Congress Again Dictates Curriculum & Faculty at Private Universities; How UnitedHealth Group Silences its Critics: With NYT Reporter David Enrich
Congress holds another hearing on antisemitism, and university leaders once again allow politicians to dictate university policies and faculty decisions. Plus: New York Times reporter and author David Enrich exposes the sinister ways UnitedHealth Group censors its critics online. ------------ Watch full episodes on Rumble, streamed LIVE 7pm ET. Become part of our Locals community Follow System Update: Twitter Instagram TikTok Facebook
Welcome to a new episode of System Update, our live nightly show that airs every Monday through Friday at 7 p.m.
Eastern, exclusively here on Rumble, the free speech alternative to YouTube.
Tonight, American conservatism has morphed and changed over the decades, as ideologies tend to do, but one constant has been a professed belief in limited government, especially the powers of the federal government.
Yet over the last 18 months, first the U.S. Congress and now the White House have a seemingly insatiable appetite to micromanage America's colleges and universities, including private ones.
And not just to dictate technical and administrative or even admissions matters, but to govern the core of academic freedom, who can and cannot serve on the faculty or as deans, what they can and cannot teach.
The desire to micromanage universities does not extend to all issues, but seemingly just to one, namely what can and cannot be said about Israel and about Jewish individuals in particular.
As they have done countless times over the past 18 months, the House yesterday held a hearing on anti-Semitism in America's universities, hauling three more college presidents before them to interrogate them on why they allow certain people to teach or certain opinions about Israel or American foreign policy to be expressed.
This is all accompanied by a growing trend, a rapidly growing trend, of forcing these universities to implement radically expanded hate speech codes with the purpose of outlawing what can and cannot be said about Israel.
We'll report on the latest Housed hearing and how it is directly assaulting the free and speech and academic freedom rights of Americans.
Then, when the CEO of United Healthcare, Brian Thompson, was gunned down in New York last week, allegedly by Luigi Vangioni, in December 2024, huge numbers of people across political spectrum used that event as an opportunity to vent their rage and contempt toward the health insurance industry in general and United Health in particular.
But United Health, in response to all of that, has not focused on reforming what makes them so hated, but rather exploiting Thompson's murder to suppress criticism of the company, using blatant bullying tactics and threats, and exploiting the killing of their CEO to suppress documentaries, investigative stories, and various activist work who are speaking out against the practices of United Health.
Last week in the New York Times reporter David Enrich published an extremely well-reported and important article detailing the means that United Health is using to silence critics and he'll be here with us tonight to discuss what his reporting found.
Before we get to all that, a quick programming note, as we are independent journalists and independent media, we do rely on the support of our viewers and members.
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For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now.
Thomas Massey and Marjorie Taylor Greene are two members of the House, both Republicans, who have often noted how often the House meets in order to discuss matters pertaining not to the lives of the American people, but to Israel, or to combating criticism of Israel, or to investigating the alleged epidemic of bigotry, not against every minority group, but against only American Jews, notoriously excluded from centers of power in the United States.
It's like an obsession.
They do it all the time.
Every time I turn around, there's another hearing about anti-Semitism or about criticism of Israel that are being organized by the Republican-led House and Senate.
Yesterday was no exception.
The Committee on Education and Workforce, which is chaired by House member Virginia Fox, a Republican of South Carolina who oftentimes has no idea where she is, was entitled, quote, and it sounds like a kind of woke thesis from one of these universities that they're so interested in, anti-Semitism in higher education, examining the role of faculty funding and ideology.
It's really right out of 2020.
Just think about a Democrat-led committee convening a House hearing with the title, Systemic Racism in Higher Education, Examining the Role of Faculty Funding and Ideology, or Misogyny in Higher Education, or Transphobia in Higher Education, examining the role of faculty funding and ideology.
That would be widely mocked by conservatives, but anti-Semitism in higher education, examining the role of faculty funding and ideology as a relentless topic of House congressional investigation, is something that prompts a lot of respect, whispered reverence among so many conservatives and Democrats who otherwise would be mocking this if this were done for any other group or let alone for another foreign country.
Now, it's worth remembering that the House has not just confined itself to theatrical hearings where they haul university presidents before them.
They've actually tried implementing legislation that would implement into law wildly expanded definitions of anti-Semitism, which would prohibit, outlaw, render officially anti-Semitic a whole range of common criticism of Israel.
You couldn't say Israel is a racist endeavor under this definition, though you can say that the United States is a racist endeavor.
You can compare American leaders or Russian leaders or Chinese leaders or Iranian leaders to the acts of Nazi leaders, but you cannot compare the acts of Israeli leaders to what the Nazi did.
That is also prohibited.
You cannot say that you believe that the Jews played a critical role in the killing of Jesus Christ, even though many in Christianity have Long maintained that, believe the Bible describes that.
And if you read the Bible, you can certainly make a good case that it does.
And you also couldn't say, I think Ben Shapiro has greater loyalty to Israel than to the United States, even though you could prove it, even if he says it's true.
You still can't say it because that's officially defined as anti-Semitism and therefore banned from under American law.
It would have been had this law passed, but it's now being forced on colleges.
From the Jewish Insider, December 20th, 2024, how the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act fell apart.
Prospects looked promising earlier this year for the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act, the bipartisan legislation that passed the House by a 320 to 91 vote in May.
320 members of the House, Democrats, Republicans, all voting yes to insert this blatantly pro-censorship act into our legal framework and only 91 voting no.
And then the Jewish insider says following shocking scenes of anti-Israel protests on college campus.
Why is it shocking that college students are protesting Israel when our government is arming and funding them in what most human rights organizations, international tribunals, many governments around the world say is a genocide?
And I think we're at the point where you cannot use any other words to describe it.
Why is it shocking that students in America on American college campuses, including many Americans, many Jews, would be protesting the U.S. financing and arming of the Israeli genocide in Gaza?
It goes on, quote, the bill is bullied by advocacy from major American Jewish organizations amidst a nationwide wave of anti-Semitism.
Chuck Schumer has been reluctant to bring the anti-Semitism legislation up for a standalone Senate vote out of concern that such a move might expose a significant divide among Senate Democrats over the legislation, according to two sources familiar with the legislation.
In the Senate, progressive Democrats and a small number of hard-right Republicans would be expected to oppose it, or in some case have already expressed opposition to the bill over its use of the IHRA definition.
