Local, state and federal law enforcement and security agencies are preparing for the possibility that former President Donald Trump will be indicted as early as next week, according to five senior officials familiar with the preparations. 

Law enforcement agencies are conducting preliminary security assessments, the officials said, and are discussing potential security plans in and around the Manhattan Criminal Court, at 100 Centre Street, in case Trump is charged in connection with an alleged hush money payment to Stormy Daniels and travels to New York to face any charges.

The officials stress that the interagency conversations and planning are precautionary in nature because no charges have been filed.

The agencies involved include the NYPD, New York State Court Officers, the U.S. Secret Service, the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, the officials said.

NBC News has reached out to all of those agencies for comment, and all have declined to comment.

Trump's attorney, Joe Tacopina, told NBC News that the former president will follow normal procedures if it gets to the point of having to surrender to authorities from the DA’s office.

Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, pleaded guilty in 2018 to a federal charge relating to a $130,000 payment to Daniels, an adult film star, in the closing days of the 2016 campaign. Daniels has said the money was to keep her quiet about her claim that she’d slept with the married Trump in 2006, an allegation Trump denies.

Cohen has said that Trump ordered him to pay the hush money and that it was for the “principal purpose of influencing” the 2016 presidential election.

Cohen was later repaid the money he’d shelled out to Daniels through payments that were listed by Trump’s company as “legal fees.”

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is investigating Trump for felony falsification of business records. Cohen testified before the grand jury hearing evidence in the case for a second time Wednesday. (read more)

New Yorker: It seems to me that we don’t necessarily want to count on the banks or the regulators always being perfect, so having these requirements might be useful.

Frank: I agree, but there’s no way to. You can require greater liquidity, etc. But there’s no way to force people to do their job well. By the way, are you assuming that, under Donald Trump, the regulation of Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase was everything it should be because they were still covered by the law?

Oh, but there is when someone is in a position of public trust.

You hang them when they play with themselves instead of doing their job.

Who remembers IndyMac?  Uninsured depositors (and there were quite a few) got hosed on that one, and the reason they got hosed is that the bank was backdating deposits to avoid violating reserve requirements.  The problem is that the regulators knew it and deliberately ignored it; in point of fact the examiner who knew it specifically had done the same thing during the S&L crisis and not only didn't go to jail, he still had his job.

And by the way, for those who think Sheila Bair would be a good choice to bring back would you like me to repost some of my articles from the 08-09 timeframe aimed at her, specifically, and her failure at the FDIC to enforce a law called "Prompt Corrective Action" which requires the FDIC to act before a bank invades its bond portfolio and thus is insolvent?

Said law is not a suggestion -- it is a law.  Yet exactly nobody has been indicted for their failure to do their actual job and enforce the law.

Its been fifteen years since that crap blew up the banking (and asset market) world generally and the people who stole the money not only got to keep it they got to ruin you -- and not a single thing changed.  These jackasses are still running around screaming about how "wonderful" they all are and, of course, how diverse!

It is absolutely true that OCC is responsible for examining the financial condition of banks.  It was back in 2007 too, along with OTS for thrifts (one of the changes is that OTS and OCC were folded into OCC.)  These requirements are not suggestions -- they are laws.  Yet we see the same thing happen all over the country, including gang-bangers being let out of jail because racism made the dude pull a gun as he was a poor blaaaaaaack or bwowwwwwwn boy, laws against carjacking and similar thuggery be damned.

We allow little hooligans to remain in schools because its too much to expect them to actually sit in class and not attack their teachers and, since we won't take those little thugs and put them somewhere else (like a reform school or even a rubber room) we then wonder why we have teachers who can't and unions who we allow to stay in power even when their members are drawing a salary while failing to do their job.  Of course the most important factor in all of this is whether a boy who claims he was born into the wrong body can go into the girl's locker room and leer at the actual girl's breasts.

