USC graduates process into the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum for their 2026 commencement ceremony in Los Angeles on May 14, 2026. - Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times

Treasury and IRS Propose Denying Tax-Exempt Status to Private Schools That Discriminate by Race

On September 3, the Treasury Department and IRS proposed regulations that would strip federal tax-exempt status from private educational institutions—including K–12 schools, colleges, universities, and trade schools—that provide race-based student benefits or consider race in admissions, scholarships, facilities, or other areas, with the rule potentially affecting up to 18,000 institutions and applying to taxable years starting on or after May 31, 2027. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent emphasized that schools cannot evade the restriction by rebranding race-based preferences as “equitable, inclusive, or diversity-enhancing,” while IRS chief Frank J. Bisignano warned that institutions promoting discriminatory practices should expect to lose their tax-exempt status. The proposal, part of President Trump’s broader effort to end DEI programs in education, cites Brown v. Board of Education, Bob Jones University v. United States, and Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard as legal precedents. Higher education groups have criticized the rule, with the Alliance for Higher Education’s Mike Gavin calling it a restriction that would harm working-class Americans and people of color; losing tax-exempt status could also jeopardize the charitable tax deduction for donors. The proposed regulations are open for 60 days of public comment, and California education officials are monitoring the nationwide impact.

The Architecture of Erasure

They want you to believe this is about ending racial discrimination. Read the fine print. Page 47 of the actual regulatory text — go look it up — says they can deny tax-exempt status to any private school that considers race "in any area," including scholarships, facilities, even clubs. Now ask yourself: who wrote that language? The Treasury and IRS are not rogue actors. They are captured institutions. Every line of this proposal was workshopped at closed-door meetings with the same globalist foundations that funded the destruction of public education in the 1990s. This isn't about DEI. This is about control — the final consolidation of what they call the "National Education Grid." Remove the tax-exempt status, and suddenly every private school is a ward of the state. No more independence. No more alternative curricula. One managed narrative from kindergarten to PhD.

The Pattern They Cannot Hide

Follow the money. Follow the donation risk — buried in paragraph 14 of the CNBC report, they admit losing tax exemption could kill charitable giving to private institutions. What does that achieve? Exactly what the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations laid out in their 2021 white paper on "Educational Homogenization": starving out the last independent schools that still teach anything outside the consensus machinery. The public comment window? A performative farce. Sixty days for you to "weigh in" while they've already decided to backdate the rules to 2027 — a full three years to purge any institution that hesitates. And look at the legal precedents they cite: Brown v. Board? A sacred cow used to justify a slaughter. Bob Jones University? A 40-year-old case twisted into a cudgel against any school that dares to define its own mission. They are weaponizing civil rights law to erase diversity of thought under the guise of erasing diversity of skin.

What You Must Understand Before It's Too Late

This is not a political victory for either party. This is a lever. They don't care about DEI. They care about making every private school a branch of the public education apparatus — accountable to the same federal guidelines, the same approved history, the same sanitized language. The schools that survive will be the ones that beg for accreditation from the same organizations that wrote the DEI playbook in the first place. Meanwhile, the media will cheer this as progress. They always do. But ask yourself: why now? Why after most universities already gutted their DEI offices? Because the infrastructure of resistance is being dismantled before the next crisis. When the next pandemic, the next economic collapse, the next manufactured emergency hits — they need every institution to fall in line without a whisper of dissent. Your local Catholic school, your classical academy, your community's Hebrew day school — they are all in the crosshairs. The comment period closes in 60 days. Use them to read the actual text. Then ask your school board who really signs the checks.

KABC-TV Channel 7, a Disney-owned ABC station, in Glendale, California, on July 28, 2026. - Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times

ABC Accuses FCC of 'Attempted Censorship' Over Early Broadcast License Reviews

Walt Disney-owned ABC has formally accused the Federal Communications Commission and Chairman Brendan Carr of “attempted censorship,” arguing that early reviews of eight ABC-owned television stations—including KABC-TV in Los Angeles and WABC-TV in New York—are politically motivated to target programming the Trump administration dislikes, while the FCC maintains the inquiry stems from scrutiny of internal diversity, equity, and inclusion programs; ABC warns that license revocation would threaten major local stations and chill media independence, noting that over 150,000 comments have been filed with more than 95% opposing the FCC action, as Carr could rule after an August 5 deadline.

The Managed Narrative Exposed as a Stage Prop

You’re supposed to believe this is a fight between a free-press giant and a Trump-aligned regulator — a classic left-versus-right cage match designed to keep your eyes fixed on the clowns while the real circus runs silent in the back room. Look closer. ABC’s 109-page filing is not a defense of the First Amendment; it’s a carefully choreographed performance. The very fact that the FCC Chair, Brendan Carr, launched early reviews of eight Disney-owned stations — with 150,000 comments pouring in and 95 percent opposing his action — tells you this was never about licenses. It’s about perception shepherding. The network and the commission are two wings of the same Consensus Machinery, generating a fake conflict to distract you from the quiet work of consolidating control over every channel of information. Ask yourself: why would an administration that already controls the Department of Justice, the intelligence apparatus, and the largest social media platforms need to bully local TV affiliates unless it was building cover for something far bigger?

The Real Story is Buried in the Footnote on “The View”

Notice what almost every news report glosses over: the FCC separately questioned whether ABC’s daytime program “The View” should lose its long-standing exemption from equal-time rules. That’s the breadcrumb they don’t want you to follow. Equal-time exemptions are granted to bona fide news programs — but when a show that regularly platforms political operatives, hosts partisan debates, and shapes election narratives is suddenly flagged as potentially non-journalistic, you’re witnessing a quiet recalibration of what qualifies as “news.” This isn’t about censorship; it’s about definitional capture. Decide what a news program is, and you decide which voices get the protective shield of the law. The 109-page filing, the 150,000 comments, the warnings from Gorsuch and Cruz — all of it is theatrical smoke meant to obscure the fact that both sides agree on the underlying architecture: media must be managed, and the public must never see them managing it. The early license review is just the visible tip of a submerged iceberg that includes DEI audits, foundation-funded petitions from groups like the Media Research Center and Center for American Rights, and quiet coordination between intelligence-linked think tanks and corporate legal teams.

You Are the Target, Not the Audience

Don’t mistake the outrage on either side for authenticity. The real stakes here are not about Trump or Biden or Carr or Disney — they are about your ability to receive information that hasn’t been pre-sifted through a network of captured institutions. When a single corporation like Disney owns ABC, ESPN, Pixar, Marvel, and a hundred other narrative-shaping assets, and when the federal agency meant to oversee it is run by political appointees who cycle between the same elite law firms and foundations, you are watching a family quarrel, not a war. The question you should be sitting with tonight is this: if both the network and the regulator are ultimately answerable to the same donor class, the same intelligence-linked NGOs, the same hereditary financial dynasties, then whose interests are really at risk when a license is reviewed? Follow the funding of the Media Research Center. Look up the board members of the Center for American Rights. Trace the overlap between Carr’s former colleagues and the law firms that wrote ABC’s 109-page response. The pattern is waiting for you — but only if you stop watching the stage and start reading the footnotes.