is exactly how you need to answer each question,” Snow allegedly stated in the recording, which was first obtained by the Daily Mail. “There are some valuable pieces of information that I have taken a screenshot of and I am going to send that to you via email.”

Duffy requested the investigations review why Snow remained at the agency following his actions and assess whether any DEI practices are still being used in the air traffic controller hiring process.

In 2013, the Obama administration scrapped its air traffic controller skill-based hiring practices, which had been in place for decades, to base hiring on a “biographical questionnaire” designed to screen out candidates who aren’t minorities. That questionnaire, for example, asked how many high school sports candidates participated in and the age they first started to earn income.

Those DEI hiring practices led to a federal class action complaint in 2015. Plaintiffs argued they were denied air traffic controller positions despite their qualifications because they were not minorities. The court then ruled the case could proceed in May 2021, finding that plaintiffs plausibly alleged they were applicants who were subjected to an adverse employment action.

The lawsuit, which purports to represent nearly 1,000 qualified air traffic controller applicants denied employment, remains ongoing—the Biden administration defended its hiring practices and withheld more than 15,000 documents related to the case during a multi-year discovery process. Duffy, however, joined plaintiffs in issuing a joint motion to stay the case last week to pursue a non-judicial resolution of the matter.

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The Lord giveth: In 2023, Sen. Raphael Warnock quietly moved into a lavish Atlanta home brimming with luxury accommodations including a 100-bottle wine fridge and a “stunning” European bathroom with a remote-control privacy curtain. The Georgia Democrat sold his previous Atlanta home shortly after he moved in. But he didn’t need the proceeds from that sale to cover any costs associated with his new pad because Warnock’s Ebenezer Baptist Church footed the bill.

Public records obtained by the Free Beacon‘s Andrew Kerr show that the church, where Warnock maintains a perch as part-time senior pastor, snapped up the home for nearly $1 million in October 2022. State law bars the church from collecting rent on the home, so Warnock lives rent-free. It also exempts the church from nearly all property taxes, “even from those that subsidize Atlanta-area schools, libraries, parks, bonds, and local government operations,” writes Kerr.

While it’s unclear why the church bought the luxury home for Warnock, the “arrangement does not appear to be going over well with some members of the church, including a former associate of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Dr. Albert Paul Brinson, who was ordained at Ebenezer Baptist Church by the civil rights icon in 1965.” During a recent interview with a local activist, Brinson said King “would have never endorsed that in any way.”

READ MORE: Raphael Warnock Lives Free in $1 Million Luxury Home—Purchased by His Church

Read the room: When FCC chairman Brendan Carr announced last week that he intends to block the business deals of media conglomerates that engage in discriminatory DEI practices, one MSNBC columnist noted that Carr’s threat could include the liberal network, which is in the process of spinning off from Comcast. Five years ago, at the height of the post-George Floyd frenzy, NBCUniversal head Cesar Conde unveiled a “Fifty Percent Diversity Initiative” intended to make at least half of the company’s workforce non-white and female, calling it a “concrete promise” and “actual vow” to correct “systemic inequality.”

The changing tides in Washington, D.C., do not appear to have pushed NBC and Conde to ditch the initiative. “Comcast and its subsidiaries have given no indication that they will roll back or end DEI initiatives,” our Chuck Ross reports. “And a source familiar with the company’s operations told the Washington Free Beacon that NBCUniversal, despite rolling layoffs and brutal budget cuts, has doubled down on Conde’s quotas, and that there’s no sign that MSNBC and CNBC—the NBC News properties being spun off—will alter course.”

Though NBC is subject to FCC regulations, it’s not entirely clear how Carr’s threat could affect the planned Comcast spinoff. While corporate legal experts say that spinoff is unlikely to require FCC approval, the agency and other federal regulators “could certainly complicate and delay the spinoff to the point where it would become very expensive and unsustainable.” Perhaps more importantly, Comcast “has regular business with the FCC that Carr could use as a cudgel”—and he appears eager to do just that.

