Tonight’s letter was supposed to be a photo, but then it turned into just a few things I didn’t want to miss, and now it’s a sort of roundup of a whole lot of stories. TGIF, I guess.
After last night’s sanction of almost a million dollars in a frivolous lawsuit, Trump dropped a similar lawsuit today against New York attorney general Letitia James. That lawsuit has been widely interpreted as his attempt to make James abandon the $250 million civil lawsuit against Trump and the Trump Organization. But it, like the one that yesterday cost him and his lawyer close to a million dollars, was assigned to Judge Donald Middlebrooks, and as MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin put it, Trump “folded. That decision was perhaps driven by lawyers who can’t afford a massive sanctions award either reputationally or financially. But it’s weird to see Trump basically concede.”
Trump also backed off on his previous threats to use the debt ceiling to extract concessions from Democrats. Yesterday, he released a video warning House Republicans not to cut Social Security or Medicare, although those are the main things Republicans have thrown on the table. Trump is clearly bowing to popular support for those programs, but he is abandoning House Republicans after pushing them to take this stand.
The troubles of the House Republicans continue to mount. Just as Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) announced the House would end proxy voting, Representative Greg Steube (R-FL) fell 25 feet from a ladder at his home and is now in the hospital, cutting McCarthy’s already slim majority.
Representative George Santos (R-NY) is still in Congress, for the moment anyway, and he continues to embarrass the Republicans. After insisting that reports he was a drag queen in Brazil were lies, it turns out that Santos himself apparently posted that information on Wikipedia. The party that has spent months grabbing headlines by attacking drag queens is now represented by one in Congress.
In the same Wikipedia article, he appeared to claim he was an actor on the Disney Channel show Hannah Montana.
Representative Bill Foster (D-IL), an award-winning physicist who holds a PhD from Harvard, trolled Santos today in a way that powerfully demonstrated the current difference between the two parties. In response to the news that House speaker Kevin McCarthy has put Santos on the House Science Committee, Foster tweeted: “As the only recipient of the Wilson Prize for High-Energy Particle Accelerator Physics serving in Congress, it can get lonely. Not anymore!... I’m thrilled to be joined on the Science Committee by my Republican colleague Dr. George Santos, winner of not only the Nobel Prize, but also the Fields Medal—the top prize in Mathematics—for his groundbreaking work with imaginary numbers.”
Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) has celebrated his elevation to the chair of the House Judiciary Committee with a flurry of requests to the Department of Justice for information about the FBI, the Department of Justice, and the investigation of the events of January 6, 2021, in which Jordan himself was implicated. But a response today from the DOJ reminded Jordan that the department could not share information about ongoing investigations and that it would need clear information about what, exactly, he hoped to investigate rather than blanket demands. Then Assistant Attorney General Carlos Uriarte assured him that the department “stands ready to provide expertise as the Committee considers potential legislation,” an apparent suggestion that Jordan recall what his constituents elected him to do.
“The Administration’s stonewalling must stop,” Jordan tweeted after receiving the letter, but it is notable that Jordan himself refused to answer a subpoena from the bipartisan House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol. McCarthy ignored one too.
The White House today followed up on McCarthy’s posturing over the debt ceiling with a statement that while Biden “looks forward to meeting with Speaker McCarthy to discuss a range of issues,” “raising the raising the debt ceiling is not a negotiation; it is an obligation of this country and its leaders to avoid economic chaos. Congress has always done it, and the President expects them to do their duty once again. That is not negotiable.”
It went on to say that while the president looked forward to learning more about the Republicans’ plans to cut Social Security and Medicare and impose a 30% national sales tax, he was interested in telling McCarthy and his allies about strengthening retirement plans, investing in key priorities, and funding it all by “making the wealthy and big corporations pay their fair share.”
“We are going to have a clear debate on two different visions for the country—one that cuts Social Security, and one that protects it,” the White House said, “and the President is happy to discuss that with the Speaker.”
Finally, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is in Africa for a ten-day visit during which she will urge greater connection between African countries and the U.S., hoping to build stronger ties with the continent than it develops with China or Russia. Africa has about 30% of the world’s reserves of minerals that are crucial to helping the modern world transition to green energy. So far, the Biden administration’s offer of partnership appears attractive, especially in the face of what appears to be a more exploitive model exercised by China and Russia. Both countries have sent representatives to travel around the continent while Yellen is there.