That's the International Holocaust Remembrance Act.
So when Israel wanted to impose a radically expanded definition of anti-Semitism to make off-limits in the West, a whole variety of criticisms of that country, needless to say, they slapped the word Holocaust remembrance on it so that people were afraid to vote no.
Who's against Holocaust remembrance?
Kind of like we called it the Patriot Act in 2001, because who would be against a patriotic act?
Quote, the claim by some right-wing Republicans that the legislation could deem parts of the New Testament anti-Semitic has led to some additional opposition to the bill among conservatives since it initially passed the House.
Right.
A lot of people believe the New Testament describes the role Jews played with Romans in the death of Jesus.
People in Christianity, not all, but many have believed that for two millennia.
And this bill would make it illegal, basically, to express that view both on college campuses and more broadly.
That's the sort of thing that is the framework, that expresses the framework that is being increasingly opposed, not to ban the protest rights of foreign students, but to radically restrict the free speech rights of American professors, scholars, students, and Americans writ large.
Here are a couple of excerpts from yesterday's hearing.
One of the leaders of the faculty of the college that they called was the chancellor of CUNY, which is a college University of New York, named Felix Matos Rodriguez, and Elise Stefanik, who loves to take the leading role in prancing around as sort of the queen overseer of American academia from her house seat in New York.
She believes she can dictate who can be on faculty, who can't, who can be heard, who can't be.
This movement, by the way, got three Ivy League presidents fired, arguably four, two at Columbia, one at Penn, one at Harvard.
Previously, it had been impossible to get a single Ivy League president removed.
It's like a lifetime job, unless they leave for an investment bank or something.
But the issue of Israel and anti-Semitism, in case you're wondering where real power lies, is what finally led to their mass firing.
Here's Elise Stefanik interrogating the chancellor of this university.
Thank you.
I want to begin by discussing the heinous scourge of anti-Semitism on your watch as chancellor at CUNY.
You are aware at Baruch, Jewish freshmen were welcomed with heinous anti-Semitic taunts about the hostages killed by Hamas.
Quote, where's Hirsch, you ugly expletive?
Go bring them home, end quote.
Quote, you ain't going home tonight.
Go back to Brooklyn.
All Zionists are terrorists, end quote.
Are you aware of those anti-Semitic harassment slurs?
All Zionists are terrorists.
Now, if they had said all Jews are terrorists, you could certainly argue, I think quite convincingly, that that was an anti-Semitic opinion.
Now, I've heard for a long time that racism-bigoted opinions fall within the free speech right that's God given to Americans or guaranteed and protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution or both.
So even if it were anti-Semitic, why is Congress getting involved in regulating it and trying to demand that it be legally constrained, but not for racist or xenophobic or misogynistic or Islamophobic or transphobic speech?
Why just this speech?
But that isn't what this random person said.
And look how they cherry-picked these, but who knows who that person was saying that?
But let's assume somebody said that.
Zionists are all terrorists.
Not all Jews are Zionists.
Many, many Jews are not.
And many people who are Zionists are not Jewish, as Joe Biden pointed out when he talked about how proudly he embraces the Zionist label.
Zionism is an ideology, not a group of people, it's a belief system.
And if you believe it's terrorism, it'd be like saying radical Islam is terrorism or neoconservatism is terrorism.
It's not racist.
It's condemning a belief system.
But because Zionism is terrorism, is perceived as an attack on Israel, this American congresswoman believes it's her duty to regulate what American universities are doing about it.
Those are deplorable statements.
And if they were associated with the event at Baruch, an investigation was done and students were disciplined.
And students were disciplined in both of those cases.
At Hunter, Jewish students were forced to enter the main university building under a swastika for hours.
Is that correct?
My understanding of that is that the swastika was placed outside and we have a custom of erasing also deplorable symbols.
In that particular case, there was a delay because it had to be referred to the NYPD for the anti-hate investigation.
So they got the NYPD in now.
Let me just make clear, this swastika is not an expression of neo-Nazi ideology.
It's an accusation that the Israelis are committing genocide along the lines of what the Nazis did.
It's a criticism of the Israeli government.
It's not an expression of neo-Nazi ideology.
But that conflation is deliberate.
But again, I thought the whole idea of free speech, like you can wave a Confederate flag, even though a lot of black people, for good reason, find it very threatening, very discomforting, very alarming.
But all of these principles are being completely renounced in the name of protecting Israel, especially from criticism on academic campuses, the one place of all the places in society where we ought to have unconstrained speech.
That was a basic principle of the Enlightenment, that society in general should protect free speech.
But if any place is crucial for the questioning of orthodoxies and taboos, it's academic institutions.
That's what it's for.
And it can only work if you protect academic freedom and free speech, which many, many members of Congress are not just periodically or in an isolated way attacking, but systemically attacking with hearings like these and with actions that they're taking.
Remind you of this particular case because that's not according to your own staff.
In fact, the Hunter College Director of Jewish Studies emailed university leadership requesting that the swastika be taken down.
And instead, this was the response for everyone to see.
Apologies, but it is not that simple.
Is that the position of CUNY?
It is entirely unacceptable that — Again, in that particular case, we were working with the New York City.
No, was this administrator disciplined for sending this response?
Any case that we have will investigate and the appropriate action will be taken.
So what was the appropriate action taken against this administrator in this case?
In this case, as I mentioned to you, we are working with the New York City Police Department.
So no disciplinary action has been taken by CUNY?
Is that correct?
We will investigate any action.
So an investigation, but no actual action, like so many of these failed university presidents.
A lot of the blame rests with these sniveling cowards who are running universities and they're supposed to be safeguarding values of academic freedom.
Why would you just not answer that question?
She asked it six times.
Did you discipline this particular administrator who responded, I think, correctly, it's not that simple.
It's not a swastika designed to express neo-Nazism but to criticize the Israeli government and to pair it to Nazi Germany because of the genocide in Gaza.
We don't have to agree with that, but that's certainly within the realm of free expression.
And just because Jewish students write to a dean and say, we don't like this, take this down, doesn't mean you just instantly go and obey and take it down.
I thought the whole point was college students are adults who don't have the right to demand snowflake treatment or demand the suppression of ideas that make them uncomfortable in the name of safetyism.
It was more complicated.
