Newly obtained donor records revealed that hundreds of thousands of dollars have flowed from entities linked to the Chinese government into the coffers of the University of California, Berkeley, one of the most prestigious public institutions in the nation.

Members of the Chinese Communist Party, a sanctioned Chinese research university, and Chinese state-owned enterprises have all routed donations to UC Berkeley, according to documents received by the Washington Free Beacon via a public records request. The outlet’s report came on the heels of the Trump administration launching an investigation into the university over its failure to disclose a $220 million research deal with China’s Tsinghua University — a state-run institution with deep ties to the People’s Liberation Army.

Tsinghua isn’t the only Chinese university with questionable ties that UC Berkeley has financially entangled itself with. The University of Science and Technology of China sent $60,000 to UC Berkeley to support its chemistry program in 2023. Just a year later, the Department of Commerce blacklisted the Chinese university for “acquiring and attempting to acquire U.S.-origin items in support of advancing China’s quantum technology capabilities, which has serious ramifications for U.S. national security given the military applications of quantum technologies.”

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Three major business leaders — SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Oracle Corp. Chairman Larry Ellison — joined President Donald Trump on Tuesday afternoon at the White House to announce the creation of a new company called Stargate.

Texas-based Stargate would invest up to $500 billion over the next four years in AI infrastructure. The initial investment is expected to be $100 billion and could reach five times that sum, according to The Associated Press.

Son, a billionaire based in Japan, had already pledged in December to invest $100 billion in U.S. projects over the next four years. The head of SoftBank had previously committed to $50 billion in new investments before Trump’s first term, which included a substantial stake in the troubled office-sharing company WeWork.

While Trump has highlighted such announcements to demonstrate that his presidency is boosting the economy, there were already high expectations for a significant expansion of data centers and power plants essential for AI development. AI has the potential to enhance productivity by automating tasks but also poses the risk of job displacement if not implemented carefully.

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President-elect Donald Trump joined the conversation on the ongoing sightings of mysterious unidentified drones and called for the government to “shoot them down.”

In a post on Truth Social, Trump questioned if the drone sightings could be “happening without” the government’s knowledge and added that the government should provide the public with answers.

“Mystery Drone sightings all over the Country,” Trump wrote in his post. “Can this really be happening without our government’s knowledge. I don’t think so! Let the public know, and now. Otherwise, shoot them down!!! DJT.”

Trump’s post comes as people have reportedly seen unidentified drones in the sky in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, and Maryland, among other states.

Lawmakers such as New Jersey state Sen. Jon Bramnick (R), Rep. Thomas Kean Jr. (R-NJ), and former Gov. Larry Hogan (R-MD) have called for the government to take action on the alleged drone sightings.

In a joint statement from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), both agencies stated they have “no evidence at this time that the reported drone sightings pose a national security or public safety threat or have a foreign nexus.”

“The FBI, DHS and our federal partners, in close coordination with the New Jersey State Police, continue to deploy personnel and technology to investigate this situation and confirm whether the reported drone flights are actually drones or are instead manned aircraft or otherwise inaccurate sightings,” the FBI and DHS added in the statement.

The Pentagon has also previously denied New Jersey Rep. Jeff Van Drew’s (R) claim that the drones are coming from an Iranian mothership located off the East Coast of the United States.

“At this time, we have no evidence that these activities are coming from a foreign entity or the work of an adversary,” Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said. “We’re going to continue to monitor what is happening, but at no point were our installations threatened when this activity was occurring.”

Disparate Impact Thinking Is Destroying Our Civilization

Heather Mac Donald

Manhattan Institute

Heather Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. She earned a B.A. from Yale University, an M.A. in English from Cambridge University, and a J.D. from Stanford Law School. She writes for several newspapers and periodicals, including The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and The New Criterion, and is the author of several books, including The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe and When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives.

The following is adapted from a talk delivered on February 15, 2024, at a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar in Naples, Florida.

The most consequential falsehood in American public policy today is the idea that any racial disparity in any institution is by definition the result of racial discrimination.

If a cancer research lab, for example, does not have 13 percent black oncologists—the black share of the national population—it is by definition a racist lab that discriminates against competitively qualified black oncologists; if an airline company doesn’t have 13 percent black pilots, it is by definition a racist airline company that discriminates against competitively qualified black pilots; and if a prison population contains more than 13 percent black prisoners, our law enforcement system is racist.

The claim that racial disparities are proof of racial discrimination has been percolating in academia and the media for a long time. After the George Floyd race riots of 2020, however, it was adopted by America’s most elite institutions, from big law and big business to big finance. Even museums and orchestras took up the cry.

Many thought that STEM—the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—would escape the diversity sledgehammer. They were wrong. The American Medical Association today insists that medicine is characterized by white supremacy. Nature magazine declares that science manifests one of “humankind’s worst excesses”: racism. The Smithsonian Institution announces that “emphasis on the scientific method” and an interest in “cause and effect relationships” are part of totalitarian whiteness.

As a result of this falsehood, we are eviscerating meritocratic and behavioral standards in accordance with what is known as “disparate impact analysis.”

Consider medicine. Step One of the medical licensing exam, taken during or after the second year of medical school, tests medical students’ knowledge of anatomy, physiology, and pathology. On average, black students score lower on the grading curve, making it harder for them to land their preferred residencies. Step One, in other words, has a “disparate impact” on black medical students. The solution, implemented last year, was to eliminate the Step One grading disparity by instituting a pass–fail system. Hospitals choosing residents can no longer distinguish between high and low achieving students—and that is precisely the point!

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