ThePersistence
@ScottPresler
We are 5️ voters away from having 10,000 more registered Republicans in Bucks County, PA.
2008: +🟦11,411
2012: +🟦10,696
2016: +🟦9,382
2020: +🟦10,258
2024: +🟥5,874
2025: +🟥9,995
This is a big deal.
https://x.com/ScottPresler/status/1901647435199291666
University of Wisconsin Axes Chief Diversity Officer, Previously Accused of Plagiarism, for Gross Financial Mismanagement
Before he was stripped of his role as the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s chief diversity officer, LaVar Charleston had been accused of assaulting a police officer and engaging in a decades-long pattern of research misconduct. Now he can add financial mismanagement to his rap sheet.
In a letter to university officials last week, the school’s top finance administrator, Rob Cramer, said that Charleston had displayed "poor financial judgment" as head of the Division of Diversity, Equity and Educational Achievement, which became the subject of an internal probe in January after concerns surfaced about the division’s finances.
The probe found that Charleston engaged in a pattern of profligate spending that strained the university’s budget. In 2023, for example, he doled out over $200,000 in bonuses, "without consultation," to the university DEI staff.
"Dr. Charleston did not discuss his plan with anyone in senior leadership, and the timing of this decision, in the context of the 2023 [budget], shows a thoughtless attitude in decision-making," Cramer’s letter reads. "This lack of consultation and disregard for the broader financial context highlights a significant lapse in leadership and fiscal responsibility."
The letter also states that Charleston, a professor in the university’s education school, "lacked important documentation to support many of these decisions," which included pay raises as well as bonuses. He was removed from his DEI role in January as the probe got underway. While Charleston is no longer "vice chancellor for inclusive excellence," he is still employed by the school, albeit at a lower salary.
"Under the terms of his appointment and consistent with state law, Dr. Charleston is able to remain an employee as an academic staff instructor and researcher, a separate, non-administrative position," said university spokesman John Lucas. "His salary in this position has been reduced by two-thirds."
The letter is the latest in a string of embarrassing revelations about Charleston, who in 2011 was charged with attempting to strangle a police officer—an incident that only became public in 2022 after the MacIver Institute, a conservative think tank, published documents showing that Charleston had sought to conceal his arrest by enrolling in a program that expunges the records of first-time felons who agree to do community service work.
Two years later, Charleston was hit with a research misconduct complaint that implicated eight of his publications. The complaint alleged that Charleston had not only plagiarized other authors but also recycled his own research without attribution, presenting it as new work—a form of résumé-padding that can result in retractions and is considered a serious scholarly offense.
One of the duplicate papers was coauthored with Charleston's wife, Sherri Ann Charleston, the chief diversity officer of Harvard University. That paper, published in 2014, had the same methods, findings, and survey subjects as a study LaVar Charleston had published on his own two years earlier.
"It is academic misconduct to publish essentially the same paper twice with no acknowledgment of the duplication," Alexander Riley, a sociologist at Bucknell University, told the Washington Free Beacon at the time. "It seems fairly clear that Charleston is gaming the system in order to get more on his CV than is merited by the amount of research he has actually done."
The university did not discipline Charleston over that complaint. Lucas, the UW-Madison spokesman, said review of the allegations "concluded with no finding of research misconduct."
The financial scandal comes as the Trump administration is investigating UW-Madison, along with 50 other schools, for sponsoring race-based fellowships and scholarships. The university is also the target of a separate probe related to its handling of anti-Semitism, which was announced days after the Education Department cut $400 million in grants and contracts to Columbia University over what it described as the school’s failure to protect Jewish students.