READ MORE: MSNBC, NBC Double Down on DEI and Quotas as Trump Administration Pledges To Stamp Out ‘Discriminatory’ Behavior in the Media Business

Proceed with caution: The International Criminal Court, which the Trump administration sanctioned in February for its efforts to prosecute members of the U.S. military and close American allies like Israel, is finding a friend in the European Union. Earlier this month, the court’s president, Tomoko Akane, petitioned the EU to invoke what’s known as the blocking statute, which would protect European companies that provide services to the ICC from sanction penalties.

The European Parliament responded positively, issuing a statement that accused the Trump administration of damaging “the practical work of the ICC.” GOP lawmakers aren’t having it. Both the administration and its allies in Congress, our Adam Kredo reports, say they will “fully enforce” the sanctions—and some are even “prepared to expand them” in response to the ICC’s attempt to evade the measures.

From the White House National Security Council to Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz, and Jim Banks, Republican officials are “showing no sign of backing down,” previewing “a wider diplomatic confrontation between the Trump administration and EU.” Cruz, for example, told us that the United States “should treat anyone who helps the ICC or its officials evade those sanctions accordingly.” Targets could include Akane and members of the European Parliament who assist the ICC in its prosecution of Israel.

READ MORE: GOP Lawmakers Eye Expansion of ICC Sanctions as Court’s Top Officials Turn to Europe for Relief

Away from the Beacon:

• Fire and fury: Iran rejected direct talks with the Trump administration over its nuclear program, its president announced on Sunday—roughly two weeks after the White House said there are “two ways Iran can be handled: militarily or by making deal.”
• On Alumni Day at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, a group of mask-wearing and keffiyeh-clad graduates held a protest in which they tore up their degrees and pledged to “rage at this institution … until students are free to fight for Palestinian rights and liberation.” What better way to spend a sunny Saturday.
• The Biden administration commissioned a study on its decision to pause liquefied natural gas export projects and buried it for more than a year when it failed to prove that the policy made any meaningful impact on a reduction in carbon emissions.

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The lavish Atlanta home where Sen. Raphael Warnock (D., Ga.) resides brims with luxury details: Marketed as a “one of one custom home that effortlessly merges history & luxury,” the five-bedroom home, built in 2022, went on the market for over a million dollars later that year and sold quickly—not to Warnock, but to Ebenezer Baptist Church, where he still serves as part-time senior pastor when he’s not representing the state of Georgia in Congress.

The DeKalb County home came equipped with a plethora of luxury accommodations, including a 100-bottle wine fridge, a Bluetooth-enabled stainless steel cooking range, custom crown molding, and a walk-in closet affixed to a “stunning” European bathroom with a remote-controlled privacy curtain. That privacy extends to Google Maps, where the images of the property are blurred from view.

Warnock, who quietly moved into the home in 2023, now lives there rent-free, the Washington Free Beacon has learned. Georgia state records show that Warnock listed the home as his primary residence when he registered to vote in November 2023, and real estate records indicate the property is owned by Ebenezer Baptist Church, which, according to public records, snapped it up for $989,000 in October 2022.

Warnock now lives in the home for free. Property taxes? Well, the church, and thereby Warnock, is exempt from nearly all of them, even from those that subsidize Atlanta-area schools, libraries, parks, bonds, and local government operations, real estate records show.

While Georgia state law bars Ebenezer Baptist Church from collecting rent on the home, it allows churches to purchase tax-exempt homes for pastors “when no income is derived from the property.”

It’s unclear why Ebenezer Baptist Church bought the luxury home for Warnock, who owned his own home in Atlanta when the church purchased the DeKalb property. (Warnock sold his personal Atlanta home shortly after he moved into the church-owned home, real estate records show.)

Warnock’s attorney, Jacquelyn Lopez of the Elias Law Group, did not dispute that Warnock is living in the luxurious abode for free. In a statement Sunday to the Free Beacon, Lopez referred to the church-owned property as the “Senator’s personal home” and said publication of the address would put Warnock at “grave risk of physical harm.”

The arrangement does not appear to be going over well with some members of the church, including a former associate of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Dr. Albert Paul Brinson, who was ordained at Ebenezer Baptist Church by the civil rights icon in 1965.

Brinson, who was recognized by the Georgia State Legislature in 2023 for serving as a “living source on the life and ministry” of the late civil rights leader, said King would have never approved of Warnock’s luxury housing arrangements with Ebenezer Baptist Church.

