'Unfair': MAGA rioter who fled country cries foul after Canada arrests him​

A man who fled the country after being convicted for his actions during the January 6th Capitol riots is crying foul after authorities in Canada placed him under arrest.

CBC reports that convicted MAGA rioter Anthony Vo was arrested this week in British Columbia four years after he and his fellow Trump supporters illegally stormed the Capitol in a failed attempt to block the certification of the 2020 presidential election.


"On Wednesday, a spokesperson for the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) said Vo was arrested in Whistler on Jan. 6 on a warrant under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA)," reports CBC. "The agency assesses whether people coming to Canada are legally admissible and investigates those already here who may not be. It can arrest and detain inadmissible individuals under the act."

Vo had originally fled to Canada after being slapped with a nine-month prison sentence and he had tried to claim asylum in the country.

Oluwadamilola Asuni, an attorney representing Vo, complained to the CBC that his client's arrest was politically motivated.

"He thinks that Canada is just trying to prove a point... to the current U.S. government to say, Oh, we are not condoning your political opponent or stuff like that," Asuni said. "He thinks the whole thing is unfair to him, and he thinks that the entire thing is unreasonable."


Regardless, Vo might fare better in the United States now given that President-elect Donald Trump has pledged mass pardons for convicted Capitol rioters when he returns to office later this month.

In fact, Vo told CBC he was confident that Trump would pardon him.

"He's already made too many promises in the public spotlight that it would look really bad if he didn't," Vo said. "And he's a man of his word."

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/u...ies-foul-after-canada-arrests-him/ar-BB1ramrp

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I think now that he has saved us from the Libs (twice!) there is an argument to be made that Trump is certainly just as consequential to American independence as Washington, Hamilton and the crew….if not far more important than them considering the stakes!

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2025 is off to a blast it seems..

Pretty astute observations. Yes, prepared for the incoming of laughing emojis from the turd faction.

In an interview with The New Republic's Greg Sargent, Vanderbilt historian Nicole Hemmer outlined how Trump has even used the devastation from California's fires to lob attacks at his political opponents instead of trying to bring the country together.

"It does strike me as something novel about the right, certainly within the last 15 years... there is a combination of the malignancy of Donald Trump himself, who is constantly seeking ways to be in the headlines, the media environment in which we live that really favors this kind of outrage and negative emotion, and a conservative media ecosystem that takes that revved-up let's-make-everybody-angry dynamic and applies it to electoral politics," she said. "All those things come together to turn everything that happens into an opportunity for a fight."

The result of this, she says, is that "everything just feels worse all the time."

Hemmer also notes that conservatives have been laying the blame for natural disasters at the feet of people who live in urban areas for decades, such as when they used the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina to smear the city of New Orleans.

"There was a pastor, John Hagee, who said... 'Have you been to New Orleans? You see the way that they are, you see what sinful people they are, so God has sent this punishment against them,'" she recalls.

She adds, though, that Trump has made this dynamic worse because he now thinks that "every time a natural disaster happens, I can make political hay out of it."

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So, yeah, it's pretty obvious Trump wants this job simply because of the attention and adulation that comes with it. And, unfortunately, he's been able to get enough people who don't really care if their guy takes the job seriously or not.

At this point, I think it's clear the Payton is struggling this year. He's had a couple of good games, played decently against Northwestern and Michigan, but really fell apart against Utah St and Iowa St. This is supposed to be the leader of the team and right now, he has the 3rd best efficiency rating and is shooting 31% from 3 (27% against top 100 teams). I hope he can turn it around because he might be hurting his draft stock if his season keeps going this way.

It seems apparent from BOTH transfer-portal movement AND what we saw on the field ... Iowa appeared to lack depth on the DL, most notably at DT. Our starters, in Black and Graves were obviously pretty good ... however, Pittman's development has apparently been a "slower build" and none of the other guys "popped" beyond that. Furthermore, the injury to Allen certainly didn't help things, seeing that he was a guy who could play on the outside OR the inside ... he was a guy who we had seen some nice things from.

At DE, guys still need to do a better job of maintaining outside leverage. Too often, guys would cheat inside ... and then we'd lose our outside leverage.