"The Department is deeply disappointed that Jewish students studying on elite U.S. campuses continue to fear for their safety amid the relentless antisemitic eruptions that have severely disrupted campus life for more than a year," Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement announcing the probe, which covers 60 universities. "U.S. colleges and universities benefit from enormous public investments funded by U.S. taxpayers. That support is a privilege and it is contingent on scrupulous adherence to federal antidiscrimination laws."
https://freebeacon.com/campus/university-of-wisconsin-axes-chief-diversity-officer-previously-accused-of-plagiarism-for-gross-financial-mismanagement/
ThePersistence
@ScottPresler
Out knocking doors for Brad Schimel in windy Waukesha County, Wisconsin.
I ask for your vote on Tuesday, April 1st.
https://x.com/ScottPresler/status/1902840275485225089
ThePersistence
@ScottPresler
Today is day 99 of reminding Wisconsin voters
that they can flip the WI Supreme Court from 🔵🔜🔴 & enshrine voter ID in the constitution
by voting on Tuesday, April 1st, 2025.
https://x.com/ScottPresler/status/1902368513152491802
Pam Bondi announces indictments against three Tesla terrorists
Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that the Justice Department is bringing “severe” charges against three individuals accused of targeting Teslas with arson attacks, following the White House’s vow to treat such incidents as domestic terrorism.
“The days of committing crimes without consequence have ended,” she wrote in a statement on Thursday. “Let this be a warning: if you join this wave of domestic terrorism against Tesla properties, the Department of Justice will put you behind bars.”
The Justice Department announced charges against three individuals.
One person, Adam Matthew Lansky, 41, allegedly threw eight Molotov cocktails at a Tesla dealership in Salem, Oregon, while armed with a suppressed AR-15 rifle.
Another, Lucy Grace Nelson, allegedly attempted to use Molotov cocktails to light Teslas on fire in Loveland, Colorado and was later found with materials that could be used to make incendiary weapons.
A third individual, Daniel Brendan Kurt Clarke-Pounder, allegedly “wrote profane messages against President Trump” and lit Tesla charging stations on fire in Charleston, South Carolina.
The Justice Department said each person could face up to 20 years in prison.
The events described by the Justice Department match some details of previously reported incidents.
Lansky, 41, was arrested for allegedly targeting a Salem dealership twice with attacks and was charged in federal court with illegally possessing an unregistered device, WBOY reports.
Nelson was arrested and given federal charges along with Cooper Jo Frederick, 24, for allegedly targeting a Tesla dealership in Loveland, Colorado, NBC 15 reports.
Frederick allegedly threw rocks as well as an incendiary device into the dealership near parked cars, starting a fire that was quickly extinguished. He’s reportedly charged with the use of incendiary devices in a felony, possession of such devices, second-degree arson, and criminal mischief.
Nelson, meanwhile, is accused of spray-painting the word “Nazi” on the dealership’s front windows and was allegedly found by police to have a car with gasoline and Molotov cocktail materials inside. Nelson was reportedly charged with malicious destruction of property and released on bond.
In South Carolina, meanwhile, Clarke-Pounder, 24, was reportedly arrested last week and is facing federal arson charges for allegedly throwing Molotov cocktails at a Tesla charging station in North Charleston.
Teslas, dealerships, and charging stations tied to Elon Musk’s electric automaker have been the target of suspected arson attacks around the country and across the world, from Las Vegas and Boston to France.
Anonymous individuals have also created a website purporting to show the locations of Tesla facilities and individuals tied to the Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk’s controversial program overseeing massive spending cuts inside the federal government. The cursor on the website is a Molotov cocktail.
The Trump administration has said it’ll prosecute Tesla arsonists as terrorists, though there is no federal law allowing the government to charge someone with the specific offense of domestic terrorism.
The FBI’s joint terrorism task force has also joined in the investigation of a suspected arson attack at a Tesla repair facility in Las Vegas.
In addition to a focus from law enforcement officials on stopping violent incidents involving Teslas, the administration has taken some unusual steps to shore up customer support for Tesla as a company.