Sadly, hate comes in many forms. It is diffuse and targeted, rooted in history and newly created, dormant and eruptive.
It has always been part of our emotional toolkit as humans, and always will be. Some people believe (at least as an ideal) that hate is never justified. Others believe that it is sometimes justified — for instance, an enslaved person's hatred for their enslaver — but far too often, hate is driven by ignorance, bias, and unwarranted fear.
Despots, autocrats, and others who seek power through divisiveness and scapegoating have long recognized that hate can be a potent tool. It can be used by those who benefit from entrenched privilege to instill a false sense of victimhood and retain an unjust status quo. This tactic was a hallmark of Jim Crow.
Hate is often directed at those a dominant segment of society demeans as the “other” for reasons of race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or physical ability, among other criteria. But in fact, our variations across these categories make this world a wonderful and interesting place to live. Hate, in short, is a potent threat to pluralism, and ultimately, to democracy. That it is ascendant now alongside the other threats to our constitutional order is no accident. That is the entire point.
We have written here at Steady about many kinds of hate. And we will continue to do so, even at the risk of being repetitive. These rising threats can never be deemed “old news.” Violent hatred can never be allowed to seep into an accepted normalcy. It must be called out whenever and however it appears. And it is especially incumbent on those outside the targeted community to stand in solidarity against oppression and violence.
With this responsibility in mind, we want to shine a light on what took place in Bloomington, Indiana, several days ago. An 18-year-old woman, a student at Indiana University, was stabbed in the head as she rode a city bus. According to court documents, the woman was attacked because she is Asian. The perpetrator, a 56-year-old white woman, has been charged with attempted murder, aggravated battery, and battery. She allegedly told investigators her motivation was to have “one less person to blow up our country.”
The story has attracted some national attention, but not nearly enough. It is one horrific example of a general trend that should concern all Americans: an increase in anti-Asian hatred and attacks.
Asia is the world's largest continent, and that means those who qualify as Asians represent a wide and diverse set of cultural, racial, and religious backgrounds. India is vastly different from Japan; similarly, the Philippines from Afghanistan. So when we discuss anti-Asian sentiment, we should recognize it comes in many odious manifestations fueled by a spectrum of noxious stereotypes.
Asians were spuriously and shamefully targeted after 9/11 for being “terrorists” and after the start of the pandemic for “spreading COVID.” They have been disparaged as supposed economic and cultural threats to American prosperity and security, from the Japanese Americans interned during World War II to those blamed for the manufacturing decline in the Rust Belt. Chinese laborers helped build the American railways — at great personal risk — only to find themselves unwelcome as fellow citizens. With the rise of China as a global competitor to American hegemony, Asians have faced an entirely new flavor of animosity.
Asians have also been deemed a “model minority” due to the perception that they have achieved higher socioeconomic status than other minority groups. This gross generalization diminishes the challenges Asians have faced, ignores the diversity within the Asian American experience, and becomes a means for pitting Asians against others seeking to find equality and justice in a nation where those ideals often go unrealized.
The obvious truth is that Asians, like every other group that has come to this country either voluntarily or in bondage, have helped to create America.
In combating racism and xenophobia, we would be well-advised to keep two truths in mind. Each group facing persecution confronts unique obstacles and historical contexts. At the same time, a culture of hatred is an immediate danger to all groups. History has shown, time and again, that pitting groups against each other serves the needs of those already in power. They fear a coordinated movement seeking to level the playing fields. And for good reason.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whose birthday we just celebrated, understood how an unjust status quo benefits from divisions among those who seek to challenge it. He preached for unity — a brotherhood and sisterhood — among the marginalized rather than a zero-sum game in which the seeming advance of one group comes at the expense of another.
We need to learn from our history — its ugliness as well as its beauty. Our story is one of intolerance but also inspiration. Discrimination but also diversity. Hatred but also healing.
Asian Americans are an integral part of our ongoing national narrative. Their pain, fear, and anger are a direct threat to all of us who believe in an America of freedom and justice.
