Armstrong Out at Columbia and Pay for Play at MSNBC

That escalated quickly: Katrina Armstrong is out as president of Columbia University just seven months into the job, the school announced Friday night. Her replacement is Claire Shipman, the Columbia board member and longtime ABC journo who is married to former Obama press secretary Jay Carney.

“The news comes just weeks into Columbia’s standoff with the Trump administration over the cancellation of $430 million in federal grant money,” writes our Collin Anderson. “At the administration’s behest, Armstrong announced a series of reforms earlier this month intended to jumpstart negotiations with Trump officials to restore the lost funds. But behind closed doors, Armstrong told faculty members that little would change on campus, the Washington Free Beacon reported.”

“It’s unclear whether Shipman intends to implement the policy changes the university announced. The former journalist, who was serving as co-chairwoman of the Columbia board of trustees, has close ties to former president Joe Biden, who looked the other way as student radicals took over campus last spring.”

READ MORE: Columbia President Katrina Armstrong Steps Down Amid Battle With Trump. Claire Shipman, Wife of Obama Press Sec, Will Take the Job.

Unholy union: Rev. Al Sharpton routinely hosts the presidents of five prominent labor unions on his MSNBC show. Together, those unions have given his nonprofit, the National Action Network, more than $6 million. And like the $500,000 contribution Sharpton received from Kamala Harris, he did not disclose the donations and payments when interviewing the union bosses on air.

“The unions do work with Sharpton at the National Action Network, often appearing at events hosted by the nonprofit, or holding rallies,” the Free Beacon‘s Chuck Ross reports. “But they are also frequently represented on PoliticsNation, where Sharpton heaps praise on the union bosses and feeds them softball questions about Republican labor policies.”

“It’s the latest potential conflict of interest for Sharpton and MSNBC, which faced scrutiny after a series of Washington Free Beacon reports that Kamala Harris’s campaign paid $500,000 to National Action Network shortly before Sharpton interviewed the Democratic candidate on his show on Oct. 20. The media ethics group Society of Professional Journalists blasted the network and Sharpton for creating a ‘black eye’ for the media industry by failing to notify its audience about the conflict of interest.”

The relationship likely violates MSNBC parent company Comcast’s code of conduct, which discourages “even perceived conflicts of interest” based on “financial interests.” Alas, as MSNBC goes through significant layoffs, Sharpton is still standing.

READ MORE: Pay for Play: Al Sharpton Books Labor Bosses Who Pour Millions Into His Nonprofit on MSNBC Show

A different kind of scholarship: Human Rights Watch is a darling of the anti-Israel left, producing a steady drumbeat of reports that accuse the Jewish state of war crimes. To do so, it relies on research staffers and external sources, including at least two linked to groups tied to Islamist terrorists.

That’s according to a report from NGO Monitor shared with our Alana Goodman focusing on two HRW contributors, Milena Ansari, a staff researcher on “Israel and Palestine” and Mahdi Sadeq, a key source for an HRW report that accused Israel of destroying “critical civilian infrastructure” in Lebanon.

Ansari joined HRW after working for an Israeli-designated terrorist group that operates as an arm for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Sadeq is an avowed Hezbollah supporter whose employer “regularly hosts meetings with Hezbollah leaders,” writes Goodman.

“The news comes as left-leaning U.S. foundations—including Soros’s Open Society Foundations, the Ford Foundation, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund—pour millions of dollars into HRW, which in turn produces reports that often accuse Israel of war crimes. Anti-Israel lawmakers on the left, including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) and Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.), routinely cite those reports.”

READ MORE: Human Rights Watch Relied on Terror-Tied Researchers To Produce Reports on ‘Israel and Palestine,’ Watchdog Report Finds

How the tables have turned: When the green group behind an environmental coalition that received a $2 billion grant from the Biden administration, Rewiring America, applied for the funds last year, one of its top staffers said senior adviser Stacey Abrams “played a pivotal role” in crafting the application. Now that the Trump administration is in charge, it’s backing away from that claim.

A coalition led by Rewiring America is suing the Trump EPA after commissioner Lee Zeldin terminated the grant, accusing Zeldin of claiming “without basis” that it holds “alleged ties to a former democratic politician.” But the Free Beacon‘s Thomas Catenacci has the receipts, and they show that the connection to Abrams “is not alleged or remote.”

“The group was established in October 2023 as a coalition of various groups led by Rewiring America, a left-wing electrification group where Abrams served as senior counsel and as a senior adviser between early 2023 and late last year,” writes Catenacci. “Abrams served in those roles when Power Forward Communities applied for the EPA grant and when it received the grant.”

“After it was formed, meanwhile, Abrams proclaimed she was ‘thrilled’ to be part of the Power Forward Communities coalition. ‘This is how we expand access to clean energy—by prioritizing housing, equity, and resilience,’ she wrote in an X post in late 2023.” Allegedly.

READ MORE: Stacey Abrams Was ‘Pivotal’ in Securing $2 Billion Biden Grant for Green Group That Now Calls Her Role ‘Alleged’

Away from the Beacon:

• Racism and misogyny? Nancy Pelosi, who said she took “immense pride” in endorsing Kamala Harris for president, reportedly had this to say after Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance: “Oh my god, it’s going to be her.”
• Promises made, promises broken: Rhode Island congressman Seth Magaziner (D.) pledged to move into his district following his election in 2022. Scratch that, he said, because the house he bought there “ended up needing a lot more work than expected.”
• Jen Psaki, best known for saying that Joe Biden’s schedule is so rigorous that she has trouble keeping up with it, appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe to advise Republicans against treating voters “like they’re stupid and like they’re complete morons out there.”