Donald Trump held an unusual event in front of the White House earlier this month with Musk with a suite of Tesla cars, where the president said he would be buying a Tesla in a show of solidarity with his billionaire adviser in the face of criticisms for working in the administration.
“I’m going to buy because number one, it’s a great product,” Trump said at the event. “As good as it gets. Number two, because [Elon Musk] has devoted his energy and his life to doing this, and I think he has been treated unfairly.”
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick also encouraged viewers during a recent Fox News interview to buy Tesla’s flagging stock.
https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/crime/tesla-arson-charges-pam-bondi-b2718922.html
Archduchess Estelle of Austria dies aged 46 leaving behind five children
Archduchess Estelle of Austria has died aged 46, leaving European aristocracy in mourning.
The Archduchess leaves behind her husband Archduke Carl Christian and their five children, Zita, 17, Anezka, 15, Anna, 12, Paola, 10 and Pier-Giorgia, four.
Announcing the death in the Carnet du Figaro bulletin, the family, who live in Nice, wrote: 'Her husband, Archduke Carl Christian, their children, her parents, and her in-laws are deeply saddened to announce that Archduchess Estelle of Austria, née Lapra de Saint Romain, was called to God on Tuesday, March 4, 2025.'
The family laid her to rest on March 12 at the Cimiez Monastery in Nice.
Her cause of death was cancer, according to Point De Vue.
Princess Astrid of Belgium joined the mourners alongside other royals including Prince Charles of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, Ferdinand of Habsburg, Princess Marie-Astrid of Luxembourg, and the Duke of Castro.
Estelle's coffin was decorated with white flowers and each of her five children lit a candle and placed it on the coffin.
The priest praised the mother-of-five's the 'loving lucidity', before Ava Maria played.
In 2007, the royal married to Archduke Carl Christian, the great-grandson of Emperor Charles I the last ruler of Austria-Hungary.
The wedding in Montgirod, a small commune in Savoy, was attended by 300 guests, including family and European aristocrats including notable Princess Astrid of Belgium, Prince Jean Napoleon, Prince Gundakar of Liechtenstein and Princess Marie of Orléans.
The couple then headed to Mexico on a honeymoon.
Carl Christian is the eldest son of Archduke Rudolf and Archduchess Marie-Hélène and a cousin of the current head of the Austrian Imperial House, Archduke Karl von Habsburg.
While the Austrian monarchy was abolished in 1918 the family have remained at the helm of European aristocracy and do work for the communities within the region.
It comes after the shock death of another European royal, aged 22.
Last week, Prince Robert of Luxembourg has announced the tragic passing of his youngest son, Prince Frederik, at the age of 22.
The cousin of Henri, Grand Duke of Luxembourg - whose shock abdication last year ended a glorious 24-year reign - revealed his son died on March 1, following a long battle with rare genetic condition, POLG Mitochondrial disease.
He mourned the news in a lengthy, heartfelt message posted to the POLG foundation, a website founded by his son, and dedicated to finding effective treatments and a cure for POLG mitochondrial disorders.
POLG disease is a rare genetic disorder that robs the body's cells of energy, in turn causing progressive multiple organ dysfunction and failure, the foundation explained.
Progression of the condition can cause multiple organs to fail, such as the brain and liver, as well as the intestines, muscles, and swallowing functions to falter.
Prince Frederik, who lived in Switzerland, was born with the disease, though official diagnosis occurred much later at age 14, when his symptoms became more acute.
In a moving statement penned by Prince Robert, 69, and his wife, Princess Julie of Nassau, 64, they revealed their son's heartbreaking last moments, which included a final goodbye to his parents and two siblings, Princess Charlotte of Nassau, 29 and Prince Alexandre of Nassau, 27.
The statement read: 'It is with a very heavy heart that my wife and I would like to inform you of the passing of our son, The POLG Foundation Founder and Creative Director, Frederik'.
He poignantly shared that his dear son said goodbye on Rare Disease Day - a special observance held on the last day of February, and committed to raising awareness and promoting research of rare conditions.
