☕️ COMRADES ☙ Monday, June 2, 2025 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Florida flirts with woke academia; MTG exposes the proxy war scam; NYT melts down over Trump’s robot jab; WSJ tags Harvard as CCP party school; Europe keeps tilting rightwards; much more.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Monday! We soon approach the year’s back half. Think of it: we are almost halfway through 2025’s year of weirdness. In today’s roundup: Florida flirts with controversial candidate for its top university slot and the battle evidences shifting historical winds; MTG opens the bureaucratic curtain and exposes the heart of the Proxy War scam; New York Times meltdown over Trump re-tweet about Biden’s robot clone; Wall Street Journal pig piles on Harvard as communist co-conspirator and party school; and good election news from Europe as another key country turns back to the right.

🌍 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🌍

🔥🔥🔥

Today’s first story hit close to home. This weekend, my hometown paper, the Gainesville Sun (a New York Times affiliate), ran a story headlined, “Trump Jr. latest to slam selection of Santa Ono for University of Florida president.” Hurricane season arrived early this year, in the form of a massive controversy over the leading candidate for University of Florida president (with the fakest sounding name yet).

Santa Ono —or ‘Oh, no!’ to his critics— boasts elite-level diversity credentials, having been born in Canada to Japanese parents, making him a walking DEI unicorn. Meanwhile, the University of Florida, my alma mater, is Florida’s flagship university, the crown jewel of our public college system, a deep-south research Behemoth and the state’s anchor for international recognition.

Mr. Ono sits poised on the precipice of final approval, the lone surviving candidate. He was recently and unanimously approved by UF’s Board of Trustees, and is now up for a vote this week by the State’s Board of Governors— the last step.

To say Ono is fluent in wokese is like saying Joe Biden flowed with quirky personal anecdotes (before he lost his marbles). While at Michigan, Ono pushed his ambitious “DEI 2.0” plan, and oversaw a diversity office once considered to be the forefront of the nation’s academic DEI movement. Ono once declared that prestigious U. Michigan was built on stolen lands that really belong to wild indians or something. He allegedly understands what “two-spirited” means —no mean feat of metaphysical gymnastics— and built out Michigan’s vast DEI infrastructure.

Until he didn’t.

Starting about 18 months ago, Ono claims he had a DEI epiphany which caused a whiplash-inducing about-face. “The fact is some of my past remarks about DEI do not reflect what I believe,” Ono explained, “and that evolution did not take place overnight and it was shaped over a year and a half of thinking, discussions, listening to faculty, staff and students.”

It’s just like how Obama was against gay marriage until he was for it.

Ono’s critics claim that, not coincidentally, 18 months ago was around the same time that Ono was invited to consider running UF. The implication is that Ono’s epiphany was he could make a lot more money at Florida. I couldn’t verify the timing, but it is fair to assume these kinds of searches take a while. Eighteen months doesn’t seem unreasonable.

On the other hand, UF’s previous president, Ben Sass, only announced his departure last July. He left suddenly and unexpectedly, giving just three weeks notice. He said he needed to care for his wife, Melissa, 55, who tragically suffered acute epilepsy and early dementia. Jab status: unknown. Sass did a commendable job for the school, and the couple is perfectly lovely.

🔥 To put it bluntly, conservative critics can’t stand Ono. Florida seems like the last place a former Canadian DEI champion should be given the keys to the Sunshine State’s academic kingdom. Here’s Trump Jr.’s tweet, which provided the Gainesville Sun with its narrative hook:

Curiously, the progressive Sun’s story was packed with conservative criticism and didn’t even try to defend Ono, apart from including his “evolutionary” quote. Similarly, the far-left Miami Herald ran a suspiciously “reassuring” weekend story headlined, “‘Loyalty pledges’: New UF president’s $15M contract ties pay to DeSantis’ agenda.

Ono stands to receive the highest salary ever paid to any public university President in Florida history— $3 million a year. But, “President-elect Santa J. Ono’s contract,” the Herald reassured critics, “includes an unusual clause that may ease some of his right-wing critics’ biggest concerns: His job performance — and potentially his pay — will be tied to how well he upholds educational reforms championed by Gov. Ron DeSantis.”

In other words, they’ll dock his pay if he starts up with the DEI stuff again. Or at least, that’s the idea.

It was a major milestone in anti-DEI history. The Herald called the contract’s “unusual clause” unprecedented. “Beyond traditional benchmarks like student success and research output,” the Herald reported, “Ono will be judged on his cooperation with the governor’s Office of Government Efficiency (known as ‘Florida DOGE’) and how effectively he combats attempts to spend funds on diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

Between his recent DEI “evolution” and the “unprecedented clause,” the Trustees clearly think Ono’s woke tendencies will be sufficiently shackled. Nevertheless, conservative critics smell a rat. They clearly disagree, and a dramatic showdown at this week’s Board of Governor’s vote is inevitable.