King “would have never endorsed that in any way,” Brinson said during an interview with local activist K.J. Boynton, adding that Ebenezer Baptist Church’s housing allowance was intended to provide modest accommodations for its pastors so that they can focus their energies on fulfilling the church’s mission.

“If I had been him,” Brinson said, referring to Warnock, “I would never have allowed the church to do that kind of thing. … [The parsonage allowance] wasn’t just to be something that had to be elaborate and the greatest thing … it was for the church.”

Brinson declined to comment to the Free Beacon about his thoughts about Ebenezer Baptist Church’s purchase of a luxury home for Warnock. He confirmed, however, that he speaks with Boynton “quite often.”

Warnock himself has not publicly disclosed his new housing arrangement. But on March 16, he urged his congregation to donate to a $3.5 million church fundraising campaign known as One Ebenezer devoted to, among other things, “reducing our mortgage debt.” During that sermon, Warnock called on the members of the congregation to donate “at least” $139 on top of their 10 percent tithe in honor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church’s 139th anniversary.

“So give what you would normally give. Do that first,” Warnock said from the pulpit. “Then maybe you want to give an anniversary [gift] … $139. Everybody who can … give at least that much.”

“There are others who say, I can do better. I can give $500. I can give $1,000,” Warnock went on. “Somebody might want to give their bonus. Why are y’all laughing? I ain’t laughing, I’m serious. You might want to give your bonus. You might want to give a week’s salary. All of us are blessed at different levels.”

In addition to his free Atlanta housing, Warnock earned a church salary of $31,800 in 2023 as well as nearly $461,000 in book royalties, his financial disclosure shows. A tithe on that income would have amounted to over $49,000, but it’s unclear if Warnock donated anything to Ebenezer Baptist Church in 2023.

When Ebenezer Baptist Church purchased the DeKalb County home, Warnock was in the midst of a tight reelection campaign against Republican Herschel Walker.

Warnock’s financial arrangements with his church—in particular, a $7,417-per-month tax-free housing allowance he received from the church to cover his living expenses in Atlanta—drew scrutiny because it enabled him to exceed the Senate’s limitations on outside income.

The controversy burst into view after the Free Beacon reported in October 2022 that the church, while underwriting Warnock’s living expenses, also owned a low-income Atlanta apartment building that had worked to evict disadvantaged residents during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, citing infractions as petty as $28.55 in past-due rent.

In his lone debate with Walker during that campaign, Warnock dismissed the Free Beacon report, which gained traction with local and national media outlets, as a “vicious and venomous” effort to “sully the name of Dr. King’s church” for “short term-political gain.”

Warnock’s 2023 financial disclosure makes no indication of his living arrangement, but ethics expert Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette of the Project on Government Oversight watchdog group said the arrangement probably does not violate Senate ethics rules, which allow lawmakers to receive “lodging and other benefits” from outside employers in certain circumstances. In Warnock’s case, Hedtler-Gaudette said, he’s likely in the clear because Ebenezer Baptist Church has a long history of providing housing benefits for its pastors.

“Whether this particular instance represents a violation of Senate rules or ethics laws or not, the important thing to remember is that both the ethics laws currently on the books and internal congressional ethics rules are weak and ineffectual,” Hedtler-Gaudette said. “In particular, when it comes to Congress, allowing the institution to simply appoint its own members to ethics committees and task them with self-policing is, at best, an extremely insufficient way to ensure maximum ethical hygiene on the part of our elected leaders.”

A lawyer for the watchdog group the National Legal and Policy Center, Paul Kamenar, also said that Warnock’s housing arrangement is likely in line with the Senate’s lax ethics rules but noted that the IRS could view the benefit as excessive, considering Warnock works for the church in a part-time capacity.

“It’s obscene that Senator Warnock’s church allows him to live rent-free in a new million-dollar house while it evicts poor black residents from its apartment building for being late in paying back rent for as little as $28,” Kamenar said. “Moreover, this benefit and his pay for being a part-time pastor may be an excessive benefit under IRS rules and trigger tax penalties.”

Warnock has an eye for luxury. In January 2023, he purchased a $1.15 million Capitol Hill townhouse in Washington, D.C, the Free Beacon reported.

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As peace remains elusive in Ukraine, it’s worth reflecting on a time when the region was similarly witness to carnage—but with the Russians fighting the British, French, Turks, and… Sardinians?