And yet he just, it's so blatant.
Like, why are you so afraid of just answering the question?
Like, no, we didn't discipline him.
We don't just run the minute somebody demands we suppress speech.
We have to think about it and analyze it and understand the context of what it is.
Why don't you say that?
And more to the point, why don't you go there and say, we didn't discipline him because we didn't do, think of getting me wrong.
We believe in free speech on our campus.
And we're not going to answer to Congress about what views we allow on our campus.
We don't have to agree with them, but we believe in free speech.
It's a vital function of academic freedom.
Why don't they go and say that that's their role?
But the fact that they go there so apologetic, trying so hard to placate these state interrogators, makes it look like they're guilty.
But that's what administrators are in college.
They're basically technocrats, constantly talking in the smoothest, like most comforting, vaguest ways to never offend anybody.
Here is another segment with Elise Stefanik who, by the way, is using this because she wants to run for governor of New York against Kathy Hochul.
That's what this is really all about.
And here's more of that.
Are you familiar with CUNY Clear?
This is the clinical arm of CUNY School of Law.
CUNY Clear, I'm not familiar with them.
Well, I will remind you the CUNY Clear founder and professor is the head of Mahmoud Khalil's legal defense fund.
Are you aware of that?
No.
Does it concern you that New York taxpayers are paying the salary for the legal defense fund of Mahmoud Khalil?
And I'll remind you who Mahmoud Khalil is.
This is the chief pro-Hamas agitator that led to the anti-Semitic encampments at Columbia, the rioting and violent takeover Of Hamilton Hall, the harassment and physical assault of Jewish students.
And we do not condone any kind of anti-Semitism.
But you allow.
Okay, do you see what I mean?
She spewed a pack of lies.
This professor is not taking public money and putting it into a fund for Mahmoud Khalil.
The professor is one of the people spearheading the raising of funds for Mahmoud Khalil's legal defense because huge numbers of people, including myself, believe that the attempt to punish and deport Mahmoud Khalil, who's a green card holder married to an American citizen, now the father of an American infant, violates free speech in the most fundamental way.
And if you're a college professor, those are the values that you're supposed to be defending.
And who cares if Elise Stafenick agrees with it or not?
Really, who cares?
And again, though, he can't even answer the questions she's asking.
He can't explain to her why the questions she's asking are offensive and way beyond the power of the federal government, which is not supposed to be running our academic institutions and dictating what ideas can and can't be expressed.
He just sits there sniveling and jumps through the hoop a thousand times about how much he's upset by anti-Semitism, and that just gives credence to all of this.
Be head of the clinical legal organization and a professor to be the chief legal aide to Mahmoud Khalil and do his legal defense fund.
Those decisions are made on the clinics, are made in the individual campuses.
It goes up to you.
You are the chancellor.
Those decisions are made at the CAN.
So you take no responsibility.
I take responsibility for any behavior of our faculty.
So is this acceptable?
Is this acceptable?
Any behavior that is anti-Semitic.
Is this acceptable that the legal defense fund for Mahmoud Khalil is the head of CUNY Clear?
That's acceptable under your watch.
We have no tolerance for anti-Semitism on our campuses, and we've been very...
Seriously, this is one of the most pathetic people I've seen, but they're all like this.
Yes, it is acceptable.
Members of our faculty, like every faculty on college campuses for decades in the United States, going back to the founding of the University of Penn by Benjamin Franklin, the University of Virginia by Thomas Jefferson, are intended to defend the right of people to engage in the political expression and political activism they believe in, including providing lawyers to somebody who, in a major case of testing a new theory, is defending First Amendment rights and raising First Amendment arguments.
Of course that's acceptable.
But he can't say that, nor can he say it's not acceptable.
He just keeps repeating like an idiot, drone who's been programmed by university lawyers.
When asked about this activism, we condemn anti-Semitism.
What does that have to do with any of this?
It's not anti-Semitism at all.
Making sure Mahmoud Khalil has lawyers?
I mean, when I went to law school, there were all kinds of clinics that constantly work pro bono on controversial political cases.
That's how you learned how to do litigation, but it's also how you came to understand what your obligation was as a lawyer and a member of a law school to make sure that people, especially ones with test cases for the broader society and their rights, have legal defense.
This is so fundamental.
But this guy is so petrified of Congress, and I do blame him, but I also blame the climate of intimidation that the U.S. Congress has purposely cultivated to scare professors and colleges out of allowing criticism of Israel.
Anybody that breaks our rules and our policies, there be an investigation.
We'll investigate.
And if there's any disciplinary action to be taken, we'll take it.
Let me make a prediction.
No disciplinary action.
This individual is not going to be fired because it's all words, no action.
You have failed the people of New York.
You have failed Jewish students in New York State.
And it is a disgrace.
I yield to.
Thank you, gentlelady.
The gentlelady's time has expired.
You know, one of the things I've been noticing is that so many people who are not Jewish, like Elise Stefanik, she doesn't talk about that much.
She likes to pose as the leading defender of the Jews on whose behalf she speaks.
So many of them purport to speak on behalf of Jews, like you failed Jews.
Who appointed her spokespeople for Jewish students at CUNY?
Huge numbers of Jews are disgusted by Israel's behavior.
Huge number of Jews are opposed to Zionism.
I'm not saying it's the majority, but a very substantial minority at least, and probably a majority at this point, at least in certain schools.
This is not about targeting Jewish students or attacking Jewish students.
And this has nothing to do with the protest or the alleged harassment of Jewish students or whatever.
People like to claim this is all about activism and expression of political views like providing Mahmoud Khalil with legal defense, a legal defense.
And a lot of these Republicans who aren't even Jewish have anointed themselves spokespeople for the Jews in the most condescending and obnoxious way possible.
As even if anyone is the spokesperson for the Jews, as though there's a monolithic view among Jews about the Israeli destruction of Gaza, the genocide there, the U.S. funding of it, there isn't.
Many of Makmu Khalil's most vocal supporters at Columbia are Jews.
Now, as I said, all of this, these attacks on academic freedom and free speech led by Elise Stefanik are really about nothing other than her own desire to become governor and to attract ample Zionist money in New York in order to do that or around the country, get attention for herself.
And here she is making very clear exactly who her real target is, the person she wants to run against.
I am calling on Governor Capu, the worst governor of America, who has been in the needs of the answer to the right to the party.