A gas mogul’s case against Beto O’Rourke could deter candidates from ever talking about money in politics.
Since Elon Musk took over Twitter, the national debate over free speech has narrowly focused on tech companies’ social media censorship. But offline in a Texas court, a lawsuit could send an intimidating message to political candidates across the country: If you suggest billionaire donors buy political influence, you could face severe punishment.
At issue is a suit brought by Texas oil and gas billionaire Kelcy Warren. It accuses former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke of defamation for slamming Warren’s $1 million donation to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) in 2021.
Warren’s lawyers have asserted the natural gas tycoon experienced “mental anguish” from comments, ads, and social media posts in which O’Rourke’s campaign suggested the money was a reward for Abbott going easy on Warren’s pipeline company, Energy Transfer Partners, before and after a deadly storm that shut down power to more than four million people.
Warren delivered the cash to Abbott’s campaign two weeks after the governor signed legislation that included a loophole allowing natural gas companies like Energy Transfer to opt out of energy infrastructure winterization mandates.
“Beto O’Rourke told millions of his followers that [Warren] engaged in bribery, corruption, and extortion and that he profited from the death of his fellow Texans simply because Mr. Warren gave a perfectly legal campaign contribution to the candidate of his choosing, Gov. Abbott,” Warren’s attorney Dean Pamphilis argued during a December hearing asking to dismiss the case. “When you look at the comments that his followers put in on his tweets, they believe him. They believe that Mr. Warren is a criminal that is engaged in profit over lives of Texans.”
The case comes less than four years after Abbott signed legislation that opponents say weakened a state law designed to prevent wealthy and corporate plaintiffs from using defamation lawsuits to silence their critics.
If the Texas court rules for Warren, O’Rourke could be forced to cough up $1 million. In the process, the case could pioneer a replicable model for wealthy political donors to deter and punish speech about money in politics.
How The Wealthy Try To Silence Their Opponents In Court
Free speech and first amendment advocates have criticized Warren’s suit as an attempt to use the court system to try to intimidate and silence critics, regardless of the case’s lack of merit.
These types of lawsuits are typically referred to as strategic lawsuits against public participation, or “SLAPP” suits. In recent years, some billionaires have sought to use SLAPP suits to intimidate critics.
Mother Jones also prevailed in a SLAPP suit in 2015 filed by Frank VanderSloot, a Republican donor and CEO, over a 2012 article that described his company, Melaleuca, as a pyramid scheme. In 2019, former Donald Trump spokesperson Jason Miller unsuccessfully sued G/O Media, formerly Gizmodo Media Group, over a report published in the now-defunct outlet Splinter that detailed allegations made by Miller’s ex-girlfriend A.J. Delgado in court filings from their fight for custody over their son.
Most states, including Texas, have “anti-SLAPP” laws designed to stymie these types of frivolous lawsuits. However, in 2019, Abbott signed a law that scaled back his state’s anti-SLAPP law, limiting the ways in which a defendant could seek to have a case dismissed.
$1 Million Donation Followed Special Legislative Loophole
Warren’s lawsuit presents an escalation of the legal tactic to deter critical speech, since it goes beyond speech from media organizations and targets the language used by political candidates and how they discuss the role of money in politics during elections.
In this case, Warren is targeting attacks levied by O’Rourke on the campaign trail, on Twitter, and in campaign ads accusing Texas Governor Greg Abbott of letting oil and gas companies — and their executives — off the hook in the wake of the deadly Winter Storm Uri in early 2021 that knocked the state’s power grid offline for more than 4.5 million residents.
The Texas power grid relies heavily on natural gas. Because gas companies in the state hadn’t winterized their infrastructure, gas wells and pipelines froze during the storm. Consequently, several hundred people died, although the precise number is uncertain.
On June 8, 2021, Abbott signed into law a set of bills that would purportedly improve the state’s power grid and require winterization of energy infrastructure. However, a loophole in the bill was carved out for the state’s natural gas suppliers that allowed them to opt out of this requirement, despite gas companies being the “primary cause of the outages,” according to the Texas Tribune.
Warren, who is executive chairman and co-founder of Energy Transfer Partners and boasts a net worth of nearly $5 billion, donated $1 million to Abbott’s campaign on June 23, 2021, his largest single donation ever in a state or federal race according to both Texas Ethics Commission and Federal Election Commission data.