'Last Friday, February 28th, on 'Rare Disease Day', our beloved son called us in to his room to speak to him for one last time' wrote Robert.
'Frederik found the strength and the courage to say goodbye to each of us in turn – his brother, Alexander, his sister, Charlotte, me, his three cousins, Charly, Louis, and Donall, his brother-in-law, Mansour, and finally, his Aunt Charlotte and Uncle Mark.
'He had already spoken all that was in his heart to his extraordinary mother, who had not left his side in 15 years. After gifting each of us with our farewells – some kind, some wise, some instructive – in true Frederik fashion, he left us collectively with a final long-standing family joke.
'Even in his last moments, his humour, and his boundless compassion, compelled him to leave us with one last laugh….to cheer us all up.'
According to Robert, what began like 'any normal day' with the sound of his daily exercise alarm ended in shocking tragedy, as it was to 'be his last in this world'.
He lamented on his son's journey with the disease, one he said Frederik fought valiantly to the end.
'This is the battle that Frederik fought, and this is the burden that he had to carry throughout his life', penned Prince Robert.
'He always did so with grace and with humour. When we asked him if he wanted to create a foundation to find a cure and help others like him, he jumped at the opportunity.
'Though he always made it very clear that he did not want this dreadful disease to define him, he nonetheless immediately identified with and helped define the mission of The POLG Foundation'.
Robert also praised his son's 'amazing sense of humour', as well as his 'emotional intelligence and compassion that were off the charts'.
'A sense of justice, fairness and decency that knows no bounds' he continued. 'He was disciplined and organised beyond belief'.
Perhaps one of the sweetest memories he shared of his son was that he was the 'strongest person' his family and friends knew.
Prince Frederick of Nassau was born in Aix-en-Provence, France, and enjoyed a stint in London, England, before moving to Switzerland in 2004.
The former student attended the International School in Geneva, Ecole Eden primary school and St George's School in Clarens.
His father, Prince Robert of Luxembourg, is the first cousin of Grand Duke Henri of Luxembourg, 69, who in December announced his shock abdication from the throne in favour of his son Guillaume.
Guillaume, 43, who had already assumed many of his father's duties in recent months as Lieutenant-Representant, will formally take up his new title on October 3, 2025.
Henri's abdication marks the second European monarch to step down from their reign this year.
His royal relation Queen Margrethe of Denmark decided to give up the throne after 52 years, making way for her son Frederik to take over as King on 14 January.
Grand Duke Henri is the eldest son of the five children of Grand Duke Jean and Grand Duchess Joséphine-Charlotte and took to the throne in 2000, after his father abdicated following a 36-year reign.
He is married to Maria Teresa Mestre, the Grand Duchess of Luxembourg. and the pair have five children together; Prince Guillaume, Princess Alexandra, Prince Louis, Prince Félix and Prince Sébastien.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-14514589/Archduchess-Estelle-Austria-dead.html
Megyn Kelly: How did Mahmoud Khalil got his Visa so quickly?
https://x.com/DefiyantlyFree/status/1902736487893893511
Zohran Mamdani, a socialist mayoral candidate in New York, wants to create government owned superstores
https://x.com/EndWokeness/status/1902448838566158463
Inside The Now-Shuttered Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, Where Employees Lived ‘Like Reigning Kings’
One of the seven small federal agencies that President Donald Trump ordered downsized or eliminated on Friday was rife with corruption, with its employees hiring friends and relatives, commissioning paintings of themselves, and using government credit cards to indulge in constant luxuries.
The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) occupied a nine-story office tower on D.C.’s K Street for only 60 employees, many of whom actually worked from home, prior to the pandemic. Its managers had luxury suites with full bathrooms; one manager would often be “in the shower” when she was needed, while another used her bathroom as a cigarette lounge. FMCS recorded its director as being on a years-long business trip to D.C. so he could have all of his meals and living expenses covered by taxpayers, simply for showing up to the office.