I do believe that we have a good core group at DE in Hurkett, Allen, and Llewellyn. Obviously, with the graduation of Black ... it leaves a bit of a vacuum of "proven" productive guys outside of Graves. Hopefully, the additions of Pace and Hawthorne address this vacuum-issue.

The other obvious thing was the play in the secondary. I know that Entringer is a talented guy ... but his absence was felt more than I would have predicted. Furthermore, apart from Harris ... our corner play was largely pretty uneven. Lee seemed to be the most consistent performer ... but his play has its own limitations. He's still on the short-side and a little slow ... so he can get abused a bit when he's caught on an island. After a surprisingly decent RS FR season ... his SO season wasn't to the same level. Kinda reminded me a bit of King's sophomore slump in '14.

Anyhow, it's obvious that Phil likes the guys he has in his room ... it seems like there's just the continued process of having those guys develop ... because they're clearly not "there" yet.

Iowa's LB play was obviously very veteran. I know that Phil asks a lot of them ... often times relying on defending against the run with surprisingly few hats in the box. This season, I don't know if the issue was that the DL wasn't doing a good enough job of keeping them clean ... or if they weren't making the right reads when filling against the run ... because our run-D was far more porous than I'd ordinarily expect for an Iowa D (particularly one with such a veteran group of LBs). Sharar and Harrell finally saw more snaps this season ... so hopefully that helps them going into next year. The Hawks have seemingly been recruiting pretty well at LB over the past few years, so I expect that the LB-room will ultimately develop into a pretty decent group.

I know that Iowa fans are seemingly very "woe is me" concerning our offensive situation ... but my eye-balls told me that even in spite of QB issues (particularly concerning QB-health) ... the O was still light years better than what it was over the prior few seasons. Thus, I think that it is reasonable to assume that Iowa's O will continue to be on a bit of an upward ascent as Lester continues to assert himself. Furthermore, I think that there was a lot to like from what we say from Dakin ... punting was usually pretty good. So that leaves the D ... will we see improvement going into next season?

The party of "science" literally doesn't understand addition. ROTFLMAO

Michigan, who Iowa lost to in Ann Arbor by 2 points when a last-second 3 missed, beat #22 UCLA last night 94-75.

Iowa, playing without Thelwell, played poorly at times last night, but without that, there is no thrilling second-half comeback. And thrilling it was. With Iowa down by 15 in the second half, I said the game was over. It was just a matter of how bad the final score would be. And just then, the Iowa Hawkeyes--led by Payton Sandfort and Josh Dix--flipped the script.

What an amazing and inspired effort on both ends, and even on the boards. Nebraska was riding a 6-game winning streak and a victory over then #15 UCLA and seemed to have the game under control. And despite the foolish no-call by the refs at the end of regulation, Iowa was not to be denied.

Everyone deserves credit for a terrific finish. It's just one game, but sometimes that's what it takes to change the narrative. But for now, stop the complaining and enjoy a well-earned, entertaining victory over a hated rival. I am.

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I voted for Harris and am disappointed in the outcome, but as I look at the Trump win and I know I'll come out ahead. So chalk one up on owning the libs!

I put 5K down on GEO, a private prison company. It's up 84%. I can see how this is going to go.

1. Illegals- what are they really doing? They aren't taking your jobs. You don't want to dig ditches, clean hotel rooms, be a maid, work in ameat packing plant, and work in a restarant kitchen. Deporting them will simply raise costs of the foods and goods you buy: Bad for you.

2. Tarrifs- These get passed to the consumer. If a Samsung washer that costs 650 now goes to 800, do you really think Maytag isn't going to raise the prices of their 650 washer to 775 to match the rest of the washing machine market? Do you think they are going to pass on the profit in the form of increased wages to their workers or are they going to profit the stock holders. Raises the costs of goods for you and casues inflation: Bad for you.

3. Universal healthcare- Democrats often support universal Healthcare. You voted against it. That makes me likely take a pay cut but but gives you free health care for your family: bad for me and good for you.

4. Corporate taxes- likely cut by Trump again. Last time he did this the majority of cuts went into company share holders and didn't trickle down to wages. Prices weren't reduced. This increases national debt. At some point the lone sharks will come for our kids: May not do much for you, likely screws our kids.