Warren’s Energy Transfer Partners boasted about making around $2.4 billion off supply shortages and rate hikes during the storm in its financial earnings report for the first quarter of 2021. Collectively, gas companies raked in nearly $5 billion thanks to the storm.
In response, O’Rourke raised awareness over the timing and size of the donation, as well as Warren’s interest in the state effectively exempting natural gas companies like his from winterization requirements.
In one Twitter post, O’Rouke wrote to Abbott: “We won’t be ‘good to go’ until gas supply companies are ready for cold weather. But you let them off the hook b/c gas CEOs like Kelcy Warren donated millions to your reelection campaign after the grid failure.”
One of the ads Warren’s lawyers took issue with is still available on O’Rourke’s Twitter account. The ad features a fact-checking segment from KVUE, the ABC affiliate in Austin, Texas, which pointed out that Warren’s company made $2.4 billion off the winter storm, that Warren donated $1 million to Abbott, and that it was his largest political donation in a state race.
“All over Texas, the profiteers who made billions off of grid failure are being allowed to hike your bills, by a governor who they gave millions,” a narrator says in the ad.
Abbott's big donors got billions while families froze.
Shortly after the winter storm, embattled Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) announced an investigation into gas companies that raised prices and price gouged consumers, but he has since refused to comment on the status of his office’s investigation. Warren has donated at least $200,000 to Paxton throughout the course of his political career, according to Texas Ethics Commission data.
The Texas Railroad Commission, which oversees the oil and gas industry in the state, caps prices at which electricity can be sold, but there are no similar regulations for natural gas. As a result, gas companies began rapidly and dramatically hiking prices during Winter Storm Uri, in some cases as much as 15,000 percent.
Warren has delivered more than $390,000 to Texas Railroad commission candidates in the last decade, according to data compiled by FollowTheMoney.org.
“A Knowing Decision On His Part To Thrust Himself Into The Conversation”
When Texas’ Third Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in December, O’Rourke’s lawyer Chad Dunn sought to have the case dismissed on grounds that Warren is a public figure, heightening the threshold for defamation and public criticism. The attorney also warned the judges about the implications that siding with Warren would have on future political campaigns in the state.
“Do we want to live in a world where we’re going to have jury trials about what candidates said along the way?” asked Dunn.
Dunn further argued that Warren knowingly inserted himself into the election discourse when he made such a large contribution.
“One of the criticisms [of the bill] was it didn’t require natural gas suppliers to winterize,” said Dunn during oral arguments. “That issue was hotly discussed before Mr. Warren got up and decided to take $1 million and donate it to the governor’s campaign. That decision, when he knew his role with an energy company, he knew what the legislature had recently debated with respect to this winter project, absolutely was a knowing decision on his part to thrust himself into the conversation.”
For its part, Warren’s legal team argued that he should be seen as a private person in the eyes of the court, despite the press coverage around his enormous contribution to Abbott’s campaign and the fact that he is a billionaire.
“Mr. Warren has never run for state office, he is a private individual,” argued Pamphilis. “He didn’t show up with a big check to give Gov. Abbott and make a big press splash. He wrote that check in private, if he even wrote it himself.”
Russia's invasion pitted Chechens against each other, caused tens of thousands of deaths and 'returned' the North Caucasus province to under Moscow's thumb. (photo: Reuters)
Moscow’s invasion has echoes of the tactics it employed in conflicts in the North Caucasus, experts and survivors say.
As Maryam watched an online video recorded in Ukraine of a Russian attack, the memories came flooding back.
She heard the wailing of a diving Russian plane, and yanked the headphones out of her ears, peeked at the sky above her and fell on the floor in shock.
“I haven’t heard this sound since the war,” Maryam, a Chechen refugee settled in a Western country, told Al Jazeera by phone.
She withheld her last name and other personal information because she still has family in Chechnya.
It was not just the sound.
The way Russian missiles, bombs and artillery appeared to deliberately target residential areas and the accusations and evidence that Russian soldiers tortured and killed civilians in occupied territories reminded Maryam of what she and many Chechens went through.