FMCS is a 230-employee agency that exists to serve as a voluntary mediator between unions and businesses. As an “independent agency,” its director nominally reports to the president, but the agency is so small that in effect, there is no oversight at all — and it showed, becoming a real-life caricature of all the excesses that the Department of Government Efficiency has alleged take place in government.
This reporter spent a year investigating the agency a decade ago, and I found egregious and self-serving violations of hiring, pay, contracting, and purchase card rules. One thing I could not discover is why the agency actually existed, other than to provide luxurious lifestyles for its employees. Endless junkets to resort destinations, which employees openly used to facilitate personal vacations, were justified as building awareness of the agency in the hopes that someone would actually want to use its voluntary services.
FMCS seemed, quite clearly, to exist for the benefit of those on its payroll, and not much else. One employee told me: “Let me give you the honest truth: A lot of FMCS employees don’t do a hell of a lot, including myself. Personally, the reason that I’ve stayed is that I just don’t feel like working that hard, plus the location on K Street is great, plus we all have these oversized offices with windows, plus management doesn’t seem to care if we stay out at lunch a long time. Can you blame me?”
“Recreation and reception fund.”
Top FMCS official George Cohen used a “recreation and reception fund” to order champagne and $200 coasters for his office, and to purchase artwork painted by his wife. The tiny agency commissioned paintings of its top employees — as one employee told me, “like they were reigning kings or something…I’ve never seen anything like it before.” It spent $2,402 retouching the portrait of someone who briefly held the top job in an acting capacity.
FMCS employees “unblocked” their government credit cards to turn off typical abuse protections, then used them to apparently fund personal expenses and simply bill anything they’d like to the government. One employee leased a BMW; another (IT director James Donnen) billed the government for his wife’s cell phone, cable TV at both his home and his vacation home, and even his subscription to USA Today.
Employee Dan W. Funkhouser used his FMCS card to rent a storage unit near his home in rural Virginia, two hours from the office he supposedly worked at, which was used to store personal possessions such as a photo album of his dog, Buster. Funkhouser also spent $18,000 at a jewelry store near his house, and “destroyed all purchase card records upon leaving the agency,” an audit said.
When Charles Burton retired from FMCS, he incorporated an LLC to which another FMCS employee paid $85,000 using his purchase card, listing it as a “Call Center Service,” even though the company had neither a website nor a working phone.
When an accountant, Carol Booth, blew the whistle on financial abuses to the General Services Administration, which manages purchase cards and contracting, Cohen forced her to send an email (which he wrote under her name) rescinding her statement.
Like something out of “The Office,” the employees spent an inordinate amount of time and money congratulating one another for being employed there and engaging in “work” that really amounted to pampering themselves.
One purchase was for $30,000 on trinkets marking employees’ anniversaries. The agency’s office was absurdly oversized, but it refused to move. It hired a consultant for a “Hallway Improvement Project” to decorate. It had an in-house gym for employees, and purchased a $1,000 TV for the gym, a $3,867 ice-maker, and a $560 stereo.
The expenses that were actually business-related were hardly better. It paid, for example, $895 “for Suzanne Nichter’s enrollment in the English Essentials: A Grammar Refresher course” and $735 “for Lakisha Steward to attend Listening and Memory Skills Development Course.”
All expenses paid lifestyle
FMCS used federal jobs as a spigot of cash for friends and relatives. Allison Beck, a former union lawyer who became a top FMCS official, employed her sister-in-law as a “special assistant,” and an inspector general found evidence that she tried to create a high-level job for a friend.
