A January 2, 2026 PBS NewsHour interview with Richard Grenell, President Trump’s choice to lead the now renamed Trump-Kennedy Center was a classic lesson in evasiveness.
According to The New Yorker, Kennedy Center staff and others often liken Grenell to Grendel, the “powerful demon, a prowler through the dark” in Beowulf. In his PBS interview, he showed he has another talent.
Richard Grenell
Co-Anchor Amna Nawaz led off with a direct question, asking him to respond to a report that a number of artists had chosen to cancel or pull out of performances at the Center because of the president’s takeover of the Center’s board and the renaming of the Kennedy Center.
“Chocolate milk,” Grenell replied.
Well, not exactly.
That’s how I characterize non-answers.
Grenell might as well have said “chocolate milk” because his response completely ignored the question and immediately veered off into an allegation that NewsHour had consistently failed to cover the Center’s finances.
“At the Trump-Kennedy Center, we have 19 unions. It’s incredibly expensive to go and put on performances,” he whined. “We cannot have unpopular programming that doesn’t pay the bills.”
“How about ticket sales at the Center.,” Nawas asked. ‘Are ticket sales down? Is that confirmed or not?”
Grenell’s response. “I find it to be outrageous that PBS is not reporting on the phenomenon that arts institutions have been having for decades. Since President Trump has arrived at the now Trump-Kennedy Center, we have raised more than $130 million, blowing away all other fund-raising, and that’s corporate donors who are coming back because they trust the programming.”
In other words, “Chocolate milk”.
And so it went, on and on.
Nawas said, “Viewership for the Kennedy Center Honors were down dramatically. Does that — as a steward of this institution, does all of this, the backlash, the headlines about artists pulling out, the fact that so few people paid attention to the Honors, does that worry you?”
Grenell: “If you go to CBS, they will tell you that the CBS Trump-Kennedy Center Honors this year tied for number one in its demographic.” In other words, it did well with a specific segment of the tv audience in that time period, not total viewers.
In other words, “Chocolate milk”.
Politicians have long evaded media questions, but Trump and his minions have raised it to an art form, figuring there’s little or no downside these days to giving a word salad answer or sequeing to a completely unrelated topic.
Donald Trump himself is the role model for his administration in this behavior.
His stream-of-consciousness speaking style, involving long seemingly unscripted statements that veer from topic to topic, is a practiced deceit allowing him to avoid directly answering questions. He has referred to his meandering speaking style as the purposeful “weave”. In his case, however, it could just as well be a rambling sign of muddled thinking and cognitive decline.
This is a frightening sign of where we are headed as a country. It reminds me of the extermination and concentration camps established in occupied Poland as part of the “Final Solution” during the Holocaust. Are ICE officers going to oversee these American warehouses like the family of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss in The Zone of Interest (2023), enjoying their idyllic life right beside the horror?
Piece by piece, President Donald Trump is dismantling America’s representation and reputation around the world.
With about 80 U.S. ambassador posts worldwide already vacant, the Trump administration has abruptly recalled nearly 30 career ambassadors at U.S. embassies around the world. They’ve been directed to vacate their posts by Jan. 15 or 16, 2026. Most of the affected ambassadors are at diplomatic posts in Africa, but the removals are also impacting posts in Europe,
Africa was hit the hardest, with about a dozen ambassadors or chiefs of mission recalled from Niger, Uganda, Senegal, Somalia, Côte d’Ivoire, Mauritius, Nigeria, Gabon, Congo, Burundi, Cameroon, and Rwanda. In the Middle East, heads of mission were recalled from Egypt and Algeria. European chiefs of mission were also recalled from Slovakia, Montenegro, Armenia and North Macedonia.
A senior department official told the Journal the recall was part of a standard process to reassess ambassadors in any administration and that it’s the president’s right to ensure he has envoys in place who advance his foreign-policy agenda.
The damage done by the vacancies is compounded by the questionable quality of some of Trump’s ambassadors who are already confirmed .
For example, Herschel Walker, a former professional football player who ran unsuccessfully as the Republican party’s nominee in the 2022 U.S. Senate election in Georgia, is Trump’s s ambassador to the Bahamas. Then there’s Charles Kushner, a disbarred attorney who in 2005 was convicted of illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion and witness tampering, and who happens to be the father of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Charles Kushner is Trump’s Ambassador to France and Monaco. And there’s Kimberly Guilfoyle, Trump’s Ambassador to Greece. She’s a former Fox News personality and Donald Trump Jr.s ex- fiancée.