5. Income cuts for rich: Increases national debt. See above. Doesn't effect you other than keeps you making less with no benefits. Worsening wealth distribution. Trickle down didn't work for Reagan. It didn't work when Brownbeck did it for Kansas. The poorest 50% don't pay much anyway. Certainly helps me. Doesn't help you.


6. I want universal education and trade schools. I can pay for private school and my kids college. Trump wants to cut federal education programs: Hurts you.

So after all of this all I can conclude is that I'm crazy for not wanting to benefit from Trumps policies and generally favor taking a pay cut, and paying more taxes.

How is this helping the non college educated, low wage worker do better in this country?

Yes, you may be upset about diminishing religion, abortion, culture wars, dems calling you dumb, etc. Well, I guess you showed us.

David Taylor is in attendance. Does anyone know if Brands are there watching all that talent?
Its on Flo, started at 5:30pm.

Hope he tears it up Charlie Jones-style.

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Never been a watch guy. I tend to see more Smart Watches than anything. People looking at their wrist for any notification associated with their phone. Maybe has sleep, fitness features that come along?

The Dress Watch is probably more of a dying breed I assume? Those are more of a fashion statement than anything. We went into a Rolex shop in Scottsdale a few years back. One of the watches was like $75k. Dumb.

Maybe Captain Koons knew how much your dad valued a stop watch?

The way your dad looked at it, this watch was your birthright. He'd be damned if any slopes gonna put their greasy yellow hands on his boy's birthright, so he hid it, in the one place he knew he could hide something: his ass. Five long years, he wore this watch up his ass. Then when he died of dysentery, he gave me the watch. I hid this uncomfortable piece of metal up my ass for two years. Then, after seven years, I was sent home to my family. And now, little man, I give the watch to you.

Wait til the end for the cherry on top.

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Good and decent man.

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The New York Times wrote a few days ago, “President Biden is bequeathing his successor a nation that by many measures is in good shape, even if voters remain unconvinced.” Just how good are things? Here’s how the Times described the state of the economy:

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For the first time since that transition 24 years ago, there will be no American troops at war overseas on Inauguration Day. New data reported in the past few days indicate that murders are way down, illegal immigration at the southern border has fallen even below where it was when Mr. Trump left office and roaring stock markets finished their best two years in a quarter-century.

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The Financial Times reported last week on “why America’s economy is soaring ahead of its rivals.” Time published an essay in November that said, “President-elect [Donald] Trump is receiving the strongest economy in modern history which is the envy of the world.”

Gosh, you are not alone if you are wondering where such upbeat reporting has been for the past few years. After all, “The economy had a strong 2024: robust growth, low unemployment and inflation descending to 3%,” former car czar Steve Rattner told us. Moreover, he has said, “All told, Biden has added 693,000 factory jobs while Trump added just 425,000 before Covid hit.7 ... The rate of grocery inflation — particularly troubling for everyday Americans — has subsided to less than 1.6%.” Real median incomes are higher than when Trump left office, border crossings are lower.


Overall, the Biden record is impressive, especially in light of the recession and pandemic he inherited. Researchers at the University of Chicago told us: “Under the Biden administration, real GDP rose 12.6 percent, rightly cheered ... as ‘a historically robust expansion’ that repeatedly defied forecasts. Since the pandemic, economic growth in the US has far outpaced that of our peer nations. Business investment is up; unemployment is low.”
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There are several explanations for why we did not have coverage commensurate with the success President Joe Biden enjoyed. The news media’s fixation on polls showing what voters thought about the state of the economy and its negative news bias (which I have written about) that refused to give proper weight to Biden’s successes failed to give voters an accurate picture of Biden’s achievements. And yet now, somehow, with the election over, the media widely acknowledges that Biden’s record is strong, something they downplayed during the election.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...id=mc_magnet-opinflation_inline_collection_20

We should not discount the disproportionate impact of rising costs (again, echoed without sufficient context in political coverage) on the public perception of the economy (which in turn got amplified to the exclusion of “good news” by the media). “Inflation in the United States reached 9% in 2022, meaning that the average cost of goods and services went up by that amount,” Johns Hopkins University’s David Steinberg explained. “That is the highest rate of inflation that this country has experienced in over 40 years.” While inflation has now dropped close to the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent benchmark, “the price level today is more than 20% higher than it was four years ago. As a result, many Americans cannot afford to buy as many things as they otherwise would.”