We have a Treasury Secretary who ignores any law she finds inconvenient just as she did when she was at The Fed; why its important to talk about how climate is going to ruin financial conditions if we don't kill whales with windmills which disrupt their navigational capacity but its perfectly ok that our banking system enables the expenditure of gigawatts of power, all of which must be dumped as heat into the environment, for the trading of mathematical formulas with no intrinsic value of any sort (so-called "crypto" assets) when that same heat could do something productive -- like, for example, turn coal into synfuel or build a LFTR that can then do so, remove the alpha emitters from said coal and use them for power instead of causing lung cancer, and make the lights and heat in your home work.

This very same Treasury Secretary is well-aware that fully one third of the funds spent by said Treasury Department goes to Medicare and Medicaid and that is 80% unfunded, which is in fact more than the entire federal deficit.  Said person also knows that 15 USC Chapter 1 forbids any sort of scheme to fix prices or monopolize trade including internationally and that every drug company in the land does exactly that with their differential pricing between nations, say much less between individuals in the United States which virtually every medical provider in the US violates on a daily basis.  She also knows that this practice was challenged twice all the way to the Supreme Court and found to be illegal.  As the person signing the checks she thus also knows she's suborning, permitting and furthering felony violations of laws that have stood on the books for more than 100 years and yet rather than demand the DOJ put a stop to it and refuse to issue said checks until it is stopped she gives a speech about how women and minorities are under-represented and, once again, your Suburban is ruining the environment.

In 2006 it was blatantly obvious that the Option ARMs and other similar hinky products were fraud-riven packs of lies and everyone knew it.  There were tapes and emails of bankers having conversations with each other calling those securities vomit yet three minutes later they were off selling them to customers as "good investments"!  Not a single one of those institutions or persons went to jail and neither did any of the regulators who were quite-clearly doing anything other than regulating -- perhaps they were watching porn on the Internet in their offices?

That "zero" interest rates would not persist into the indefinite future because it could not, that M2 was driven up on a parabolic trajectory by both Democrat and Republican administrations with exactly neither Treasury Secretary doing a thing to stop it, that Trump bragged repeatedly about being "The King of Debt", that every penny of The Fed's bond-buying could only happen if the Treasury continued to deficit spend and thus issue said bonds was in fact driven by and caused by that issuance and that all of this was wild-eyed crazy, irrational and criminally negligent, akin to giving a convicted arsonist a five gallon can of gasoline, a pack of matches and several bricks to throw through the windows of buildings is fact.

That we, the people of this nation were given a prime, front-row seat as to what happens when you allow such conduct and refuse to jail those who are supposed to enforce laws but refuse, and instead they collude with entities interested in stealing everything they can is also fact.  That happened fifteen years ago, I reported on every bit of it and you would think the damage it inflicted on the average American would have forced reform -- if not jail right then and there a very clear statement that if it happened again we, the people, will not wait around to see if you suddenly decide to enforce the law -- we will do so on a summary and final basis, so you better cut that crap out.

But nooooooo!

Instead we're still screaming "Diversity!", "Equity!" and "Inclusion!" without a single care in the world as to whether before any of those the two most-important words of all are enforced:  COMPETENCE and JUSTICE. (read more)

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's "Point in Time" survey, conducted in January 2022 and released at year's end, indicated that at least 30% of all of America's homeless population live in the Golden State, with homeless tents and encampments prevalent in some urban centers.

The survey showed that around 115,500 "unsheltered" people – half of the total roughly 233,800 "unsheltered" population – reside in California. 

The Public Policy Institute of California analyzed the data and compared it to the two years prior, finding a "new snapshot of California’s homeless population." 

PORTLAND HOMELESSNESS CRISIS SPIRALS OUT OF CONTROL: ‘THIS IS THEIR VISION OF UTOPIA’

If one wants to see what a huge segment of the American people have morphed into, look no farther than the ‘People of Walmart’ website. It features the obscenely unbecoming clothes that people wear while shopping at Walmart. The site is both hysterical and depressing at the same time. Though it pokes fun at sloppy Walmart shoppers, the truth is that vast numbers of Americans dress like this at any place they patronize. It’s often difficult at times to distinguish between a sloppy but employed person and a homeless bum. Some have called it “hobo-chic.”