She needs to make that call today.
She needs to make the voice of the board of trustees, the desires, and the fighters remain All right, it's a little hard to hear because it's her in a press conference in the hallway with tons of people murmuring.
But of course, she's just calling for yet another scalp.
She wants yet another university leader fired for failing To repress criticism of Israel.
That's what she's really doing, and she's using it specifically to bash Kathy Hochul.
So Kathy Hochul either does what Elise Stefanik demands and fires the CUNY Chancellor, or she runs and uses that to run against her and get money from it.
Hear from, just as a reminder, from December of 2023, Elise Stefanik celebrates the University of Penn's president's resignation after she targets university heads.
Hear from the Independent, January 3rd, 2024, Republican Elise Stefanik claims credit for Harvard's president's resignation.
Hear from the New York Post, Stefanik demands Columbia president resign, putting Jewish students' safety at risk, and the Columbia president did resign.
It's their obsession.
It's what the Congress works on.
Here is a Republican from Michigan, Lisa McClain, who is extremely upset about one Palestinian-American professor in particular because of the things that she has expressed, the opinions she's expressed.
She wants her fired as well.
Dr. Makadi, a professor of history at Berkeley University, on the other hand, said, I could have been one of those people who broke through on the siege on October 7th.
What do you think he meant by that?
What?
I can't speak to...
What do you think he meant by that?
Put yourself in a Jewish student spur, you know?
Look, I think I want to separate the phrase from the person.
If I heard some other person...
So as much as we want to separate it and dance around it, let's not because the person that works at your university said this.
So I would like to know.
Let's say that you give the most ungenerous interpretation to that.
They were basically saying that people in Gaza have the right to use violence and armed resistance against Israel for the blockade that they've done, for the constant bombing and killing of innocent children and people inside Gaza for many years, including throughout 2023 before October 7th.
Let's say that was the person's view who's on the Berkeley faculty.
How did they not have the right to that view?
Again, the whole point of an academic institution is to allow orthodoxies to be questioned and challenged.
A lot of people in the world believe when people say, oh, Israel has the right to defend itself, meaning bombing Syria, bombing Iran, bombing Lebanon, bombing the West Bank, bombing Gaza, bombing whoever they want, a lot of people believe that Palestinians also have the right of armed self-defense against occupation, which is a right under international law.
And so some people believe October 7th, even if it had unjustified elements like targeting civilians at a rave, it primarily targeted military bases and it was about attacking an occupying force.
A lot of people believe that.
Why can't that be debated at Berkeley?
Why can't adult students hear those competing views?
Why is the U.S. Congress putting itself into the uber authority of U.S. colleges where it gets to dictate what views can and cannot be heard on American college campuses?
On what authority, on what conception of federal government's role is this justifiable?
Oh, because you're so educated and you are and you taught yourself at that end.
You've earned that.
What do you think the professor meant?
Hello?
I believe it was a celebration of the terrorist attack on October 7th.
Right.
Do you think, did you have any conversations with this professor?
I've had conversations with this professor, yes.
Yeah, and what was his response?
And what were the conversations?
That's a fine scholar that spews hate.
And the people who pay, the students, don't feel safe.
That's great.
He's a fine scholar.
I'm sure there's a lot of murderers in prison that are fine people too, fine scholars.
But they do some pretty nefarious and heinous acts.
So you want to explain what the conversation was?
The lady's time has expired.
Saved by the bell.
Thank you, Mr. Samaza.
It's just the same kind of safetyism that conservatives have been knocking for ever.
Oh, the poor little college students on campus can't hear opinions that make them uncomfortable.
You know what the difference is between a professor that she's identifying and murderers in prison?
The murderers in prison use violence against innocent people in a way that violates the law.
The professor that she's targeting expressed an opinion that she dislikes or that others feel uncomfortable by.
And even opinions that make other people uncomfortable are well within the scope of the First Amendment.
In fact, if the Free Speech Clause doesn't include views that make people uncomfortable, it would be meaningless.
In every society, you're allowed to express the views that don't make people uncomfortable.
No one needs a First Amendment protection for those kind of views.
These are adults at an academic institution, and she is demanding some sort of official administrative act to punish the expression of views, not violence or anything else like that.
Here is the chair of the committee, Virginia Fox, and you'll notice how in her interrogation of the president of Georgetown, she never once looks up from her scripted paper.
That's because many times it's been quite apparent that she has no idea where she is or what she's saying.
She's very old.
She's, I think, 82.
Some 82-year-olds are very sharp, and many others are not.
I think we learned that with the Joe Biden example.
So she's reading a script prepared by one of her aides that strongly implies that the president of Georgetown has the obligation to fire a Georgetown professor.
Remember, this is a private school, one of our most prestigious private schools in Washington, D.C., because of remarks that he made about the Iran conflict.
Now, I happen to know this professor.
I've interviewed him before.
His name is Jonathan Brown.
He's married to Lila Arian, who's been on our show before.
And he's a very, very strong critic of U.S. foreign policy, that's for sure.
But that's what he does, express his opinions as a member of a faculty.
And here's Virginia Fox reading the script prepared by her, one of her aides, interrogating the Georgetown president.
Okay.
Dr. Groves, after the U.S. floating word, anti-Semitism, on the screen, maybe I did that when I was there.
I mean, it's actually apt because that's basically what she, all she ever does is accuse people of, but that shouldn't be there.
Let's listen.
Dr. Groves, after the U.S. successfully struck Iran's nuclear infrastructure, one of the professors at Georgetown Center for Muslim Christian Understanding, Jonathan A.C. Brown, said, quote, I hope Iran does some symbolic strike on a base.
Is this person really suited to be educating the next generation of American diplomats?
In other words, what he said was, the U.S. is bombing the crap out of Iran, and so is Israel in an unprovoked war that Israel and the United States started.
And I think that there'd be something positive if Iran showed that it has the capability and the willingness to strike an American base in response, in retaliation, they have that right.
And he said symbolic, meaning I don't want them to kill Americans, but I want them to actually show they have the firepower and the willingness that they have the ability to attack American bases as well.
And that's exactly what they did.
Basically, with the acceptance of the United States government.
They made it known which base they were going to attack.
No one was killed.
It was evacuated.
They did some damage.
And Trump made clear that he doesn't intend to retaliate.