There is something else at work as well. Utilizing 89 years’ worth of data, University of Chicago researchers found, very simply, “It is not enough to say that a strong economy favors the incumbent. ... A strong economy favors Republicans, and a weak economy favors Democrats, regardless of the incumbent.” They postulate that “when the economy is weak, Americans become more risk averse, and that’s why they favor the party that promises redistribution and social insurance — Democrats. During booms, by contrast, voters are more willing to take risks and therefore more likely to elect Republicans, who favor lower taxes.”
Democrats, including Biden and former president Barack Obama, like to point out that Democrats routinely inherit recessions from Republicans, clean up the mess and yet get no credit for it. (“In finance, there’s a phenomenon known as the ‘presidential puzzle’ — stock returns have been higher under Democratic administrations than Republican ones,” the research showed. “Between 1927 and 2015, the period analyzed in our study, the average excess market return was nearly 11 percent per year higher under Democrats than Republicans.”)
And yet this does not explain why, after inheriting great economies, Republicans manage to mess things up, ushering in the conditions for Democrats to return. Let me suggest the most simple explanation: The sugar-high from the only consistent economic policy Republicans favor (supply-side economics) quickly wears off, leaving the country with higher debt, more economic inequality and underinvestment in critical areas (e.g., education, infrastructure). Coupled with reckless deregulation that often results in financial crisis (as in 2008), Republicans’ policies leave Americans reeling, ready to bring back the only party of responsible governance: the Democratic Party.


Democrats should extract several lessons from this pattern. First, the media cannot be relied on to tell the success story. Republicans have a reliable propaganda machine in right-wing media; Democrats enjoy no such luxury. (One need only look at the economic coverage during Biden’s term to see this is true.) Second, it follows that Democrats must do a much better job touting their own successes and communicating with low- and no-information voters. Biden joked he should have put his name on the stimulus checks; he was right.
And finally, before Democrats change their philosophy or dump capable leaders, they might simply run a 24/7 hard-hitting critique of the Trump economic agenda. That will set the stage for the midterms.
We already have hints what Trump will do: run up big deficits, cut taxes for the super rich, slash entitlements, enact inflationary tariffs that provoke trade wars, undertake mass deportations that prove economically disastrous and do corporation’s bidding in enacting reckless deregulation.
Voters may not have long memories (amnesia about Trump’s first term pervaded the campaign) but, fortunately for Democrats, Trump’s failures and scandals will be fresh in the minds of voters when they go to the polls in 2026.

The Lehigh Valley Barbershop was bustling with the next generation of American strivers. The mood among the young men, mostly first- or second-generation migrants from the Caribbean, was hopeful. Their candidate, Donald Trump, had just won the presidential election.

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Sitting in high-end silver chairs, the young men talked about the businesses they had built, or would build. That would be more possible, they hoped, with the return of Trump, someone to whom they could relate — a businessman who has made mistakes, they said, but still keeps striving.

“Kamala said, 'Trump is for the rich, I fight for the poor.’ But I don’t want to be low-class — I hope that’s not a bad way to say it. But I don’t want to be there,” said Christian Pion, 31, referring to Vice President Kamala Harris. He became a U.S. citizen last year, a decade after coming to the United States from the Dominican Republic, and cast his first presidential ballot for Trump. “God doesn’t want you to be poor.”


Next to him, his best friend, Willy J. Castillo, 39, who owns the shop and others, worked the register as he talked about Trump’s drive to succeed, overcome and survive. Castillo, who also voted for Trump, identifies with that: “The Bible says ‘God helps those who help themselves,’ right?”
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The mix of hope, drive for success and belief in a God who rewards faith, sometimes with financial accomplishments, has become dominant across the United States and Latin America, experts on Latino religion say. The belief system is sometimes called “seed faith,” “health and wealth gospel,” or “prosperity gospel.”
In the past half-century, driven by larger-than-life pastors, it has overtaken other more traditional theologies centered on God’s priority being poor and disenfranchised people, some experts said. This belief system, they said, helps explain what exit polls showed was a significant shift among Latino Christian voters to Trump, who they see as an uber-successful, strong and God-focused striver.
“If you take Trump and all his characteristics, it’s almost exactly as any prosperity gospel preacher,” said Tony Tian-Ren Lin, an Asian-Latino pastor in New York who wrote a book on Latino Americans and the prosperity gospel. “The big personality, talking a big game, saying things like ‘no one can do it’ but him … If for years you’ve been listening to someone like that, you’re not surprised when a political leader says those things.”