It has become common in America to see someone wearing a hoodie, backward baseball cap, torn jeans, a ‘wife-beater,’ or their baggy pajamas to the grocery store, the DMV, or to the movies. Most people probably don’t even notice it anymore because it has become a regular feature of what Americans wear. A large sign had to be posted at the local courthouse where I live to remind visitors to wear shoes and that tank-tops are not allowed. Americans, it seems, are quite content in attiring themselves like complete slobs. They can’t be bothered to wear appropriate and form-fitting clothes. Comedian Bill Mahr was right when he said on his Real Time show in 2013 that Americans won’t be happy until they can go shopping in a diaper!

Mind you, I’m not against wearing casual clothing. But there is a time and place for everything. Few Americans seem to understand this. Some have surmised that the origins of our sloppy dressing habits began when companies started implementing “casual Friday’s” which turned into casual Monday-thru-Friday.

Turning to our women, far too many of them are not just frumpy in appearance, but they often dress in the most unbecoming ways – such as spandex so tight you can see the entirety of their butt cracks, the shape of their labia majora, including jiggling cellulite for all to behold. Every basic rule of fashion and clothing coordination is violated.

Many of them dress this way even though they are morbidly obese. You’d think they would naturally want to conceal their girth and draw as little attention to their rolls of fat as possible. But no, they persist in wearing clothes that only serve to accentuate it. Many of them, in fact, are quite proud of their rotund bodies. They’d go ballistic if anyone dared to “fat shame” them. We’re expected to not notice and consider it perfectly acceptable.

Look also how much makeup is caked onto their faces, especially among our younger women. There seems to be little understanding that sometimes less is more. Makeup, as I understand it, is supposed to enhance a woman’s natural beauty rather than make her look like someone completely different when she takes it off. Those guys who have been shocked to see their girlfriend without makeup know exactly what I’m referring to. The current trend among young women to affix enormous fake eyelashes has reached absurd levels.

Have you noticed also how sexual and provocative our young women dress? They leave nothing to the imagination. They tattoo themselves like an old bar whore, pierce their noses and other bodily parts, and then complain when men look at them or act too forward toward them. They attire themselves in ways that narcissistically scream “Hey everyone, look at me!” — and then self-righteously condemn anyone who dares to notice. There is nothing modest or graceful about these gals either. They’re loud, abrasive, and seemingly possess just as much testosterone as the average male they look down upon. They have no self-awareness. They think the world of themselves, but they have little reason to do so.

Much of this, I suspect, is due to our national decline which is reflected in how people attire themselves. But some of it must be due to the fault of their own mothers who failed to teach and model before them on how to conduct themselves in public, especially how to dress appropriately for each occasion. Just as so many American fathers have abdicated their role as leaders in the family, so also mothers have failed to instruct and guide their daughters on what it means to be a woman. The days when our women were known for being feminine, soft-spoken, and polite are over. The entire notion of behaving “classy” and “dignified” seems to have been kicked to the curb.

Whites Have Succumbed to the Degrading Fashion Trends of Blacks

What I find to be especially disturbing is how many of our young White men and women follow the fashion trends of Blacks. White males wearing their hat backwards might seem like a petty thing to complain about. Perhaps, but even in something as seemingly insignificant as this, it shows the degree of influence that Black ‘culture’ has had on our way of life.

EDITOR'S NOTE: See Africanization

White males didn’t do this sort of thing until around the late 80s or early 90s when Black ‘rap’ music took hold of the nation. It’s been downhill ever since. The backwards baseball cap thing popular among Black males is, in my view, indicative of them as a people. Everything they do is backwards. They are largely unwilling to assimilate to the norms of White civilization, and it shows in their attitudes, including at times in the smallest of ways. These are subtle acts of defiance by Blacks, a sort of “Fuck you!” to the White man and a declaration that “we’re different than you!” And, indeed, they are, but not quite in the superior way they imagine.