The American Foreign Service Association (AFSA) , which represents the U.S. foreign service and career diplomats, said the recall represents “a steady erosion of norms, transparency, and professional independence in the Foreign Service.”
“Abrupt, unexplained recalls reflect the same pattern of institutional sabotage and politicization our survey data shows is already harming morale, effectiveness, and U.S. credibility abroad,” AFSA said.
The United States is going to pay a steep price for President Trump’s reckless moves undermining our country’s diplomatic authority.
“Go back to where you came from”, he said to the Somali immigrants in Minnesota, employing an insulting slur unacceptable in polite society.
Last week Trump said on his social media channel, Truth Social, he’d send Somalis “back to where they came from.” Yesterday he said Somalis in the U.S. should “go back to where they came from and fix it.”
A person familiar with Trump’s plans told the Associated Press federal authorities are preparing a targeted immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota that would primarily focus on Somali immigrants living unlawfully in the U.S.
At a cabinet meeting yesterday, Trump said Somalis “contribute nothing.”
“I don’t want them in our country,” a snarling Trump told reporters. “Their country is no good for a reason. Your country stinks and we don’t want them in our country.”
I remember hearing that taunt directed at minorities by racist know-nothings in my youth in the 1950s, but I thought people had long ago been shamed from uttering it.
Trump, however, seems to enjoy denigrating “the other”.
Trump’s own Equal Employment Opportunity Commission cites “Go back to where you came from,” as an example of unlawful workplace conduct, along with the use of “insults, taunting, or ethnic epithets”.
I suppose in some respects nobody should really be surprised by Trump’s insults. That’s his modus operandi. Demean and slander his opponents, particularly those he deems not “real” Americans. And his supporters often embrace his scurrilous attacks.
He even goes after members of Congress with abandon. He has described Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, (D-Minn), who came to the United States from Somalia as a refugee and became a citizen 25 years ago, as “garbage.”
“We could go one way or the other, and we’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country,” Trump said. “She’s garbage. Her friends are garbage.”
And Trump’s recent explicit use of hateful speech is not original or unprecedented. It was a feature, not a bug, of his campaigns for office.
An analysis published by Presidential Studies Quarterly[1] , cited by the National Library of Medicine, concluded that “no other comparable candidate of either major US party has ever approached the level of negativity and vitriol toward racial/ethnic minorities that Trump did.”
A Washington Post column today by George Will is headlined “A sickening moral slum of an administration”.
Indeed.
[1] Çinar I, Stokes S, Uribe A. Presidential rhetoric and populism. Presidential Studies Quarterly. 2020;50(2):240–263. doi: 10.1111/psq.12656. [DOI] [Google Scholar]
Black Friday is probably going to turn into Bleak Friday for some credit users at Oregon retailers.
“When it Comes to West Coast Furniture Stores, We Have the Best Prices in Home Furniture,” Mor Furniture says on its website. On Nov. 26, the site is highlighting: “IN-STORE ONLY. No interest with equal monthly payments for 61 months on purchases of $6000 or more made with your Mor Furniture credit card. Equal monthly payments required for 61 months. Learn more.”
If you’re not careful, it could be a costly trap
Let’s say you buy furniture that costs $6,800. The monthly payment due for 61 months, Mor told me, would be $112.00. BUT, if you still owe any of the $6800 at the end of the 61 months, even $1, Mor Furniture will charge you interest on the full $6800 at a 35.99% rate starting from the purchase date.
Do the math. The total interest on an amortized $6800 loan paid off in 61 months at an annual interest rate of 35.99% would be approximately $7,422.39, more than the cost of the furniture itself. In other words, that furniture will cost you $6,800 + $7,422.39, a total of $14,222.
Shop at Key Home Furnishings and you will encounter the same problem if you don’t pay off your entire purchase price in the time required.“No interest will be charged on the promo balance if you pay it off, in full, within the promo period.,” Key says. “If you do not, interest will be charged on the promo balance from the purchase date. The promo balance is equal to the promo purchase amount and any related optional debt cancellation fees. “
Wayfair credit card financing also offers 0% interest options for a set period (e.g., 6, 12, or 24 months) on qualifying purchases, but if you don’t pay the balance in full before the promotional period ends, you will be charged retroactive interest on the entire original purchase amount at a high APR.
