<[Event "21st World Open"] [Site "Philadelphia PA"]
[Date "1993.07.04"]
[EventDate "1993"]
[Round "7"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
[White "Wolff, Patrick"]
[Black "Zapata, Alonso"]
[ECO "B46"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

By the bye: in my opinion, this kid is going places.

<[Event "US Amateur Team East"] [Site "Parsippany NJ"]
[Date "2026.02.16"]
[EventDate "2026"]
[Round "6.27"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
[White "Shaw, Alan"]
[Black "Shen, Leo"]
[ECO "A33"]
[WhiteElo "2200"]
[BlackElo "2247"]

<The Trump administration is unlawfully trying to force universities and colleges nationwide to release large collections of "sensitive student information," a federal lawsuit filed on Wednesday alleged.

In August 2025, President Donald Trump issued a memorandum outlining an effort to track "consideration of race in higher education admissions." That same day, Department of Education Secretary Linda McMahon announced a sweeping change in how institutions of higher education must report student data to the federal government.

For decades, basic statistical data was reported through the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS). After McMahon's directive, however, schools are required to "report data disaggregated by race and sex relating to applicant pool, admitted cohort, and enrolled cohort at the undergraduate level and for specific graduate and professional programs." In other words, such scholastic data is now granular – and broken down by race, gender, GPA, test scores, income level, and academic program.

In December 2025, those plans went into effect – following a formal administrative process, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued the Admissions and Consumer Transparency Supplement (ACTS) to the underlying IPEDS regime.

Sign up for the Law&Crime Daily Newsletter for more breaking news and updates The plaintiffs, in their 43-page lawsuit, say the new process goes too far and threatens to reveal students' "highly personal information," including their identities in some cases, all in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), the federal statute governing the behavior of, and lawsuits against, administrative agencies.

"The IPEDS ACTS survey is unprecedented in scope, seeking a vast array of disaggregated data from the 2025-2026 academic year and six prior years," the lawsuit reads. "Never before has IPEDS sought retroactive data; never before has IPEDS sought such a vast array of disaggregated data; and never before has the Department of Education so quickly effected a major change to IPEDS."

That demand for institutions of higher education – in terms of breadth, scope, and the timeline involved – is gargantuan to the point of causing "harm" now and moving forward, the plaintiffs say.

"Standing alone, the sheer amount of data sought through the ACTS survey would place a considerable burden on [schools]," the lawsuit goes on. "Here, however, that burden is compounded through the expedited timeline which [schools] have to compile that data and the error-ridden and confusing process implemented by the Department of Education to collect it."

And it's not just the large scale of the new data demands that has upset the plaintiffs, including several states led in part by New York Attorney General Letitia James, over the new data collection demands.

On top of the administrative burden, the Trump administration is trying to turn "a trusted data source for universities, lawmakers, and the public" into a political weapon as part of the "focus on DEI [as] a policy goal," according to the lawsuit.

The plaintiffs argue the defendants "seek to fundamentally change IPEDS, converting it from a reliable tool for methodical statistical reporting to a mechanism for law enforcement and the furthering of partisan policy aims."

The lawsuit also alleges the "new IPEDS ACTS survey is not a data collection developed using rigorous statistical methodology; rather, it is a fishing expedition to obtain onerous, extra-court discovery on the admissions practices of IHEs across the country."

These efforts violate multiple federal laws, the lawsuit insists

"The IPEDS ACTS survey is contrary to law, exceeds statutory authority, and failed to observe the procedure required by law," the complaint goes on. "[The agency's statistics-gathering sub-agencies] have statutory mandates, and neither is authorized to collect data to further partisan political ends, as the Defendants propose here. Second, the Paperwork Reduction Act sets forth multiple requirements for data collections by agencies. These requirements are mandated by statute and cannot be overcome by executive fiat."

The plaintiffs argue that despite the OMB using the formal administrative process to push the new survey, the government effectively paid lip service to APA requirements without following the administrative rules required for such a "dramatic change."....>

<....From the lawsuit, at length:

Whereas past changes to IPEDS data collection methods have undergone rigorous advance vetting to ensure they will not unduly burden IHEs, this dramatic overhaul of IPEDS occurred virtually overnight. At no time during the initial notice-and-comment period did the Defendants alert universities to the actual changes to IPEDS that would be sought. The survey ultimately implemented by Defendants evinces that they did not consider the reliance interests and concerns set forth in the many comments detailing just how onerous the contemplated changes to IPEDS would be.