And she's now demanding punishment for this professor, a tenured professor, chair of a department, for saying that.
That geopolitically, I think Iran has the right to and would be unofficial if they did a symbolic strike on the American military base in retaliation for the American bombing and Israeli bombing of Iran.
Thank you for the question.
Within minutes of our learning of that tweet, the dean contacted Professor Brown.
The tweet was removed.
We issued a statement condemning the tweet.
Professor Brown is no longer chair of his department, and we're beginning, and he's on leave, and we're beginning a process of reviewing the case.
So he's been making similarly appalling statements for years, but he has been kept around for years.
So you are now investigating and disciplining him from what you've said.
Yes, Congresswoman.
Again, so pathetic, so unbelievably pathetic.
On both sides, we already talked about the seizure of power by the U.S. Congress, that now they're in a position to dictate to private colleges what professors can and can't say, who should and shouldn't be fired because of their views, not because of their actions, because of their views.
But instead of going to Congress as a president of a major institution, a Jesuit institution that has long been one of the most prestigious in the United States, independent and at the highest academic achievement, instead of going and defending the core value of academic freedom, he crawls around hoping to placate Virginia Fox and the Republicans and the House by saying, oh, don't worry, we did exactly what you would have demanded that we do.
He's no longer the chair.
We ordered him immediately to delete the tweet.
You're not allowed to say that about U.S. foreign policy, especially if it involves Israel's main enemy, Iran.
And we begun basically, put him on leave and now begun the process of firing him, even though he's a 10-year professor.
So they're telling Congress, yes, you have the absolute right not only to summon us here, but to force us to prove to you that when a professor expresses a view or a student expresses a view that you dislike, that we have to prove to you that we've sufficiently punished the person for expressing that opinion.
Here from Yahoo News, this is July 16th, Georgetown professor, the one Virginia Fox's script told her to ask about, removed as department chair after publicly hoping for a symbolic Iranian strike on the U.S. quote, a professor at Georgetown University has been removed as chair of his department and is on leave after he publicly hoped Iran would launch a, quote, symbolic strike on a U.S. military base, the university president said.
Quote, I'm not an expert, but I assume Iran could still get a bomb easily.
I hope Iran does some symbolic strike on a base and then everyone stops.
I'm surprised this is what these FDD, Foundation for the Defense of Democracy and Niukan, group and Hasborah people have been auto-erotically asphyxiating themselves for all these years.
Dr. Jonathan Brown, Yawale bin Talal Chier of Islamic Civilization, and the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University posted on X in June after the U.S. struck Iran's nuclear enrichment sites.
Again, you don't have to like that view, but it's so well within the reason of what you can debate.
I think it'd be good if Iran did a symbolic strike.
And again, that's what they did with the, basically with the cooperation of the U.S. government.
Not allowed.
Congress will demand your firing.
Georgetown will comply, and they'll try and ruin you.
That has been pretty much Virginia Fox's main role as a member of Congress, and we could show you a lot of different examples for that.
And I think it's really worth remembering that they have tried to implement these constraints on free speech when it comes to protecting Israel or criticizing Israel, not just on American college campuses, but they're succeeding in doing.
The Trump administration is forcing private institutions like Harvard and Columbia to adopt this expanded definition of anti-Semitism under the International Holocaust Remembrance Act that bans people from expressing the ideas that I enumerated earlier that are very common critiques of Israel or particular Jewish individuals.
It's just so ironic that the Trump movement gets into power and starts going on a hunt to eradicate one kind of racism by imposing speech constraints on American college campuses, the precise mentality that they claim for so long to vehemently oppose.
So there are so many of these kinds of examples.
We've been covering them for a long time, and we're going to keep covering them because I really do believe that this is certainly by far the gravest threat to the First Amendment and academic freedom in many, many years.
Certainly we had others, including the Biden administration's systemic attempts to threaten, enforce, and cajole big tech to remove dissent on COVID in Ukraine in the 2020 election that they disliked.
We covered that extensively, including the lawsuits that sued the Biden administration on this.
But this is, it involves the Congress' constant attention and the White House's very vigilant efforts to prevent an entire range of views.
At least like when the left goes on censorship campaigns, their pretext is that they want to protect marginalized Americans.
For all the reasons I've discussed, it's authoritarian and misguided and dangerous.
But at least their claim is we want to protect American citizens from dangerous speech.
This is not even about protecting Americans.
This is about protecting a foreign country, Israel, from activism and criticism and expression of dissent by American college professors like Jonathan Brown and American college students as well, including all sorts of Jewish students, even though they're doing this based on the obnoxious and offensive conceit that they're speaking on behalf of all Jewish people in order to protect us from hearing views that some, but by no means all Jews dislike.
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Our guest tonight is David Enrich.
He is a deputy investigations editor for the New York Times, where in his words, he, quote, writes about the intersection of law and business, including the power wielded by giant corporate law firms and the changing contours of the First Amendment and libel law, often with a focus on things like institutional wrongdoing on Wall Street and in corporate America, all of which are topics, of course, that are of great interest to this program.
He's the author of four books, including his latest, Murder the Truth, that reviews attacks on press freedoms and the campaign to overturn the Supreme Court's pioneering decision in New York Times versus Sullivan that protects reporting from frivolous defamation lawsuits.
Last week, he published an outstanding piece of reporting in the Times under the headline, United Health Campaign to Quiet Critics.
I read that article with great interest.
I thought the reporting was outstanding, and so we are happy to have him on our program tonight to discuss all of these topics in which he's playing such an important role.
David, thank you so much for coming on.
We really appreciate it.
It's good to see you.
Yeah, it's great to be here.
All right, so let's start with your article.
There obviously was a lot of attention paid, I think, for the first time publicly to United Health when its CEO, Brian Thompson, was gunned down on the streets of New York, allegedly, by Luigi Mangioni.
And I think people were kind of surprised to see how much kind of unexpressed anger and resentment and rage there was at United Healthcare, not necessarily supporting what, the murder, of course, but just anger at the health industry in general.
And before we get into the specific ways that they're attacking and suppressing criticism or dissent, as you reported, can you just talk about the size and scope and power of United Health?
People know it's a health insurance company, but the other sorts of things it does inside the American health system?
Yeah, I think by most measures, it is the biggest healthcare company in America.