White males who allow their pants to “sag” like ghetto thugs reveal just how much White Americans have come under the power and influence of Blacks as amplified and promoted by our [mostly Jewish] liberal-left media. I expect young Black males to wear their pants “saggin” because it’s indicative of their lower intelligence levels. Black communities in America, in fact, must create public “anti-saggin” campaigns to urge their young Black males to stop wearing their pants so low. What other racial group on this planet other than Blacks must erect large billboards and public service announcements to tell its young men to pull up their pants?

Few Whites are aware that the pants “sagging” fashion originated in America’s prisons in which Black males receptive to anal sex from other prisoners would allow their pants to sag below their buttocks. It serves as just one more gauge revealing how utterly dysfunctional Blacks in America are. Thus, when young White males emulate the same gutter fashion as young Black males, it’s a clear indication of how far Whites in America have fallen.

Our young White women, likewise, mimic the tribal dancing of Blacks which is overtly sexual in nature (“twerking”). The current trend among ghetto-influenced White gals of trying to grow gargantuan-sized buttocks (ala Kim Kardashian) in order to attract young Black bucks shows just how low our people have sunk.

Prior Generations of Whites Had Greater Self-Dignity

What a stark contrast all of this is to prior generations of White Americans. Consider the 1950s when America, according to some observers, was at its pinnacle in terms of national unity, civility, and morality. People used to dress up when they went shopping or even to the grocery store as strange as that may sound to our ears. It wasn’t rare to see men in the stands at a professional baseball game wearing suits and women wearing dresses. These were public events, and they dressed accordingly.

This wasn’t because they were snobs and thought themselves better than others. Rather, it was because they had respect for themselves as well as those around them. They lived in a high-trust, homogeneous society. There was a common consensus among most Americans on right and wrong, a love for their country and countrymen, and they maintained this national unity in everything they did. They were far from perfect, no doubt, but they had a level of civility and self-respect largely missing from today’s generation.

Few Americans in our time seem able to relate to this. We are a deeply divided nation (if we can even be called a “nation”?) and there is almost no consensus on anything. We have become individualistic to the core and care only what is best for me and mine. The racial and cultural changes that emerged during the 1960s — orchestrated and funded in large part by revolutionary Jews who felt no attachment to heritage Americans — ensured that the next generation and those after would be marked by racial division, the decline of the family, total demoralization of the White majority, and increasing instability.

Making matters worse, Americans have been badly influenced by Nihilism and Cultural Marxism which attack the very foundations of tradition and beauty. Is it any wonder why our young people who come under the spell of Leftist thought, including the more recent ‘woke’ movement, are soon transformed into the most visually repugnant persons? It’s a sickness of the mind and soul, and it manifests itself in how they outwardly present themselves to the world.

The Inanity of Tattoos

Consider also the popularity of tattoos among Americans which has reached epic proportions. In the name of “art,” huge numbers of Americans tattoo the entirety of their arms (“sleeves”), tattoo the entirety of their necks and faces, and any body part that’s exposed. All of it, we’re told, is an expression of one’s individuality and uniqueness. It sets them apart from others.

In reality, it only serves to show how all of these folks are compliant sheep with little real individuality among them. They’re enslaved to mind-numbing trends even though they like to think of themselves as standing apart from the crowd. Seriously, how original is a “Tribal band” tattoo when almost every other person has one? I’m sure if they thought that wearing a watermelon rind on the top of their heads was popular and would give them attention, they’d do that too.

It would be one thing if the tattoos were something earned as a result of bravery and survival. But most of the tattoos that Americans graffiti themselves with have little meaning or significance. They do it because it looks “cool” and will get them noticed by others which is really their underlying purpose.