Nationally, network exit polls showed that between 2020 and 2024, Trump gained 14 points in support among Latinos, although a bare majority favored Harris, the Democratic nominee. In that same period, he gained 25 points among Latino Catholics and 18 points among Latino evangelical Protestants.




The shift is evident here in Lehigh County, in the eastern part of pivotal Pennsylvania. It is the county with the highest proportion of Latino voters — 29 percent, according to the U.S. Census. The Democratic Party’s margin in presidential contests shrank in Lehigh by 4.9 percentage points, from 7.6 percentage points in 2020 to 2.7 percentage points in 2024. But in majority-Latino Allentown, the county’s biggest city, the move toward Trump was even more pronounced. The 10 city precincts with the highest-proportion of Latino voters shifted to Trump by an average of 20 percentage points since Trump faced eventual winner Joe Biden in 2020, according to a Washington Post analysis of precinct results from Lehigh County and demographic data from L2, an election data provider.
The prosperity gospel is rooted in American Pentecostalism and evangelical Protestantism, but experts say it’s become huge across faith in general, and especially among unaffiliated, often online spiritual influencers. Trump grew up in the church of the Rev. Norman Vincent Peale, whose book “The Power of Positive Thinking,” was a huge bestseller and is considered a classic of the prosperity gospel.
A Pew Research Center survey in 2014 found wide majorities of Protestants and Catholics in almost all of Latin America agreed that “God will grant wealth and good health to believers who have enough faith.” In the Dominican Republic — the ancestral or birth home for many in Allentown — 76 percent of Protestants agreed and 79 percent of Catholics did. The firm PRRI asked a similar question in March and found 44 percent of U.S. Latinos overall agreed, higher than any other group except African Americans. What that means politically is that wealthy candidates like Trump are seen by some as both faithful and worthy of emulation.


The movement started in the United States with healers and televangelists such as Oral Roberts and Benny Hinn, who told followers that giving them money would lead to divine blessings, conjuring a transactional God. By extension, personal wealth was seen as a goal for the faithful. It focused on the power of the self, and the idea that God would reward positivity, hard work and confidence.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported 271,484 immigrants to nearly 200 countries last fiscal year, the highest tally in a decade, according to the agency’s annual report published Thursday.

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Most deportees had crossed the U.S. southern border illegally, part of a record number of people fleeing authoritarian regimes, poverty and economic collapse in the Western Hemisphere after the pandemic. The ICE report covered enforcement operations from Oct. 1, 2023, to Sept. 30.

The report is ICE’s final accounting of immigration enforcement under the Biden administration before President-elect Donald Trump takes office on Jan. 20. Trump has promised to immediately launch the largest deportation campaign in American history, though he has offered few or conflicting details about how he would manage it. Staffing levels of immigration enforcement officers have been stagnant for years.


“Our agency is chronically underfunded, but our workforce is adaptable, resilient and agile, and they set the bar high within the federal government,” said ICE’s top official Patrick J. Lechleitner, in a statement. “ICE is an apolitical agency, and one thing I can tell you about our workforce is that they’re here to investigate crimes and enforce the laws Congress sets forth.”
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Biden took office in 2021 pledging to pause deportations, and he sent Congress a bill that would have allowed most of the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country to get on paths to citizenship. But surging border crossings derailed his plans, and Biden officials ended up expanding rather than reducing detention and deportations.
Illegal border crossings have plunged since Biden implemented new rules last summer that sharply restrict asylum claims, resulting in far more migrants being deported than released into the United States with a pending court case.


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4.1 million migrants​

The Washington Post analyzed more than 4.1 million U.S. immigration court records from the past decade to find out where migrants come from and where they live once they arrive in the country.