A similar contretemps erupted over Ben Sass’s hire. Sass was a never-Trumper who voted for Trump’s impeachment while he was in Congress. He got primaried for that little act of protest, transitioned to president of a medium-sized private college, and then came straight to UF. You can imagine the howls of protest about Sass’s hiring. Yet Sass is now widely credited with having done a solid job of unraveling UF’s own vast DEI architecture. So.

🔥 My analysis of Santa Ono’s prospective presidency is much simpler. At Michigan, Ono enforced strict college vaccine mandates well into 2023. As late as May, 2023, students living on campus had to submit proof of receiving the bivalent omicron booster or have an approved exemption.

In a LinkedIn post just two months ago, Ono glowingly commemorated the 70th anniversary of the Salk polio vaccine, describing it as “safe, effective, and potent,” and endorsed the University of Michigan’s role in that signature moment in ‘public health’ history. So, he loves the jabs.

I easily found many examples of online criticism of Ono’s pandemic policies during that late unpleasantness. For example:

So, Gretchen Whitmer-approved President Ono was a covid tyrant in Canada even before he graduated to Michigan. Ono’s enthusiastic enforcement of coercive biomedical policies is a pattern, not a one-off. And unlike his DEI evolution, Ono has never questioned or even slyly distanced himself from the mask and jab mandates.

The University of Florida doesn’t need a president who’s just now evolving on DEI, and still hasn’t evolved on coercive medicine. At UBC and Michigan, Ono didn’t just follow the mandates—he led them. That’s not leadership. That’s obedience.

🔥🔥🔥

On Saturday, fiery Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) posted a long, frustrated tweet that demands attention. Every once in a while, we’re permitted to peek —just for a second— behind the government’s curtain, and that’s what happened here. MTG began by accusing the intelligence agencies and the Pentagon of lying to Congress about the Proxy War:

President Trump has said that altogether, the U.S. has invested over $300 billion to help protect Ukraine’s border while leaving ours wide open. Greene is now saying what we long suspected: that Biden’s deep-state analysts lied like rugs to terrify Congress into coughing up our money.

MTG’s story, however light on details, exposed a deep cynicism, even a contempt, that the permanent bureaucrats hold against elected members of Congress. The entrenched class of unelected executive agency termites view Congress not as a co-equal branch, but as a PR obstacle course. They don’t believe Congress deserves the truth. It doesn’t trust Congress with the truth— and more importantly, it thinks Congress doesn’t need the truth to vote the right way.

Remember how oleaginous human cockroach Fauci condescended to the Senate? “Senator, I am the science.” That was in front of the cameras. Imagine how they talk to elected officials in classified briefing sessions, which the electeds aren’t allowed to disclose?

In the 17th century, French King Louis XIV infamously announced, “L’État, c’est moi.” In English: “I am the state.” It’s now a catchphrase for absolute dictatorship. Just like Louis XIV believed he was a divinely empowered absolute monarch, the permanent bureaucrats see themselves as untouchable technocratic rulers. Being an absolute ruler means being exempt from challenge, correction, or consent from the governed.

Thanks to MTG for exposing the charade as best she can, even though tied down by the threats of prosecution for disclosing state secrets.

🔥🔥🔥

The New York Times ran one of the most entertaining stories of the weekend, headlined, “Trump Amplifies Another Outlandish Conspiracy Theory: Biden Is a Robotic Clone.” It was classic Trump, playing the media like a harmonica.

The “news,” if you can call it that, was that President Trump re-posted a saucy comment from an unnamed Truth Social user accusing President Cabbage of having died in 2020 and been replaced by a robotic clone. The Times feels this sort of Presidential re-posting communication was mean, or undignified, or something, “the latest example of the president amplifying dark, false material.”

Somebody said something!

Trump’s superpower is creating irresistible catnip that forces the media to talk about things it desperately wants to avoid discussing. The post about Biden being replaced by a robot isn’t wrong per se— not if you consider the mechanical autopen to be a robot, enthusiastically issuing pardons, and appointing Supreme Court justices, and signing critical executive orders with stainless steel fingers while Biden napped.

Frankly, I trust the autopen’s judgment over Biden’s. It is probably more sentient than Joe or Uncle Bosey. That doesn’t make it right; I’m just saying. Anyway, the Times sneeringly dismissed Biden’s autopen scandal as a “specious theory.” Uh huh.

But the point is: they are talking about it. Point to Trump.

🔥🔥🔥

Oh, Harvard. Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal ran a story headlined, “Harvard Has Trained So Many Chinese Communist Officials, They Call It Their ‘Party School.’” Veritas! Harvard has become Animal House for Marxist dictators. If you want to rush, see Dean Lenin, M.P.A. ’06, or house mother Mao.

The Journal marveled that China’s communist party prefers to send its officials to US institutions for governance training. What does it mean when our premier colleges are the top finishing schools where up-and-coming communists learn how to be better Marxists?

Most humiliating of all, Harvard has become the new home of Alpha Kappa Marx, the revolutionaries’ party-school pick:

Not coincidentally, the story also reported that last Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the Administration will soon severely restrict visa applications from China, and “aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields.”