FMCS employees allegedly steered contracts to friends, allowing them to write the “statement of work” that would be used to choose the contract winner — resulting in, of course, their own selection. Such “trainers” were paid $1,500 per day per person to train FMCS’s staff, plus $163 an hour for travel. When a low-level employee eventually said the extra travel pay ran afoul of federal rules, a contractor made clear he viewed it as an entitlement, huffing: “Work we have successfully performed for the agency for more than a decade — at great personal sacrifice, I should add — will be taken away unless we comply in an unquestioning manner with your edict.”
Scot Beckenbaugh, a top agency official, was paid $174,000 a year, but that wasn’t enough: He had his “duty station” listed as Iowa so that he could have all of his living expenses and food paid for in D.C., where he lived and worked, as if he was on a six-year-long business trip. When an employee raised the issue to an agency lawyer, the lawyer told him he “should not raise these issues … it would open a can of worms.”
FMCS hired a former mail carrier who lived in Pennsylvania, Lu-Ann Glaser, for a high-level, D.C.-based job, and agreed to pay for her to stay in a hotel for half of every month — even though it would have been easy to find someone better qualified who didn’t need to be put up in a hotel to simply do her job.
Paul Voight, a human resources official, was listed as living in D.C. even though he actually lived in Wisconsin, in order to fraudulently obtain higher cost-of-living pay. Voight’s boss was Artur Pearlstein, who left the agency to become a law professor, and was then re-hired after his academic career imploded in a plagiarism scandal. His first move in his new job was terminating an independent investigation into FMCS staff abusing taxpayer funds for personal gain.
Cohen, for his part, steered work to his previous employer, despite signing ethics forms saying he would not.
Constant junkets
Many of the agency’s top employees lived outside of the typical Washington, D.C., commuting area, and only stopped in the area occasionally, in an era before telework was routine. Its CFO, Fran Leonard, would come to the office twice a week but leave by 2:00 p.m.
The agency had, inexplicably, an office in Honolulu.
It funded constant travel of its employees to exotic locales, on the pretext that it was drumming up business for the federal agency — an admission that there was little demand for the agency’s existence.
In one month, Beck traveled to Italy and Switzerland, where she conducted a business meeting — over video chat. Then she went to Tunisia and an island off the coast of Georgia. She flew first class and forced the agency to reimburse her for mileage when she drove to her vacation home in Maine.
The agency had three full-time media relations staffers, none of whom would speak to me, almost certainly one of the only reporters to ever call.
Cash grants for insiders
The agency’s existence is predicated on the idea that it is an impartial mediator, biased neither towards labor nor management. But its staff largely comes from a union background, and it gave out grants to promote union membership. But it was too incompetent to do much ideological damage; its employees’ comfort always came before helping unions.
Anyone could request cash grants from the agency, with the only requirement that they mention some nexus with unions, however tortured. It doled out a seemingly random assortment of giveaways to private businesses, perhaps because they were the only ones who knew the grants existed.
It gave $63,000 to a hospital that went bankrupt; $51,000 to a childcare company to help it pay government licensing fees; and $57,000 to a company to “strengthen of culture of continuous improvement to drive us to world class excellence!”
What surprised me most about my FMCS investigation was what happened afterward: nothing. An inspector general made a referral to the FBI, but there were no prosecutions. Instead, President Barack Obama nominated a chief subject of the investigation to the top job.
A decade later, Trump has done what even the agency’s own employees said should happen: shut it down.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/fmcs-slush-fund-abolished-by-trump
Rep. Jasmine Crockett asks activists to take down Tesla and Elon Musk on her birthday
https://x.com/EndWokeness/status/1902552260195889465
Western Lensman
@WesternLensman
Rick Wilson, 2015: Put a bullet in Donald Trump.
Rick Wilson, 2025: Kill Tesla.
Rick Wilson knows exactly what he’s doing.
https://x.com/WesternLensman/status/1902445296115970441
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
People that get caught sabotaging Teslas will stand a very good chance of going to jail for up to twenty years, and that includes the funders. WE ARE LOOKING FOR YOU!!!
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114198218638202475