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Deportations by ICE during Trump’s first term peaked at 267,260 during the 2019 fiscal year, data show. Under Trump, deportees were more likely to be individuals arrested in the interior of the United States, rather than recent border-crossers.
Federal immigration officials said several factors drove the overall increase in Enforcement and Removal Operations during the past year, particularly to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, which accepted more flights transporting those deported from the United States.
“These actions enhanced ERO’s ability to scale up removal operations and laid the groundwork for the increase of removals in FY 2024,” the report said.

ICE also expanded after “intensive diplomatic efforts” the number of charter flights last year to countries in the Eastern Hemisphere, including the first large removal flight to China since fiscal 2018.

Five hundred deportees were dispatched to China last year, down slightly from fiscal 2019. Other flights went to Albania, India, Senegal and Uzbekistan.
Records show Biden largely kept his promise to focus on immigrants who are a top priority for removal, including recent border crossers and people who posed a threat to national security or public safety.
Immigration officials typically remove a tiny fraction of the nation’s undocumented immigrants each year, in part because of huge backlogs in U.S. immigration courts, budget constraints and public opposition to removals in many states.

The 2024 report shows that the highest numbers of immigrants removed from the United States went to Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, in that order.
Those countries typically cooperate with deportations, and their citizens are likely to be significant targets for removal under the Trump administration.

Venezuela, however, is less cooperative. People from that South American country are among one of the largest groups on ICE’s deportation docket. But last year just 3,256 people were deported.
Trump and his surrogates have provided few details about how they would steer a dramatic expansion in enforcement.
ICE has about 6,000 immigration enforcement officers, roughly the same staffing level that it had a decade ago, the report shows. During that time, the number of people with pending immigration cases on ICE’s docket — individuals who are not detained but under ICE’s management — has nearly quadrupled to about 8 million.

Trump also promised to aggressively increase deportations during his first term, but because of resistance from Democrat-led cities and states, he never surpassed the Obama administration’s record of more than 400,000 removals a year.

Here are the last 7 signings for Fran:

No political stuff in this one.

California fire map:

Live news:

Hollywood Hills now on fire:
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The wide net the Chicago Bears are casting in search of the 19th coach in team history includes at least one college coach.

The team is expected to meet with Iowa State’s Matt Campbell, according to multiple sources.

Campbell, 45, has been the Cyclones coach since 2016, and his name has popped up previously for jobs not only at more traditional college powers, but also in the NFL. The Detroit Lions were rumored to be pushing to hire him in 2021, and he also has been linked to the New York Jets in the past.

Campbell, who was the coach at Toledo before taking the Iowa State job, guided the Cyclones to an 11-3 record — the first 10-win season in program history — and the Big 12 title game this season. He was rewarded in December with an eight-year contract extension that runs through the 2032 season.

He is the third-longest-tenured coach in program history and has the most wins at Iowa State with a 64-51 record and seven bowl games in nine seasons. He coached former Bears running back David Montgomery as well as Jets running back Breece Hall and San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy. Defensive end Will McDonald, drafted by the Jets at No. 15 in 2023, was the first Iowa State player in 50 years to be picked in the first round.

Bears general manager Ryan Poles made it clear the team’s search will take it in many directions. Virtual interviews began Wednesday, and the team announced it completed an interview with former Tennessee Titans coach Mike Vrabel.

“It’s going to be a diverse group,” Poles said Tuesday. “This will be different backgrounds from offense, defense, special teams, college, pro. We’re turning every stone to make sure we’re doing this the right way.

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“There’s going to be some names that you don’t expect that are going to surprise you because we’re digging deeper than we ever have before.”

Poles said the Bears will announce the names of candidates after interviews are completed, with permission of the candidate. Given the sensitive and competitive nature of college recruiting, it’s possible the Bears wouldn’t release Campbell’s name or any other college coaches they might interview — but the Iowa State coach is a candidate for the job.

The list continues to become more diverse.

Adding to its 50-plus civil rights complaints across the nation in recent years accusing academic institutions of race- and sex-based discrimination, the anti-affirmative action Equal Protection Project has filed a federal complaint against the University of Northern Iowa for what it called “discriminatory scholarships.”



In the complaint — filed Wednesday with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights — the Rhode Island-based group accused UNI of offering, administering and promoting 13 scholarships that “discriminate based on race, sex, or both.”