Whenever you see a young woman fully “tatted” out, know well that she’s practically guaranteed to be the proverbial “attention whore.” No one intentionally does this sort of thing unless they want people to notice and gawk at them. Any man who has an ounce of intelligence is advised to turn and run from these kinds of women.

The following analogy may help us to see the utter mindlessness of our women tatting themselves like tribesmen. Have you even seen a Ferrari or Lamborghini sports car plastered with bumper stickers? Of course not! That’s because these finely tuned cars are by themselves beautiful works of art. Nothing more is needed to make them beautiful or to stand out more. To attach anything like a bumper sticker to them would cheapen them immensely. It would be completely inappropriate to do so.

On the other hand, one might not mind attaching bumper stickers to their Toyota Celica sedan or their Ram diesel truck because these are not works of art and the quality of these vehicles are not on par with a Ferrari or Lamborghini. This isn’t to say that Toyota and Ram vehicles aren’t good vehicles, but only that their quality is vastly inferior compared to such finely tuned and expensive sports cars as a Ferrari Testarossa, Porsche Carrera GT, or a Lamborghini Veneno.

It seems from this commonsense analogy that the greater number of our American women view themselves as merely Toyotas (or worse!) which explains why they are so eager to mark up and graffiti their bodies. In other words, the woman who tattoos herself in the ways I have described probably has very low self-esteem. Sure, she might make highfalutin claims about herself (they always do), but I suspect that most of these women have “daddy issues” and an array of psychological disorders.

What is so disturbing is that White women are seen by much of the world as the standard of beauty. Why, then, would so many of them go out of their way to intentionally make themselves much less attractive? I can only attribute it to one thing — they have come under the spell of a poisonous and self-hating Leftist ideology. When a woman intentionally cuts off most of her God-given long hair, colors that same hair in bright neon colors, defaces herself with multiple inane tattoos, pierces her nose, and attires herself in the trashiest manner one can imagine, it’s a clear indication that her mind and soul are not well.

Is it any wonder why so many American men are turning to the much more feminine, trim, and less abrasive Asian and Russian [and Ukrainian] women? I don’t necessarily support this kind of thing because I want Whites to marry and create families among their own kind (Russians are fine). But I understand why it’s occurring. American women have slowly driven themselves from the dating marketplace by their attitudes, conduct, obesity, and caustic nature. They have allowed themselves to be so badly duped by ultra-feminist and trans rhetoric that they’ve become insufferable.

Humans Are Wired to Make Judgments

Some are offended at these kinds of personal judgments of others. We’re supposed to be a polite society that doesn’t judge, right? Wrong! All of us judge, and most of us make them quickly upon meeting other people for the first time. Anyone who tells you that they don’t judge others is a liar and is virtue signaling.

The truth is, we’ve been hard wired to judge others. It’s simply a matter of recognizing patterns, learning from past mistakes, and having reality-based discernment which we are supposed to get better at as we get older. Many people don’t, and they’re just as gullible at 72 years of age as they were at 22. This is the value of having many experiences, both good and bad, in life. It makes us wiser and more cautious in all that we do – or at least it’s supposed to.

How Understanding Criminal Profiling Helps Us to Read People

When I was cop, it was drilled into us to not “racially profile.” This is right because we really don’t want cops stopping people on the roadway for no other reason than the color of their skin. But this doesn’t necessarily prevent cops from recognizing and finding a legitimate vehicle code violation in order to stop criminal gangsters on the roadway. It shouldn’t stop the beat cop who recognizes suspicious activity even if the persons are minorities. Why is that? It’s because cops are engaging in criminal profiling which is perfectly legal. This is quite different than racial profiling. Most people don’t understand this, and they wrongly view criminal profiling as no different than racial profiling.

Criminal profiling is based on repeated and observable patterns. In other words, when gangsters or other criminal types wear certain kinds of clothing, particularly colors such as blue and red, it fits a certain criminal profile that alerts the officer. It conveys important information to the officer. Based on this, the officer may find probable cause or reasonable suspicion to stop and contact the driver. This often leads to apprehending criminals who have warrants issued for their arrest, including probation violations which sends them immediately to jail.