And it does, and it's the biggest health insurer, but that's only one part of its business.
And it runs a huge pharmacy benefit manager that basically acts as a middleman between insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies and drugstores and basically is often accused of basically jacking up the prices that people pay for prescription drugs.
It increasingly has a big role in dispensing actual medical care.
It's bought up medical practices all over the country.
And so it's not only insuring and paying for care, it's also administering the care.
And so, I mean, it's kind of like a great hospital or medical system octopus that has its, you know, fingers or tentacles, I guess, in many, many corners of the healthcare system.
And it's huge and it makes hundreds of billions of dollars a year in revenue.
And so I think that the fact that it touches so many areas of healthcare and the fact that the American healthcare system is so deeply screwed up, I think it's made the company a real lightning rod for a lot of criticism.
I think the principal expression of anger at United Health when all of this happened with the murder of its CEO had to do with, and I think this is the way most Americans interface with United Health as a health insurance company, that they pay premiums for so long.
And the minute they actually need coverage for some significant health problem for themselves or their family, they spend enormous amounts of time on the phone begging for coverage.
United Health finds ways, concocts ways to deny coverage.
Is this, in your view, a valid source of anger toward the health insurance industry in general and United Health in particular?
Oh my goodness, like unquestionably, yes.
There is, and the American healthcare system is deeply troubled.
I think almost anyone who lives in this country and interacts with the healthcare system in any way, whether that is trying to get coverage for much needed medical procedures or even getting prescription drugs in an affordable way, would agree that the system we have is infuriating and often unnecessarily expensive and often unnecessarily cumbersome and prevents people from getting medical treatments that they need.
And United Healthcare, as the biggest company that provides much of these services in the country, I think deserves a very substantial portion of the responsibility, by no means all of the responsibility, but a substantial portion of it.
And I also should be clear that to me, and maybe I'm biased here, I don't think that condones, I'm not condoning violence.
I don't think that's a very important thing.
Clearly, right, it's a separate question.
The anger is understandable and I think often justifiable.
Yeah, so in the wake of the attention paid to health, to United Health CEO's death, and even before that, but especially since, there have been a lot of attempts to investigate United Health practices, to do journalism, investigative journalism into it, documentaries, activism.
And you have a lot of examples in your article about specific cases where United Health really took very aggressive action to try and force the suppression of these critics, using their power and wealth to do so.
And I want to get into a few of those examples in just a second.
But before I do that, I want to talk about one of the kind of theories that United Health has invoked to justify their demands that criticism of United Health be suppressed.
And it has several aspects to it, but one of them is basically exploiting the killing of their CEO to argue that criticism of United Health are actually dangerous because it can provoke violence against United Health personnel as evidenced by the killing of its CEO.
Can you elaborate a little on what exactly they're arguing and what the implications would be of that theory?
Yeah, well, I mean, they're kind of using a sleight of hand maneuver here where they're taking content that has been produced, whether it's on social media or a newspaper article or a documentary, and they're looking at, for example, the comments that people might leave in response to a TikTok video.
And the comments sometimes are like pretty extreme.
Someone might say, I hope that these people get murdered just like Brian Thompson did.
And that's, again, in my opinion, kind of an abhorrent thing to say, but they're using that type of response just generated on social media as an argument that the original content, again, whether it's a TikTok video or a newspaper article, is somehow inciting that violence and therefore should be suppressed.
And, you know, that's just not how the First Amendment works in this country, and or at least it shouldn't be how the First Amendment works.
And we have a long history in the United States of celebrating and protecting vigorous and sometimes fierce free speech, including, and especially, in fact, when we are talking about big, powerful institutions or powerful, wealthy individuals.
And United Health, I think, is trying to use the fact that they, one of their executives was murdered as basically a cudgel to beat back additional criticism under this argument that, well, that might cause more people to get murdered in the future.
And, you know, it just strikes me as a very tenuous argument to make sense.
Obviously, the people who commit violence should be held responsible for that violence, but that does not mean that the fact that they were angry about something is invalid or that the sources of information that stoked that anger should be suppressed.
Yeah, I mean, what strikes me as particularly dangerous about this theory they're using, aside from the fact that they're obviously manipulating the emotions surrounding the killing of their CEO to try and generate more sympathy for themselves as a way to kind of give more weight or validity to their desire to suppress their critics, is that really that would justify the suppression of pretty much every political argument.
If you say that you think abortion is murder and someone goes, someone might go and murder abortion doctor, that has happened.
It doesn't make you responsible.
If you say that you think pro-life laws endanger the health of women, someone might go and bomb a pro-life office, which has also happened.
It doesn't make you responsible.
Pretty much any kind of political opinion can prompt violence.
And on top of that, to use internet comments, you know, one of the things that always amazes me is as a journalist, of course, especially if you're involved in deeply felt polarizing conflict, you get a lot of hate, amazing things that get said toward you.
That's true for everybody.
But I follow tennis writers or TV critics, and you look at their comments.
If they criticize a show that people like or a player that people love, the kind of death threats and insane amounts of hatred are shocking.
And for any person on the internet, that happens.
Is there anything to United Health argument beyond that?
That very universal view and truth that criticisms might lead someone to get so angry that they go and engage in active violence?
Well, I mean, substantively, I think that is the crux of it.
And they're also saying that in a number of instances, journalists or activists or doctors or investors are saying things that United Health claims are incorrect.
And, you know, I'm not trying to adjudicate really who's right and who's wrong about the accuracy of things.
There's obviously, you know, when someone defames you, you do have the right to seek redress in the legal system.
Notably, that's not really what United Health is doing in most of these cases.
Most of their activity, so far at least, is confined to sending threatening letters that are supposed to remain secret.
And they're marked at the top of these letters, confidential, do not disseminate, do not share with anyone.
And so they are designed to, I think in general, to intimidate and to silence.
And they're specifically designed to avoid being tested in court or in public in a way that they would almost certainly be struck down on First Amendment grounds in this country.
Yeah.
Now, personally, you know, if someone sends me an email, an unsolicited email, and it says at the top, confidential you are not to disclose this, my first instinct is to disclose it because no one can bind you to a secrecy agreement when you're not a party to it.
But the problem here is the imbalance of power and wealth, where as you began by pointing out, United Healthcare is a massive corporation with hundreds of billion dollars in revenue.