“Discrimination is unlawful no matter which race or sex is targeted or benefits,” Equal Protection Project Founder William A. Jacobson said in a statement about the complaint against UNI. “All students are entitled to equal treatment without regard to race or sex.”




According to the complaint, UNI offers and oversees six scholarships that discriminate on the basis of race and color, five that discriminate based on sex and two that do both — violating, it says, Titles VI and IX of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.


“We respectfully ask that the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights prioritize and expedite this complaint, given the sheer number of discriminatory scholarships at UNI reflecting a systematic disregard for Titles VI and IX,” Jacobson wrote in the complaint, which also called on the office to “promptly open a formal investigation, impose such remedial relief as the law permits for the benefit of those who have been illegally excluded from UNI’s various scholarships based on discriminatory criteria, and ensure that all ongoing and future scholarships and programming at UNI comports with the Constitution and federal civil rights laws.”


“We have not received notice from the Office for Civil Rights on this specific matter and will not have comment on a pending legal issue,“ UNI officials said in a statement Wednesday.


The complaint comes on the heels of state legislation and Board of Regents directives barring Iowa’s public universities from spending or committing resources to diversity, equity and inclusion offices or employees not required by law or for accreditation.





The new state law — taking effect this July — defines DEI, among other things, as “any effort to manipulate or otherwise influence the composition of the faculty or student body with reference to race, sex, color, or ethnicity, apart from ensuring colorblind and sex-neutral admissions and hiring” and “any effort to promote differential treatment of or provide special benefits to individuals on the basis of race, color, or ethnicity.”


The regents’ DEI directives include one requiring its campuses to ensure services supporting “diversity or multicultural affairs” are available to all students.


Regents next week will consider an update to the board’s strategic plan modifying diversity, equity and inclusion goals — with the campuses slated to update their plans in February.


"The Iowa Board of Regents will vote on January 15 whether to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) language from its strategic plan as part of the legislatively prescribed elimination of DEI programming,“ Jacobson said in a statement. ”The blatant discrimination in the scholarships challenged by the Equal Protection Project highlights the need for such reforms, as DEI has turned into blatant discrimination."

UNI scholarships​

Among the UNI scholarships highlighted in the complaint is the “Dr. Carlin Phillips Endowed Education Opportunity Fund,” described as a $1,000 award for a full-time elementary education student who identifies as a “person of color from Black Hawk County.”


A “Regions Bank Endowed Scholarship” offers up to $1,000 to full-time minority students from Black Hawk County, according to the complaint and UNI’s website. Criteria for a “Black Hawk County Opportunities Endowed Scholarship” includes “African American.” And a “Tillie Huismann & Jantze Huismann Endowed Scholarship” offers “preference to women from Spencer High School.”


“In this case, the explicit use of race-, skin color-, and sex-based criteria constitutes unlawful discrimination,” according to the complaint. “Regardless of UNI’s reasons for offering, promoting, and administering such discriminatory scholarships, UNI is violating Title VI and Title IX by doing so.”


In the complaint, Jacobson cites precedent set by the U.S. Supreme Court — which in 2023 barred the use of race in college admissions.


“If the scholarships are intended to achieve racial balance, such an objective has been ‘repeatedly condemned as illegitimate’ and ‘patently unconstitutional’ by the Supreme Court,” according to the complaint.


“The Office for Civil Rights has the power and obligation to investigate UNI’s role in creating, funding, promoting and administering these scholarships — and, given how many there are, to discern whether UNI is engaging in such discrimination in its other activities — and to impose whatever remedial relief is necessary to hold it accountable for that unlawful conduct,” according to the complaint. “This includes, if necessary, imposing fines, initiating administrative proceedings to suspend or terminate federal financial assistance and referring the case to the Department of Justice for judicial proceedings to enforce the rights of the United States under federal law.


“After all, ‘The way to stop discrimination … is to stop discriminating’.”


During a November update on the universities’ efforts to comply with the new DEI legislation and regent directives, the University of Iowa reported it had made scholarship changes — namely cutting some that had class-based criteria.


“Scholarships and programs that were targeted toward minority students have been eliminated, and scholarship funds have been redistributed through the Slater grant program to support financially disadvantaged students,” UI officials reported.


UNI did not address scholarships in its November update.