Criminal profiling is based upon the millions of contacts officers throughout the country have had with gang members and hardened criminal types over the past many decades. As many people know, this was originally developed by the FBI years prior. They provided a framework in which to better understand the criminal mind, including distinctive patterns that help us to identify them. Some of these indicators are seen in how criminals attire themselves.

Yet, more than that, the patterns I refer to are innate within humans. They are part of our internal defense system that helps us to survive. Many people, unfortunately, ignore the signals our body gives us or refuse to develop and sharpen their skills at pattern recognition.

Hispanic gang members (“cholos”) as well as Black gang members (“crips” and “bloods”) dress a certain way that stands out from the rest of society. These are clear markers or indicators that this person is more than likely a criminal thug that an officer would be wise to pay attention to or find probable cause that would justify a stop or even a consensual encounter. Again, it’s a matter of recognizing repeatable patterns, and then making a judgment about the gathered information.

Part of understanding all of this is recognizing that no one puts on their daily clothes without thinking about it. None of it is accidental. Yes, there are persons who give little thought as to what they wear, but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t care if they dressed up like a clown or a disheveled hobo. Most of us attire ourselves a certain way because this is how we want to portray ourselves to others. Our clothes, then, serve as a reflection of ourselves and what we want others to think of us. Thus, when a gang member attires himself in a thuggish way or anyone else for that matter, they are sending a message. They are signaling to others. They are portraying themselves, as well as messaging their values and worldview (however slight it may be).

Most people don’t think about it much, but this is what is occurring. A corporate professional for a large city bank, for example, would not think of wearing cowboy boots and a cowboy hat to work. He wouldn’t wear pajamas to the office either. He knows he has an image he wants to project, one that comports with his vocation and the policies of his company.

Thus, when Americans dress like slobs it’s a peek inside their little world. It tells us something about them (though not everything, of course). It may only be suggestive, but it still provides some insight into the person. It may tell us that he or she is lazy or economically poor. It might also reflect the downward spiral of the society they are a part of. It may be an indicator of their narcissism. It might suggest there’s been an erosion of decency in that society, a national decline of sorts.

All of these are possible, although I am inclined toward the view that overall it’s indicative of America’s fall. Would you want these people in our military? Running a corporation? How—on such a large scale—can it be otherwise when one compares the current generation with prior generations? None of this happened in a vacuum. None of it was accidental. There is good reason to believe it was planned despite how conspiratorial it may sound to some people.

After decades of daily and intense liberal-left indoctrination from the media and almost every government entity, how could it not impact the way we dress and carry ourselves? Beginning in elementary school, American children are incrementally propagandized to think and act a certain way. Their entire worldview is manipulated to interpret the world around them in ways that agree with a Leftist and corrosive mindset. This continues when our children enter high school. The final process of indoctrination occurs when they enter college. Like the compliant and childish ‘Eloi’ in The Time Machine (1960), they naively drink from the poisonous well of liberal and Marxist rhetoric they’re taught by their professors. They’re quite content with it. They don’t challenge it in the least. It isn’t long before these same young White students begin to hate their race, their country, as well as mock all that’s good and beautiful. And this, in turn, expresses itself in how they dress and present themselves to others. Contemporary Leftism, then, destroys and makes ugly all that’s in its path. It can do no other because this is the nature of the Beast.

We can be certain, too, that the more depraved our society becomes, the more absurd and insane will be our fashion trends. What young White woman in the 1950s would want to dress the way our women do today? What young White man in the 1950s would want to emulate the lowest fashions and degrading practices of Blacks? I suspect there would have been very few, if any.

Times have changed, and not for the better. We have been feeling for decades the effects of the disastrous social and political changes that occurred beginning in the 1960s. One can see the downward progression by simply observing the clothing standards of each new decade. Current trends, sadly, indicate that it will only get worse. (read more)

The queen of all drag queens RuPaul has spoken out against legislation in states including Tennessee banning drag shows for children, arguing conservatives are trying to distract the public from more important problems.