Human rights groups and analysts have said the brutality and alleged war crimes in Ukraine, a nation of more than 40 million, began in Chechnya, a mountainous, Qatar-sized province whose current population is 1.5 million.
“In this war, many observers see echoes of previous atrocities under [Russian President Vladimir] Putin,” Ivar Dale, a senior policy adviser with the Norwegian Helsinki Committee, a rights watchdog, told Al Jazeera.
“Especially for Chechens, the indiscriminate bombing of civilian infrastructure is reminiscent of the attacks on [Chechnya’s administrative capital of] Grozny in 1999,” he said.
The Kremlin’s military strategies and tactics used in Ukraine were tried and tested in Chechnya, military analysts said.
“Possibly, the most important thing is that [in Chechnya] the Russian army and law enforcement really got used to warring and killing,” Nikolay Mitrokhin, a historian with Germany’s Bremen University, told Al Jazeera.
Even the Soviet-Afghan war of 1979-1989, let alone previous military conflicts communist Moscow had taken part in, were not massive enough for such practices to take root, he said.
For decades, the Soviet military mostly had theoretical knowledge about warfare – and imitated it during drills.
“And here – a direct experience all or almost all land and air force units were involved in” both Chechen wars, Mitrokhin said.
Dark age
Maryam was a teenager when the first Chechen war began in 1994.
It killed tens of thousands of civilians and ended with Chechnya’s de facto independence from Moscow in 1996.
In 1999, newly appointed Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin launched the second invasion of Chechnya – or, as he called it, an “anti-terrorist operation”.
For many Chechens, these years were a throwback to the dark ages.
Maryam’s family lived in a basement without electricity and running water, and she had to carry endless buckets from the well and chop firewood for heating and cooking.
“I don’t even remember my first love,” she said. “War, war, everywhere [was] war, the war that became part of daily life, the main thing in your life.”
The new invasion pitted Chechens against each other, caused tens of thousands of deaths and “returned” the North Caucasus province to under Moscow’s thumb.
Moscow convinced Muslim scholar Akhmad Kadyrov to switch sides and become Chechnya’s leader.
After his 2004 killing, it installed his son Ramzan, a bullnecked boxing enthusiast as head of the Chechen Republic.
In Ukraine, the Kremlin also wanted to install a more pro-Moscow leader as president.
As its plans to topple President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government failed, Moscow appointed Russia-friendly Ukrainians to govern occupied areas.
But they were rejected by the general population, while some were assassinated by Ukrainian intelligence and rebel fighters.
“An attempt to find a ‘Ukrainian Kadyrov’ failed,” Sergey Bizyukin, a fugitive Russian opposition activist, told Al Jazeera.
“And that was of critical importance. Essentially, [first Russian President Boris] Yeltsin and Putin lost the war in Chechnya, but won the ‘special operation’ after finding a vassal,” he said.
Brainwashing both sides
Maryam fled the rule of Ramzan Kadyrov, whose henchmen still abduct, torture and kill critics, alleged “radicals” and their families, according to survivors, witnesses and rights groups.
The sound of the Russian plane in the video made her suppressed horrors come back.
“It was so horrible that I couldn’t get a grip for about 20 minutes. The flashback was so strong,” she said.
And she was angry at average Russians, analysts and journalists who say they could not possibly imagine that Russian servicemen in Ukraine were capable of atrocities.
“And a million people [in Chechnya] who went through this hell sit and listen to Russians tearing their hair and saying, ‘Oh God, how did we allow this to happen,’” she said.
The second Chechen war also restarted the Kremlin propaganda machine.
“Russian control comes together with a lot of militant propaganda,” a Russian human rights advocate who documented the war crimes in Chechnya told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity.
In 2013, Valery Gerasimov, who now leads the Russian invasion in Ukraine, published his views on the doctrine of “hybrid wars” postulating that modern conflicts need ideological elements to target civilian populations on both sides.
For years, propaganda demonising “radicals” and glorifying Russia’s “peacemaking” corroded hearts and minds – even among Chechens with firsthand experience of the wars.
“What I know from my Chechen friends is that they are in shock at how many people around [them] actually believe in this propaganda after everything they’ve lived through,” the advocate said.