In other words, the lawsuit claims the Trump administration glossed over the procedure to rush the new survey through and force it on institutions of higher education.

But, the lawsuit further argues, the threats are not empty.

"Completing IPEDS is mandated by statute, and educational institutions face hefty fines and other serious consequences, including potential loss of federal funding, if they fail to submit timely and complete data through IPEDS," the lawsuit continues. "[Schools] face an untenable dilemma: quickly compiling data they typically would have years to collect and submit, all the while knowing that the data may suffer from inconsistencies given the haste with which it has been prepared and the lack of guidance from the Department of Education on what key definitions and data elements mean."

The plaintiffs say the hasty implementation of the new survey has left schools "with the question of how to protect students' privacy, at the same time that they face the risks of hefty fines and loss of federal funding."

"The consequences from the Defendants' sloppy implementation of the IPEDS ACTS survey are therefore severe: [schools] will face costly investigations based on unreliable data," the filing goes on.

The three-count lawsuit seeks an injunction to nix the fast-approaching March 18 due date for the new IPEDS ACTS survey.

"Once again, this administration is trying to stretch the federal government's authority to serve its own political agenda and target DEI initiatives," James said in a statement announcing the litigation. "Colleges and universities should not be forced to turn over massive amounts of sensitive student data to satisfy another witch hunt. We are going to court to stop this unlawful mandate and protect institutions and students across the country.">

<The war in Iran is threatening to split the conservative movement, dividing it between those who see it as Donald Trump’s breaking of a promise against new wars and those who see it as a necessary confrontation long overdue.

Progressives, predictably, frame it as another Middle Eastern adventure driven by Israel. Anti-war libertarians call it regime change in a new dress.

And across the world, from Brazil to Beijing, London to Karachi, the argument is the same: America is fighting Israel’s war.

But this isn’t true. And the confusion matters, because if you misread what this war is actually about, you will misread everything that follows.

This is not a war about Israel. This is not a war for Israel’s sake. Israel is a beneficiary, a capable and willing local partner, but it is not the reason America is in this fight. America is playing a much bigger game, about more than what happens in the Middle East. The subtext, that Israel exercises outsize influence or ‘drags Americans into wars they don’t want’, borders on the conspiratorial.

This isn’t one war, but two.

Two Geopolitical Chessboards Shape the Conflict

There is a regional chessboard, on which Israel, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the other Gulf states all play. Iran’s proxies, its drones and ballistic missiles, its nuclear ambitions, its funding of Hezbollah and the Houthis. All of that belongs primarily to this smaller game. Israel has always understood this board. So have the Saudis. So has everyone in the neighbourhood.

But there is a second chessboard, vastly larger, on which the United States and China are the primary players. On this board, the central question of the next 30 years is being worked out: whether the American-led global order survives, or whether China displaces it. Every American foreign policy decision, from the pivot to Asia to the tariff wars to the posture in the Pacific, is ultimately a move on this board.

America is in this fight because of China. Specifically, it is about dismantling the most significant Chinese forward base outside of East Asia.

Iran, for most of its history as an adversary of the United States, existed only on the smaller board. It was a headache. It was a regional destabiliser. It funded terrorism, harassed shipping, threatened America’s allies, and kept the Middle East expensive and unpredictable.

Iran’s Shift From Regional Problem to Strategic Factor

But it was not, in any direct sense, a threat to American primacy on the global stage. It was Israel’s problem, the Gulf states’ problem, and only tangentially Washington’s.

That changed when Iran made one of the most consequential strategic miscalculations of the century.

Squeezed by decades of American sanctions and increasingly isolated, Iran turned to China as its economic lifeline. The relationship deepened rapidly.

Today, roughly 90 per cent of Iran’s crude oil exports go to China, processed through Chinese refineries that operate beyond the reach of American sanctions enforcement. That oil revenue supplies around a quarter of Iran’s budget, a huge portion of which is spent on its military forces. Without Beijing, the regime cannot pay its security forces, cannot subsidise basic goods, and would soon face the kind of internal collapse that its own ideology has spent 40 years trying to prevent.