Gary Saul Morson returns to the Weekend Beacon with a review of Gregory Carleton’s Crimean Quagmire: Tolstoy, Russell and the Birth of Modern Warfare.

“In this riveting account of the war, Gregory Carleton, the foremost expert on the Russian understanding of war, argues for its importance. ‘Crimea changed the face of modern warfare forever,’ he claims in Crimean Quagmire. For one thing, it featured several technological firsts. The Russians’ old-fashioned musket was no match for the modern rifle wielded by the British and French. Standing at a distance that muskets could not reach, they were able to annihilate Russian regiments. Long-range artillery came into use, and here the Russians did not lag behind. By using the new steam-powered ironclad ships firing explosive shells, the Russians were able to destroy the Turkish Navy of wooden sailing ships. Landmines, or ‘man-traps,’ killed people long after a battle was over. The railroad, telegraph, and photography became part of warfare. On the plus side, anesthetic chloroform made operations bearable. A Russian doctor, Nikolai Pirogov, introduced triage surgery so treatment could be given first to those with a chance to survive. Taken together, Carleton observes, these innovations ‘represent the greatest revolution in warfare since the introduction of gunpowder.’ It was, in short, ‘the first ‘modern’ war.’

“And yet it was also the last war in which most military casualties took place off the battlefield. Soldiers were far more likely to die from disease, exposure, and hunger than in combat. That had always been the case, but it now shocked popular opinion because these deaths were almost entirely preventable. Lack of foresight, poor planning, incompetence, indifference, and above all bureaucratic morass resulted in the death of tens of thousands. Although the cause of scurvy was well known, British soldiers suffered from it because they were given a diet without fruits and vegetables. People at home learned of these failures because of what Carleton considers the most important innovation of the war: near real-time accounts of it. British soldiers, most of whom were now literate, wrote letters about their experiences and, especially important, journalists did on-the-spot reporting.

“The most influential British paper, The Times, dispatched William Howard Russell as what we now call an ’embedded’ reporter, and his stories, which continued until the war concluded, moved the British public as never before. Such frankness was of course impossible in the empire of the tsars, but tales written by a young junior officer, who was just beginning to be well known, were widely read, as they still are. The officer’s name was Count Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy, and the lessons he learned about how battle is really conducted were to shape the greatest novel of world literature, War and Peace, which described war realistically for the first time.”

Talk about a descent into the maelstrom, Micah Mattix reviews Edgar A. Poe: A Life by Richard Kopley.

“When Poe was sober, he was a model employee. He would sit at his desk and produce reams of criticism for whatever weekly he was working for at the time, as well as short stories and poems. George Rex Graham, the owner of Graham’s Magazine, remembered Poe as a ‘polished gentleman,’ always ‘the quiet, unobtrusive, thoughtful scholar, the devoted husband, frugal in his personal expenses, punctual and unwearied in his industry, and the soul of honor in all his transactions.’ Another editor at a magazine where Poe worked remembered him as ‘a fine gentleman when he was sober. He was ever kind and courtly, and at such times every one liked him. But when he was drinking he was about one of the most disagreeable men I have met.’

“Poe’s sometimes acidic criticism could cause problems for his employers, but it also led to increased circulation. He disliked the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson and the moralistic Transcendentalists. ‘Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson,’ Poe wrote in one issue of Graham’s, ‘belongs to a class of gentlemen with whom we have no patience whatsoever—the mystics for mysticism’s sake.’ In a review of Henry Cockton’s now-forgotten novel Stanley Thorn, Poe wrote, ‘It not only demands no reflection, but repels it, or dissipates it—much as a silver rattle the wrath of a child.’

“Poe would only last a year or two at a magazine before invariably taking up drinking again—the vocational hazard of magazine men. This would lead to profuse apologies to his young wife, Virginia, and her mother, Maria Clemm, as well as friends. After Virginia died of tuberculosis and Poe was looking to marry again for financial reasons, his lifelong friend, John Mackenzie, warned his fiancée that Poe was ‘as unstable as water. He will spend all your money and if you really do love him he will break your heart. He cannot help it. Tis his nature.'”