“Drag queens are the Marines of the queer movement,” he added.

RuPaul called the bills  “a classic distraction technique” in an Instagram post Wednesday, while also encouraging his followers to donate to the ACLU.

“Hey, look over there! A classic distraction technique, distracting us away from the real issues that they were voted into office to focus on: jobs, healthcare, keeping our children safe from harm at their own school,” RuPaul said.

“But we know that bullies are incompetent at solving real issues. They look for easy targets so they can give the impression of being effective. They think our love, our light, our laughter and our joy are signs of weakness. But they’re wrong because that is our strength.”

He continued: “Drag queens are the Marines of the queer movement. Don’t get it twisted and don’t be distracted. Register to vote so we can get these stunt queens out of office and put some smart people with real solutions into government. And by the way, a social media post has never been as powerful as a registered vote.”

As Breitbart News reported, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) recently signed into law legislation that prohibits sex change operations, cross-sex hormone therapy, and puberty blockers for children who are attempting to transition, in addition to prohibiting drag performances on public property and in the presence of children.

Similar legislation is in the works in other states including Nebraska, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and South Carolina.

As a result, drag queens have become the left’s latest victim class, with the media portraying them as targets of anti-LGBTQ hate. The news media have also sought to portray drag queens as First Amendment pioneers, arguing attempts to halt drag shows for children infringe on their Constitutional rights. (read more)

Columbia, Harvard, the University of Chicago, Stanford, Mount Sinai, and the University of Pennsylvania have already done so. The list already tops forty, and more are sure to follow.

Of course, the universities won’t admit what they are doing – and certainly not why. All they will say is that their new standards add “equity” and “lived experience.”

Unfortunately, adding those factors inevitably lessens the weight given to others.

The harsh reality is medical schools are downplaying academic achievement and MCAT scores, which give the best evidence of how well students are prepared for medical school. The MCAT is specifically tailored for that purpose. In addition to a section on critical reasoning (similar to the SATs), it examines students on biology and biochemistry, organic chemistry, the physics of living systems, and the biological and psychological foundations of behavior. It’s easy to see how those relate directly to higher education in medical science. Yet med schools want to downplay them and add inherently subjective criteria like “lived experience.”

Med schools are especially eager to get rid of the MCATs. After years of evaluating admissions folders, they know they cannot meet their goals for minority enrollment if they retain their near-total emphasis on academic qualifications. They know, too, that standardized tests and grades leave a statistical trail. They want to kick dust over that trail before the Supreme Court’s expected ruling against affirmative action. They fear the statistics will show marked differences in admission rates for individuals from different groups who have similar scores and GPAs. That’s not a wild guess. Admission teams know the evidence from years of experience.

But dropping the tests, or making them optional, presents a thorny PR problem. Schools fear they would sink below competitors in national rankings, which include MCAT scores. So, they are doing what undergraduate colleges have already done. They are colluding. By withdrawing jointly from US News and World Report rankings, they hope to soften the blow to each one’s prestige. (It’s an interesting question whether this collusion violates anti-trust laws, as their collusion about scholarship awards did.)

What medical schools call “equity” and “lived experience” are code words for discrimination by racial category. They are using this word fog to cloud over four crucial but uncomfortable facts.

• First, today’s standardized tests are actually fair and unbiased. Medical schools don’t deny that. They know test makers have spent fortunes over the past half century to scrub their tests of any racial, cultural, or ethnic bias.

• Second, medical schools aren’t claiming the tests are poor predictors of performance. They can’t.

• Third, they know criteria like “equity” and “lived experience” are inherently subjective and opaque to outsiders. That’s their magic potion for admissions officers. These education bureaucrats are following the advice Humpty Dumpty gave in “Alice in Wonderland.” Alice asks him, “Must a name mean something?” And Humpty replies, “It means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.” Humpty Dumpty would be enthralled with code words like “lived experience” and “equity.” They mean exactly what Humpty and admissions officers choose them to mean – neither more nor less.