🔥 According to the story, Harvard-trained comrades include Xi Jinping’s top trade negotiator, a former vice president of China, and several sitting Politburo members. In 2010, President Xi’s daughter even attended under an alias. While her daddy prepared to rule the world’s largest dictatorship and assume the reins of America’s geopolitical enemy, get this: Harvard helped hide her.

“Harvard administrators and some faculty members,” the Journal coolly reported, “were aware of her identity.” Thanks a lot, Harvard.

While American manufacturing collapsed, IP theft soared, and the U.S. lost entire sectors to China’s strategic trade practices, America’s top universities enthusiastically invited CCP officials into the inner sanctum— training new communists in public policy, governance, negotiation, and national development.

Presumably, they weren’t learning about how to run capitalism.

We didn’t beat communism. We’re exporting it! We professionalized it, credentialed it, and sent it home dressed in Ivy League robes sporting red berets. Today’s CCP technocrats don’t carry little red books—they carry Harvard diplomas and PowerPoint decks from the Ash Center for Democratic Governance.

The truth is that the Trump Administration is fighting fiercely to disclose the unavoidable truth that the West is no longer containing Marxism. It’s rebranding it, polishing it up, and handing it off like a Subway franchise model.

In other words, it’s been lies all the way down. The same schools that have long claimed to stand for “liberal democracy” are actually training the next generation of Chinese Communists— on how to outcompete liberal democracies using our own tools against us.

Nor does the academic tolerance extend both ways. In Democrats’ America, if you’re a domestic dissenter —say, a parent questioning school boards, a scientist skeptical of pharma funding, or a Facebooker posting unapproved memes— you’re labeled a threat to democracy, deplatformed, and probably put on a watchlist.

But if you’re a high-ranking Chinese Communist official, you’re no threat to democracy at all. You get a Harvard fellowship, a guided tour of the State Department, and trained seal-like applause from the Kennedy School faculty for your “innovative governance.”

🔥 Maybe what was most encouraging about this story was its timing. The Journal’s piece reads like a fresh exposé, but nearly everything in it, from Xi’s daughter at Harvard to the CCP’s mid-career training programs at the Kennedy School, has been in the public record for years.

We’ve seen this kind of thing before. Rather than real investigative journalism, this story is elite repositioning, a soft pivot into a strategic recalibration. The Journal’s editors are reading the room. They’re sensing that the regime consensus of engaging China, educating their officials, and “exporting democracy” has collapsed.

To be fair, for years corporate media has reported on Chinese influence in education. But this story is different. It breaks ground by reporting not just Chinese influence but academic complicity. In the story, Harvard wasn’t described as the victim. China was portrayed as Harvard’s strategic partner, a de facto training academy for Communist Party élites.

In other words, this WSJ story is a major narrative reframe, a new permission structure. It reminded me of when, in 2021, the Atlantic ran its first story criticizing the CDC for its outdoor masking guidance. The Times followed immediately after. It was a slow, safe corporate media pivot, right after the truth had become undeniably obvious to everyone else.

Maybe the Trump Administration is preparing to disclose damning new evidence of Harvard’s complicity in CCP logistics, and someone leaked it to corporate media, which quickly unveiled this latest limited hangout. Who knows. Either way, this story pig-piles on Harvard and justifies the Administration’s crackdown. So, it’s progress.

🔥🔥🔥

Finally, more signs of the global conservative counter-revolution. Sky News ran the story yesterday, headlined, “Trump-inspired candidate Karol Nawrocki wins Poland's presidential election.” The sub-headline explained, “Karol Nawrocki had positioned himself as a defender of traditional Polish values, aligning himself with US conservatives, including Donald Trump, and showing scepticism towards the EU.”

For context, Nawrocki is a conservative historian. His opponent, Rafal Trzaskowski, 53, ran on a platform of expanding abortion rights, introducing LGBT+ civil unions, and promoting “constructive ties” with EU partners.

Poland might seem like a remote jurisdiction, but it punches far above its geopolitical weight. It sits all along Ukraine’s western border and is the key entry point for NATO supplies to the Proxy War. It also votes with the 27 other EU members on key initiatives in that conflict.

You will not be surprised that the EU’s voter surveys predicted Nawkrocki’s loss right through the exit polls. What would we do without polls?

Throughout the Cold War period, Polish people were courageous anti-communists even while squirming under the Soviet boot. Never count the Poles out. The conservative counter-revolution marches on.

Have a magnificent Monday! Then pivot (or evolve) back here tomorrow morning, for a (not mandatory) updated booster dose of C&C-style essential news and commentary.

Don’t race off! We cannot do it alone. Consider joining up with C&C to help move the nation’s needle and change minds. I could sure use your help getting the truth out and spreading optimism and hope, if you can: ☕ Learn How to Get Involved 🦠

How to Donate to Coffee & Covid

Twitter: jchilders98.
Truth Social: jchilders98.
MeWe: mewe.com/i/coffee_and_covid.
Telegram: t.me/coffeecovidnews
C&C Swag! www.shopcoffeeandcovid.com