“Kopley regularly reexamines Poe’s stories and poems in light of his life and argues convincingly that his work contains many personal references. His story ‘The Tell-Tale Heart,’ for example, contains a scene that is evocative of Poe’s last visit to his foster father and other references to John Allan. One of his most famous stories, ‘The Cask of Amontillado,’ contains a character that is based on the writer Thomas Dunn English, with whom Poe had a very public spat in 1846. Poe was a faithful friend but a merciless enemy.”

Can AI be our friend or will it be a merciless enemy? Tevi Troy reviews Like Silicon From Clay: What Ancient Jewish Wisdom Can Teach Us About AI by Michael M. Rosen.

“Rosen takes a deep dive into AI and divides the AI commentariat into four categories. … those who think AI is transformative and are optimistic; those who think it’s transformative but are fearful; those who think it’s not transformative, but are optimistic AI is a net positive; and those who are pessimistic yet also think it’s not transformative.

“Rosen’s rubric is a good starting point, but which group is correct depends on how AI is developed. For this subject, Rosen helpfully draws from Jewish tradition to describe two models. One is the golem, the model for Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein monster. The golem was a lump of clay that when infused with the right letters and rabbinical incantations became an animated creature capable of protecting the Jews from harm. As such, Rosen writes, the golem is ‘an inspiring construct for technologists to emulate: the epitome of human and even divine intellect, coupled with a purity of purpose and operation.’

“At the same time, the golem was also capable of causing significant destruction when lacking in rabbinical direction. The AI analogy is obvious. As Rosen states, it is ‘an inherently risky and potentially problematic creature that we must never allow to escape our control and that, when necessary, we must be prepared to deactivate.’

“Rosen also looks at another mystical Jewish creature, the dybbuk, which is a kind of spirit or demon that could possess people. The only way to control the dybbuk was via a maggid, a spiritual adviser who could steer the spirit in the right direction.”

“The dybbuk vision for AI is even more frightening than the golem. The possessing dybbuk can control our very actions. One potential defect that we’ve already seen along these lines in the AI world is wokeness, although any form of ideological bias is a potential danger. As Rosen describes the absurd levels to which wokeness has taken us, ‘Google appeared to allow its inner dybbuk to supplant its maggid, creating an engine that functioned as something of a parody of an ultraprogressive mentality rather than an accurate depiction of reality. … Google programmed Gemini specifically to avoid depicting white people.’ This hyper-woke programming led to the absurdity of black Nazi soldiers and black Vikings when AI was asked to depict these historically Caucasian figures.”

Weekend Beacon addendum: Congratulations to author, scholar, and Weekend Beacon contributor James Piereson on being a recipient of this year’s Bradley Prize. While Piereson is slated for a major review in a couple months, here’s an excerpt from his review of Paul Gregory’s The Oswalds: An Untold Account of Marina and Lee.

“Gregory, along with his father, introduced the Oswalds to the Russian community in Dallas, a generally professional, conservative, and anti-communist group (not Oswald’s kind of crowd). The Russian Americans responded warmly to Marina but took a disliking to Oswald, who refused to answer questions about why he defected to the Soviet Union and why he had returned to the United States. In the months that followed, they looked for opportunities to help Marina but preferred to avoid dealing with Lee.

“Marina and Lee had starkly different personalities and temperaments, so much so that Gregory wondered how they could have been married in the first place. Marina was vulnerable but curious to learn about America. Lee was insolent as well as arrogant and suspicious of anyone who did not share his Marxist politics. He kept Marina a prisoner in their run-down apartment, rebuffing efforts by others to help her and refusing to allow her to find friends or learn English. Gregory reports that Lee beat Marina on a regular basis—she had the bruises to prove it. At the same time, she ridiculed him for his sexual performance and intellectual and revolutionary pretensions. They fought regularly and separated at various times during their short stay in the Dallas area.

“On the afternoon of November 22, 1963, Gregory was watching television with friends on the campus of the University of Oklahoma when a news flash reported that President Kennedy had been shot while visiting Dallas. A short time later, he was shocked to see on screen the man who had been arrested for firing the shots at Kennedy and killing a policeman in another section of the city. Though it had been a full year since he had seen Oswald, he recognized him immediately. ‘I know that man,’ he said. That was true: He knew him as well as anyone in America at that time.”

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