• Finally, by emphasizing non-academic “experience,” these schools are downplaying the reality that their applicants have already graduated college, most likely as science majors. That academic background is the most important “lived experience” for graduate study in any rigorous field, including medicine.

To implement the bias they prefer and do it secretly, medical schools are counting on public ignorance and apathy. When patients believe any subgroup of doctors has systematically higher or lower qualifications, they will take that into account. They do the same thing in choosing lawyers, dentists, accountants, and other professionals.

That may be unfair to any individual practitioner, but it’s inevitable. That’s because ordinary patients (or consumers) have no direct way of judging professional competence. They can only look for indirect (and imperfect) signs of a good doctor. Did she go to a top medical school, for instance, or practice at a teaching hospital? If they think it is harder for an outstanding Chinese-American undergraduate to gain admittance, they will reasonably guess she’s a better student and a more-qualified doctor. They may be wrong about that particular doctor, but it’s a sensible guess.

There’s a general ­– and inescapable – point here. When admissions, hiring, or promotion are influenced, either positively or negatively, because of group membership, when outsiders know that and cannot measure quality directly, they will see that “group membership” as a telltale sign of ability.

Are There Any Remedies?

When issues are as divisive as admissions bias and racial discrimination, it’s wise to begin with shared values. America needs lots of well-qualified doctors, and getting more from underrepresented groups is a worthy goal. Getting more African American doctors is especially important, both because of our country’s scarred racial history and because younger students need role models from all groups.

At the same time, these would-be physicians should be admitted and trained without any racial, religious, or ethnic bias, without hiding evidence of discrimination, and without using subterfuge to evade the law or public scrutiny.

Nor should medical schools ever require their applicants, as many do, to submit statements saying they adhere to a leftist vision of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” and will implement it as part of their medical education. That’s ideological bullying, and it has no place in education at any level. It should end immediately.

So should racial bias in admissions. There’s a good way to guard against it. No matter how heavily medical schools choose to rely on MCAT scores, they should require them of all applicants. The schools should be required to retain these scores for all applicants, whether they are admitted or rejected, along with all other relevant data about each applicant (after hiding each individual’s name for privacy). Those mandates will leave a clear statistical trail if legal challenges arise later.

Congress could easily pass such a law for schools that receive federal money. It won’t, not as long as Democrats control the Senate and the White House. Neither will like-minded federal bureaucracies. But the roadblocks in Washington shouldn’t prevent state legislatures from undertaking these actions for universities they fund. They can require all applicants to submit MCATs and grades, and they can require universities to retain them.

State legislatures shouldn’t stop there. They should pass similar laws for undergraduate admissions and for all graduate and professional programs, such as law schools, which are moving swiftly to make these tests optional for the same reasons medical schools are dropping them. Again, these mandates would not tell schools how much weight to give test scores or grades. But requiring their submission and retention would leave a clear statistical record, which rejected applicants could use if they believe they faced discrimination. That looming threat would have a bracing effect on university officials.

Second, medical schools should work hard to increase the number of strong minority applicants. One possibility is to launch intensive, one-year programs in the biosciences, aimed at promising college graduates from underrepresented groups (making sure they are consistent with anti-discrimination laws). Students in these enriched programs would be in a far better position to apply successfully to medical schools on a level playing field. Programs like this already exist for college graduates in the humanities and social sciences who later decide to pursue medical careers.

These intensive programs could offer either certificates or degrees (BA or MA), depending on their length and academic level. Some graduates would go on to medical school. Others would be qualified to begin professional positions in the biomedical sciences.

The fundamental problem here is reconciling three laudable goals: increasing the number of minority medical students, keeping academic standards high, and avoiding illegal discrimination.

It’s time to launch intensive programs that make the effort instead of watering down academic standards and pretending no one will notice. (read more)