And they often threaten people who don't have a lot of financial resources who are going to take that threat very seriously for good reasons.
And the example the article begins with, and then you go into it more in detail, is Mary Strauss, who produced a docuseries that's called Modern Medical Mafia.
And it basically targets one part of United Health business, which is this pharmaceutical benefit business.
She kind of talks about how they're a corrupt middleman in this transaction.
Can you talk about a little bit more about what her critique was of the health industry in general and United Health in particular and what they did to her to try and silence that?
Yeah, so her critique is not unique or novel at all.
It's a widespread and bipartisan critique of pharmacy benefit managers, which serve as middlemen between drug companies and insurance companies and employers that are trying to set prices for drugs.
And there is a very widespread and I think accurate critique that these pharmacy benefit managers, and a United Health subsidiary, Optum RX, is one of the biggest, are operating in a way that is artificially driving up prices for drugs and artificially limiting the supply of drugs for people who need it based on essentially a quid pro quo relationship that these companies have with drug manufacturers where they get kickbacks.
And now, the pharmacy benefit managers argue that this is a very important business or very important role they're playing at keeping a lid on costs.
Based on the reporting in the New York Times and many other publications, that is not true.
And this is a longstanding gripe of many pharmacists, including Mary Strauss's father, who was a pharmacist in Wisconsin for many years.
And so the critique is not uncommon.
The video that she and her father produced is, you know, it is very direct and kind of brash in its argument.
It's accusing United Health of being part of like an organized crime run, essentially, that is conspiring to push up drug prices for the sake of its own profits.
And, you know, that might be, United Health can probably make a decent argument that that's a slight oversimplification.
But what they've done instead is they've gone after companies like Amazon and Vimeo, both of which had, were streaming this documentary on their sites and argued to Amazon and Vimeo without even going to Mary Strauss or the other people involved with this film.
They're going to these streaming platforms and saying, A, this film is defamatory and therefore violates your terms of service.
And B, it has doxxed our client.
It has doxxed United Health.
And get this, because I think this is really outlandish by showing in a still in the video a street sign where Optum RX, the United Health subsidiary, is located that is easily available to anyone who wants to like Google where is Optum RX located.
And so they've claimed to Amazon and Vimeo that that violates the platform's terms of service and therefore the video should be removed.
And both platforms removed it.
And so they effectively, without even making a complaint to the filmmakers, got these services to take down the video in a way that strikes me as an outsider as pretty close to censorship.
Now, again, you can make an argument that on the merits, the film should not have been up there, maybe.
Maybe it had inaccurate information or maybe it didn't meet the standards that those platforms have for high quality content.
But that's not what happened here.
What happened here is that there was essentially a legal threat made to these hosting providers, these streaming platforms.
And they, instead of fighting this, decided the simpler thing to do would be to just do what United Health, this giant company with a very high-priced law firm working in its corner, wanted them to do.
And so, you know, the video is gone from the services.
It is still available on YouTube, at least for the time being.
So people can go look at it there if they want to.
Yeah.
And I mean, just to be clear, too, under libel law and the like, you have to meet an extremely high standard if you're a company of that size with an impact on society.
It's not just you win a libel suit if you prove there's some inaccuracies.
You really have to prove that it was maliciously filled with lies that really harmed the business.
And that's what I want to ask you about that I find really disturbing here that kind of relates to the first segment we did on Congress hauling university presidents before it to kind of dictate and demand that professors be fired or certain views be banned.
And I was making an argument that if presidents of major colleges aren't willing to go to Congress and kind of defend academic freedom and say this is not your place to do, they kind of have an obligation to that's part of their job is to defend those values and they're not.
I think there's a similar dynamic at play here, which is if you're Amazon or Vimeo, you don't really care about this documentary because it's not very popular, it's not making any money for you.
And then the question is, why would these corporations want to spend millions of dollars against United Health's massive law firm just to defend the right of a docuseries that they don't really care about?
They don't probably look at their role as defending free speech.
Then on the other hand, though, one of the things that really called my attention as someone who used to do reporting and work with The Guardian was The Guardian published a very good piece of investigative journalism about United Health.
They had a second major investigation plan that they were going to publish, but in the interval, United Health sued The Guardian.
And despite the massive resources that The Guardian has, which they do, they have a huge endowment, they make a lot of money on subscriptions, now The Guardian essentially has withheld their second article.
What do you make of that in terms of the role and responsibilities of a big media outlet like that?
And what are the issues being raised in that situation?
Well, I think at the outset, it's important to recognize that this was a finely calibrated attack by United Health and its law firm, Claire Locke.
I mean, they knew that they had big problems with the article the Guardian had published.
And, you know, I'm not really in a position to adjudicate the merits of those claims.
But even taking their claims at face value, they knew that the second investigative piece was coming.
And they knew the exact timing of that because The Guardian, as a responsible news organization, had gone to them with a detailed request for comment.
And as part of that, had told them when their article was expected to run.
And the law firm Clair Lock and United Health filed this lawsuit against them just a matter of hours before that article was scheduled to appear.
And it seems clearly designed to have prevented or at least discouraged The Guardian from going ahead with publication.
And look, I mean, I think I don't really know what the outcome is going to be with that.
I think that it's possible The Guardian will still ultimately go ahead and publish this second story.
But I can tell you, just having done a ton of reporting on this broad trend in general, when a news organization gets sued or even when they receive a threat from a serious law firm, they take that seriously and it leads you and your lawyers internally and externally to really slow everything down.
And that makes sense, right?
You want to be more careful.
There's a real legal threat and these lawsuits can cause a huge amount of money and damages and time.
And so it's a natural response by a company and its lawyers in the Guardians case to slow things down.
And that's exactly what United Health and its lawyers were aiming for here.
One of the, and I just have a few more questions, but I find this topic not just interesting, but super important for reasons that I think you're illustrating in these cases.
But one of the changes I often talk about in large corporate media is the kind of corporatization of media that took place in the 60s and 70s and 80s where you had television networks and major media outlets starting to be purchased and gobbled up by huge corporate conglomerates where they have all kinds of businesses and then the sort of media is one of them.
And we see that now in a lot of the lawsuits that President Trump has brought against CBS or ABC where when you're, you know, he's he's going after the parent companies who have all kinds of business with the government and they don't really have so much of an interest in defending values of free speech because they're major corporations that are there for profit for their shareholders.
