Think More: Thursday, June 11, 2026
Los Angeles defunded, a Title IX whistleblower vindicated, UC Davis caught evading the Supreme Court, Britain's £28 billion to its enemies, Albany's data-center freeze, and more.
Lead · The California Audit
HUD Cuts Off the Money to Los Angeles’s Homeless Agency
The Department of Housing and Urban Development suspended all federal funding to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority on Thursday while its inspector general investigates the agency and its leadership. The bill of particulars: a former chief who steered $2.1 million toward her husband’s nonprofit employer, what a federal judge called “obvious fraud” in shelter billing, and 2,300 housing sites the agency could not verify, all while county homelessness topped 72,000.
$1B
Federal funds since 2021
$513M
Unspent in fiscal 2024
2,300
Housing sites unverified
The California Audit
Above Sylmar, an Ocean of Fuels and a Stalled Plan to Clear It
In footage posted by Christopher Rufo, fire expert Gabriel Mann walks the Sylmar foothills where the Sayre, Saddle Ridge, and Hurst fires all ignited, pointing to brush he says is ready to burn today. Angeles National Forest Chief Bobby Garcia has a plan to clear these fuels, Mann says, stalled for years by state bureaucracy.
Lessons in Defiance
Special Counsel Confirms Biden Education Officials Defied a Federal Court
The Office of Special Counsel told President Trump the Education Department “fully substantiated” whistleblower Timothy Mattson’s allegations: Catherine Lhamon’s civil rights office kept enforcing its gender-identity reading of Title IX after Judge Charles Atchley enjoined it in 2022, rerouted cases to compliant regional offices, and kept directives out of writing. OSC now recommends sanctions; Lhamon teaches at Berkeley Law.
Justice Department: UC Davis Medical School Engineered Around the Supreme Court
Department of Justice | justice.gov
After a six-month investigation, the Civil Rights Division found UC Davis’s medical school ranked applicants on a “Davis Scale” of disadvantage proxies while leadership boasted of circumventing the Supreme Court’s 2023 affirmative action ban. From 2023 to 2025, 93% of white and certain Asian admittees posted MCAT scores at or above the average black admittee. UCLA and Yale drew the same finding in May.
The Reading Collapse Reaches the College Classroom
Writing instructor Tyler Jagt reports in The Chronicle of Higher Education that not one of his students finished an assigned 20-page article. The 2024 national assessment put 12th grade reading at its lowest since 1992, with nearly a third of seniors below basic, and an MIT study found 83% of ChatGPT users could not quote a single line from essays they had just written.
The British Reckoning
Britain Handed £28 Billion to Terrorists, Hostile States, and Gangs
A buried Cabinet Office dossier obtained by the Telegraph found more than £28 billion in British taxpayer money flowed to terrorists, hostile states, and organized crime between 2015 and 2021, including Covid loans to Islamic State and grants to firms tied to Russia and the Chinese military. The report was kept secret to spare the last government embarrassment; Hinderaker hears echoes of Minnesota.
Britain’s Terror Watchdog Concedes Trump’s Point on Migration
Timothy Nerozzi | Washington Examiner
Days after Sudanese asylum seeker Hadi Alodid allegedly attempted to behead a man on a Belfast street, Jonathan Hall, Britain’s independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, conceded that mass migration now raises a genuine national security question, writing that Trump has already securitized the issue and Britain must decide its answer. Riots have spread across Northern Ireland.
New York Against Business
Albany Freezes Data Centers and Blames Them for Its Own Rates
Albany’s first-in-the-nation moratorium on large data-center construction now awaits Governor Hochul’s signature. Ken Girardin reads the fine print: an 18-month environmental review hiding inside a 12-month pause, prevailing-wage rules that would shut out nearly 80% of the state’s construction workforce, and an on-site renewables mandate that excludes nuclear. The state’s own climate law, not server farms, drove rates up.
Mamdani Celebrates a Storefront Recovery That Has Not Happened
Mayor Zohran Mamdani tweeted that storefront vacancies hit a post-pandemic low; Comptroller Mark Levine’s report spoiled the toast. New York’s retail vacancy rate stands at 11%, above its 10.5% pre-Covid mark, with roughly 15,700 storefronts sitting empty, while the national rate fell below its 2019 level back in 2024. The rest of the country recovered years ago.
Washington at Work
Moolenaar and Khanna Move to Break Beijing’s Magnet Monopoly
House Select Committee on China | chinaselectcommittee.house.gov
Chairman John Moolenaar and Ranking Member Ro Khanna introduced the Magnets Value Chain Support Act, tiered production credits running from rare earth oxides to defense-grade magnets plus a 15% credit for motor makers who buy American. China produces over 90% of the world’s permanent magnets and restricted dysprosium and terbium exports last year; demand is projected to more than double by 2035.
Jury Convicts the Architects of a Deadly Counterfeit-Pill Operation
Department of Homeland Security | dhs.gov
A Manhattan federal jury convicted Dominican nationals Francisco Alberto Lopez Reyes and Edward Eustate Jimenez for manufacturing millions of counterfeit pharmaceutical pills and selling them through fake online pharmacies. The pills carried fentanyl and para-fluorofentanyl and killed one victim; Reyes was found to be the principal administrator of a continuing criminal enterprise, with money laundering conspiracy attached.
Voters Say the Fix Is In: 45% Believe Incumbents Cannot Lose
Napolitan News Service | napolitannews.org
Scott Rasmussen’s new survey asks how 94% of incumbents survive a Congress voters despise. A 45% plurality blames gerrymandering and election laws that make losing nearly impossible; 36% say people hate Congress but love their own representative. Democrats blame the maps by 22 points, Republicans split, and a companion finding shows 68% would replace the entire Congress.