In other words, Iran has become – has made itself – utterly dependent on China.

China, for its part, was not being charitable. It was being strategic. Iranian oil, sold cheaply because Tehran has no other buyers, has helped Beijing build a strategic petroleum reserve exceeding a billion barrels, enough to sustain the Chinese economy for roughly 100 days in the event of a naval blockade.

Iranian Oil as Beijing’s Strategic Hedge

China’s single greatest vulnerability is the American Navy’s ability to interdict its energy imports, especially at vulnerable choke points like the Malacca Straits. Iranian oil, flowing outside American oversight, was a direct hedge against that vulnerability. (So, by the way, was Venezuela’s, another US operation that was ultimately about containing China.)

But the energy relationship was only part of the picture. China was also arming Iran with systems designed to threaten commercial and American military assets.

Reports emerged in February of a near-finalised deal to supply Iran with supersonic anti-ship cruise missiles capable of speeds exceeding Mach 3 and engineered to evade the Aegis defence systems deployed on American carrier strike groups....>

<....China was replacing Iranian government and military software with closed Chinese systems, hardening Iran against CIA and Mossad cyber operations. Joint naval exercises between China, Russia, and Iran in the Strait of Hormuz were becoming regular events, building real-time operational familiarity between the three navies.

Iran had switched from the GPS system to the Chinese BeiDou system. And Iran was providing China with the port at Jask, as part of China’s ‘string of pearls’ base system in the Indian Ocean.

The picture that emerges from all of this is, as I have said, of a Chinese forward base, a lynchpin of the country’s naval architecture; cyber efforts; an economic Belt and Road influence programme – every element of Chinese power projection and empire-building – positioned at the throat of the global oil supply, armed with weapons designed to penetrate American defences and kill American sailors, and embedded in a strategic architecture whose explicit purpose is to constrain American military freedom in any future conflict over Taiwan.

Iran’s Transformation Into a Direct US Strategic Concern

When Iran began to look like that, it stopped being Israel’s problem and became America’s.

The administration itself has struggled to explain this, and it’s not clear why.

On March 2, Secretary of State Marco Rubio explained that the US had launched pre-emptive strikes against Iran because the administration knew an Israeli attack was imminent and wanted to prevent ‘automatic’ Iranian retaliation against American bases. He said intelligence showed Iran had pre-delegated orders to military commanders to strike US assets the moment the regime was attacked by any party.

Rubio emphasised that the US chose to destroy Iran’s offensive capabilities first rather than ‘sit there and absorb a blow’ that would have resulted in higher damage to American personnel.

It’s hard to take this explanation at face value. If the trigger was simply an Israeli strike, America could have told the Israelis to sit tight. It’s done it before, repeatedly and even recently.

And it doesn’t fit the nature of the war. For one thing, American media reports tell us that America, not Israel, chose the timing.

Reliable sources tell us the CIA, not Mossad, tracked Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to the Saturday meeting of Iranian military leaders struck by Israel, and Trump, not Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, pulled the trigger on the joint attack.

The Americans went to war together with the Israelis because that’s the best way to fight a war like this.

The Strategic Value of Local Allies in Modern Warfare

Having a capable and loyal local ally willing to deal damage and absorb blowback lowers the costs to America and increases the chances of success. If America ever finds itself in a kinetic fight with China, it presumably expects Japan and Taiwan and South Korea to play a similar role in the fighting.

But American forces have used this operation to target Iranian military positions and assets that have nothing to do with the Israeli-Iranian face-off.

In the first 24 hours of the war, American strikes, as confirmed by US Central Command (CENTCOM), focused on Iranian naval vessels, submarines, ports, and anti-ship missile positions along the southern coast.

The port of Bandar Abbas, headquarters of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy, was hit. So was Jask, which China had hoped would become a permanent naval foothold on the Indian Ocean. Isfahan and Tabriz, hubs of ballistic missile production and drone assembly, were struck.

The goal, explicitly stated by US officials, was not merely to degrade stockpiles but to destroy the industrial base from which those weapons are produced, so China cannot spend the next few years quietly rebuilding it.