And they'd rather just pay $15 million to settle a frivolous lawsuit than defend against a blatantly frivolous case.
And as a result, it's an obvious threat to a free press.
There are a few big outlets, and your employer is one example, that isn't really part of a gigantic media conglomerate, hasn't been broad.
It's still in the hands basically of the same family that has run the New York Times for more than a century and kind of does see its role as defending these values.
And you've seen a couple universities stepping up and confronting the Trump administration as well, despite the threats and the cost.
Where do you see this trend going in terms of the willingness of media outlets or media corporations to defend this?
Because those are the really ones who have the resources that can.
Yeah.
I mean, I think there's two things going on here.
One is that there's no question, we've seen this in at least a couple of instances recently, of media properties that are owned by big companies caving in to the Trump administration basically because that is the expedient thing to do for the broader businesses.
And that obviously applies to Disney settling the lawsuit against ABC News.
I think applies very much to the lawsuit that Parramint settled against CBS News when they have a merger pending that needs federal approval.
I think there are a lot of other cases where corporate-owned news outlets have withstood this pressure and we'll see.
I haven't seen many signs of others cracking.
I think there's, look, one of the positive trends in the media world these days is the rise of all of these independent voices and independent journalism organizations, whether it's people like you, Glenn, or just someone with a Substack newsletter or a YouTube channel or whatever.
And what I'll say about that, I think that's great.
And I think it's very good to have this democratization of voices and viewpoints and with a lot of aggressive journalists doing really important reporting.
I really think that's amazing.
I also think that it's exactly those types of journalists that are at unique and kind of existential risk of being silenced by the types of tactics that United Health is using and that their law firm, Claire Locke, has really pioneered.
And one of the things, you know, at risk of like touting my book too much, one of the things that I report on extensively in the book, it's not looking that much at how big media companies are getting affected by these types of threats and lawsuits.
It's much more focused on how these tactics are often being weaponized against news outlets and independent journalists who are in the kind of weakest positions to stand up to it.
And it leaves people with this really impossible choice between standing up for your values and possibly risking the existence of your news operation or kind of making a concession and either caving or just deciding to focus on a different target and having your business survive.
And that's a terrible choice to make.
And it's just like, I think that's one of the reasons that in general, these tactics have been so effective is that they're picking on players, whether they're large or small, where the plaintiffs or the aggressors in these cases have leverage, whether it's in the form of whether the federal government will approve a merger or whether just simply suing someone, even if it's a meritless lawsuit that'll get tossed out of court, the expenses for that will be so high that it might bankrupt your small upstart news organization.
And I think that's just a reflection of the times we're in right now.
And I think it's really troubling.
No, I think that's the most important, one of the most important parts of your book as somebody who does, who has had one foot or even two feet on occasion in mainstream media outlets, but now is a huge evangelist for and big believer in the critical role that independent media plays.
That really is my big concern.
And what ends up happening, I'm interested in your view on this, isn't my last question, is the way in which it kind of leads to self-censorship or anticipatory censorship.
There was an anecdote that happened here in Brazil a few years ago that has stayed with me forever about this.
A really good journalist, independent journalist named Alex Quadras, who was based in Brazil for many years.
He's written a lot of articles for The New Yorker, and so he's an established journalist.
He wrote a book called Brazilianaires, which was about the ecosystem of billionaires in Brazil and just the way they exercise so much power, a lot of the sinister and nefarious ways they gathered their wealth.
And not one publishing company in Brazil would publish that book out of fear that these billionaires would end up suing them and basically destroying them.
And you could only get a book about Brazilian billionaires published in the United States because they were less fearful.
And what is interesting about your background is you work at the New York Times, you came there from the Wall Street Journal, but you got your start in local newspapers in Ohio and Texas, I think, among other places.
And local newspapers, which are critical because they cover counties or city governments or even state governments, have really suffered economically, become a lot more economically and financially vulnerable than, say, big independent media that can make a lot of money.
And I imagine this kind of fear has to be just constantly at the forefront of their mind when it comes to the question of should they do the kind of reporting that you just did against United Healthcare or companies like that.
What do you think that dynamic is in terms of local and state papers?
I think it's just a huge risk.
And I think there are many instances, some of which I detail in my book, where this is already happening.
And a frivolous lawsuit, even a frivolous legal threat, can subject a small news organization to tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in expenses.
Liable insurance, which a lot of places have, doesn't kick in under all circumstances.
Your premiums can go up.
You have to hit a high deductible.
And so it's a real point of vulnerability for news outlets.
And there are a lot of publishers and journalists out there who are highly principled, highly ethical, really want to do the right thing.
But when faced with the choice between possibly, you know, financially decapitating themselves or moving on to a different target are going to do the thing that is sustainable.
And again, these tactics have been really finely honed and calibrated over the years by law firms like Claire Locke to really take advantage of that dynamic, I think.
And that's something that a lot of journalists at the local level and a lot of publishers at the local level, I think have been dealing with for the past decade or so.
And I think it's something that a lot of independent journalists who are kind of coming onto the scene now really need to grapple with and probably be a little bit worried about.
And I don't have a good answer to that other than, you know, just to be like aware of it and for readers and viewers to support those local outlets or those independent journalists whenever they can, because it's really important and it's really hard to do it alone.
Yeah, some states have implemented things like anti-SLAP laws designed to punish what is clearly anticipatory censorship through legal threats.
Other countries have a rule where if you lose a lawsuit, you pay the other side's legal fees, which actually deters smaller people from entering litigation because that's an even bigger risk.
So it's hard to balance.
But I do think the most interesting thing of your article is that so often United Health's lawyers would threaten to sue, trying to demand that it not be published or be removed.
And then when it was published anyway or wasn't removed, they never ended up suing because they knew they could never prevail in court.
They didn't have a valid legal claim.
They were hoping to intimidate people with these threats.
And that is a huge threat to a free press.
And as you said, you don't have to love the New York Times to be concerned about it because it threatens even more smaller outlets and independent media.
All right.
Well, David, congratulations on this article.
I hope everybody will take a look at it.
I think it's a great piece of reporting.
And we will put the link to your book as well, which I think in an even more comprehensive way, obviously, documents a lot of these threats that come from the huge power of mega corporations.
And I appreciate your taking the time to talk to us about all of this tonight.