Russia began replicating the pattern in Ukraine right after annexing Crimea in 2014 as the Kremlin began to vilify local Muslims.
“They will turn us into a second Chechnya,” a Crimean Tatar Muslim, said in March 2014.
Within weeks, he had to flee to mainland Ukraine as Moscow-installed authorities began arresting and jailing Muslims around him – and branding them “radicals” and “terrorists”.
Death from above
In Chechnya, Moscow also “pioneered” its use of ballistic missiles on civilian areas.
On October 21, 1999, they hit an outdoor market, a maternity hospital and a mosque in Grozny, killing 118 and wounding more than 400.
For many more weeks, Grozny was shelled with artillery, now-internationally banned cluster bombs, and cruise missiles that killed thousands and razed the city to the ground.
Then, small infantry groups moved in, shooting at anyone in sight, according to survivors and media reports.
Colonel Alexander Dvornikov led a motor rifle division there – and 22 years later, between last April and June, served as chief commander of Russian forces in Ukraine.
Many more officers battle-tested in Chechnya are now among Russia’s top brass.
Even some Chechen rebels who had joined Kadyrov now fight in Ukraine – although with very mixed results.
‘Clean-ups’
Grozny fell on February 6, 2000, boosting Putin’s approval ratings and paving the way for his election as president a month later.
And as Russia was establishing control over Chechnya in the early 2000s, federal forces began mass-murdering civilians.
On February 5, 2000, riot police from St Petersburg, Putin’s hometown, executed 56 civilians in the town of Novye Aldy.
“They just got in and shot dead whomever they wanted,” the advocate said.
Russian forces systematically “cleaned up” residential areas to detain, torture or kill disloyal locals and terrorise the survivors.
Those “clean-ups” still fill Maryam with dread.
“The war itself was not as horrible as the clean-ups,” she recalled.
For years, human rights groups documented the “clean-ups” and their consequences – and can now compare them with what happened in Ukraine.
“Russia’s attack on Ukraine finally puts these horrors into context, and when the war is finally over, historians will surely see patterns stretching across all of Putin’s wars, as well as other human rights disasters under his leadership,” Norwegian Helsinki Committee’s Dale said.
Move by the Republican governor is the latest in a series of actions to stop conversations about race and gender in public schools
Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor, has rejected a new advanced placement course in African American studies from being taught on high school campuses. He argues that the course violates state law and “lacks educational value”.
This move is the latest in a series of actions to keep conversations and lessons about race, sexuality and gender identity off the state’s school campuses.
DeSantis officially banned the course in a letter from the state education department to the College Board, the organization that administers college readiness exams like the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT). They also oversee advanced placement (AP) courses, which allow students to earn college credits in subjects like English and chemistry.
In a 12 January letter to the College Board, the Florida education department said the course is “inexplicably contrary to Florida law and significantly lacks educational value”.
In the summer of 2022, the College Board announced a pilot program to “offer high school students an evidence-based introduction to African American studies” would be launching in 60 high schools across the country during the 2022-23 school year and will be set to expand to other campuses the following year.
“Like all new AP courses, AP African American Studies is undergoing a rigorous, multiyear pilot phase, collecting feedback from teachers, students, scholars and policymakers,” the College Board said in a statement.
“The process of piloting and revising course frameworks is a standard part of any new AP course and frameworks often change significantly as a result,” the statement continued.
DeSantis, a one-time Donald Trump ally, plays an active role in stoking social and political anxieties, primarily among white Americans, that stem from conversations about race and gender that occur on K-12 public school campuses. In April 2022, he signed the Stop Woke Act, which severely limits “race-based” discussions at schools.
He has also taken a similarly intolerant approach to conversations about LGBTQ+ people. In March 2022 he signed a highly controversial piece of legislation dubbed the “don’t say gay” bill. The policy forbids instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade. It has drawn intense national scrutiny from critics who argue it risks marginalizing LGBTQ+ people and put DeSantis in conflict with employees at Disney, a major source of tourism and employment in Florida.
The DeSantis administration is also asking Florida universities to disclose the number and ages of their students who sought gender dysphoria treatment, including sex reassignment surgery and hormone prescriptions. It remains unclear why he is surveying universities for this information, the Associated Press reports.