President Trump announced the operation in terms that could not have been more direct, explicitly mentioning elements of Iranian power – the navy, the missile production sites – that would serve as that second front in a war with China.

Russia and China Avoid Direct Involvement

One of the more revealing subplots of this war has been the behaviour of Iran’s supposed allies. Russia signed a comprehensive strategic partnership with Iran in January of last year. China has been Iran’s economic patron for years. And yet when the bombs started falling, neither moved.

Russian radar systems in Syria went dark, transponders reportedly switched off, apparently to avoid accidentally drawing American or Israeli fire. China issued statements. Neither fired a shot in Iran’s defence.

This matters beyond the immediate moment. The entire architecture of the alternative world order that China has been constructing – BRICS (the Belt and Road Initiative), the network of partnerships meant to demonstrate there is a credible alternative to American-led institutions – rests on the assumption that China is a reliable partner....>

<....Every government, from Central Asia to sub-Saharan Africa to Latin America, is now watching China leave its closest Middle Eastern ally to burn. That is a blow to Chinese soft power that no diplomatic offensive can easily repair. It is an American success that will be felt for years, irrespective of how the Iran operation turns out.

America, meanwhile, has demonstrated something important: that it retains both the will and the capability to act decisively when its core interests are genuinely threatened. Not Israel’s interests. Not abstract liberal internationalist ideals. American interests, defined coldly and specifically.

None of this means the war is without risk. Strikes on Saudi oil infrastructure, Houthi threats to close the Bab el Mandeb Straits, the escalation in Lebanon: these are real dangers, and the costs of miscalculation are enormous.

Why Washington Now Sees Iran as a Strategic Threat

Iran, aware that it is facing an existential moment, is doing what cornered regimes do, setting as many fires as possible in the hope that the pain forces a negotiated exit. And we cannot forget the risk shouldered by Israeli civilians.

But the logic of the American position is not difficult to follow once you’re looking at the right chessboard. Iran embedded itself so deeply in China’s strategic architecture over the past couple of years that removing it became a prerequisite for American freedom of action in East Asia.

This is also why President Trump seems to be pursuing a strange sort of regime change – something very different from what George W. Bush or the neocons meant by the term.

Trump doesn’t care one whit about democratisation, or, as Venezuela showed us, about changing any element of a regime that doesn’t stand in America’s way.

He’s interested in regime change in Iran only because it is, in its founding theology, unswervingly anti-American. It is thus not swayable from the Chinese orbit by any other means. He doesn’t need a democratic Iran, he just needs a not-anti-American Iran.

It must be said: Israel is also at war with Iran, and has focused its strikes on Iranian targets that specifically threaten Israel, such as the ballistic missile launchers.

But there are nevertheless two different wars underway in Iran, each taking place on very different strategic scales.

The Administration’s Reluctance to State Its Strategy

The best-case scenario that could emerge from this war is a stable, democratic-leaning, US-orientated Iran, a more secure Gulf, a weakened Hezbollah and thus a more stable and successful Lebanon, a more secure Israel – and above all, a China less able to threaten America’s Pacific allies.

None of that is nation-building. There is no Marshall Plan in the wings, no democratic project, no idealism of the kind that animated the adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is colder and more coherent. So why can’t Secretary Rubio say it? Why hem and haw?

One obvious answer: they don’t want to push the Chinese to more overt responses. One should always give one’s enemy an excuse not to respond in kind. It’s a sensible ambiguity on the world stage, but it’s causing damage at home. It may be time for the administration to speak clearly on its strategy – in articulated statements that answer the good-faith questions of many Americans.

Once you understand the real reasons for America to strike now, everything else about this conflict clicks into place. The loudest voices in the debate are still arguing about the smaller chessboard. The war is being fought on the larger one.>

<[Event "21st World Open"] [Site "Philadelphia PA"]
[Date "1993.06.29"]
[EventDate "1993"]
[Round "1"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
[White "Salman, Joel"]
[Black "Shipman, Walter"]
[ECO "D36"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

<[Event "First Boston Futurity"] [Site "Boston Mass"]
[Date "1981.05.01"]
[EventDate "1981"]
[Round "7"]
[Result "0-1"]
[White "Rizzitano, James"]
[Black "Dymond, David"]
[ECO "A56"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]