A perceptive consumer observed on Reddit, “One really has to study a business structure. They aren’t furniture dealers first, they are credit companies first, predatory lenders that have attached a tangible item or service to their scheme.”
It’s worth noting that deferred financial schemes are not restricted to furniture stores. Numerous other retailers offer it, too.
For example, Car Toys, a specialty car audio and mobile electronics retailer, promotes “No interest if paid in full within promotional period” but “Interest will be charged to your account from the purchase date if their purchase balance is not paid in full within the promotional period.”
Window company Renewal by Andersen can trap consumers, too. NO MONEY DOWN, NO MONTHLY PAYMENTS, NO INTEREST FOR 12 MONTHS* its website says. Then it adds, “*Interest is billed during promo period but will be waived if the amount financed is paid in full before promo period expires.’
Anybody can be caught in these credit schemes, but the people most likely to be vulnerable are consumers with lower credit scores who suffer a job loss or medical emergency that makes it hard to pay off the balance, triggering the retroactive interest charge.
The now beleaguered federal Consumer Finance Protection Bureau cautions all consumers to know the difference betweenzero interest and deferred interest, because the differences can have big effects on your wallet.
A zero percent interest promotion will not add interest based on the balance of your purchase during the promotional period. If you still have an unpaid balance when the promotional period is over, you will start to pay interest on the remaining balance only from the date the promotional period ends.
In contrast, some retailers offer financing such as “No interest if paid in full in 12 months.” That’s when you need to be wary because it usually means the promotion is a deferred interest offer.
The largest U.S. military presence in the Caribbean in decades is now operating, with nearly 20% of the Navy’s deployed warships in the region, according to a Stars and Stripes’ analysis. The deployment also includes the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit based in Camp Lejeune and Marine Corps Air Base New River. The 22nd MEU consists of Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 263 (Reinforced), Combat Logistics Battalion 26 and the Battalion Landing Team, 3rd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment.
Other American aircraft, including an AC-130J Ghostrider, an Air Force gunship designed for close air support, air interdiction and armed reconnaissance, have been spotted operating in El Salvador. The aircraft, known for being the most heavily armed gunship in history, “plays a critical role in supporting ground operations, providing close air support to troops in contact, conducting armed reconnaissance missions, and engaging enemy targets” according to The Aviationist.
An AC-130J Ghostrider being refueled
The New York Times has reported that U.S. officials ran a war game during President Trump’s first term to assess what the Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro’s fall might unleash. “The results showed that chaos and violence were likely to erupt within Venezuela, as military units, rival political factions and even jungle-based guerrilla groups jockeyed for control of the oil-rich country.”
Nevertheless, asked if he would rule out U.S. troops on the ground in Venezuela, Trump said on Monday “No, I don’t rule out that, I don’t rule out anything.”
And then, of course, no matter what happens, will it matter? Mary Speck, former executive director of the Western Hemisphere Drug Policy Commission, wrote today in the Dispatch, “The United States—for all its military might—cannot defeat “narco-terrorism” unilaterally by ousting a corrupt and brutal dictator. Whatever the end game of the U.S. military deployment in the Caribbean, the region’s drug cartels have nothing to fear.”.
“What is the balance of risk? ,” opinion columnist Bret Stephens wrote in November 19s New York Times. “Unintended consequences must be weighed against the predictable risks of inaction…And Trump’s hesitation will be read, especially in Moscow and Beijing, as a telling signal of weakness that can only embolden them, just as President Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan did.”
“Any morally serious person should want this to end,” Stephens opined. “The serious question is whether American intervention would make things even worse.”
As Puck observed on Nov. 20, “Trump’s plan for Venezuela may be a mystery even to himself. “I think he thinks about what will make him look tough, but he doesn’t think much beyond that,” said John Bolton. “He never does.”
What does the Trump administration want to achieve in this dramatic effort and what will be the cost? America waits.
U.S. Forces Now in the Caribbean
Up to 15,000 U.S. troops are in the area.
USS Newport News SSN-750Four F/A-18E/F Super Hornets, assigned to Strike Fighter Squadrons 31, 37, 87, and 213 from embarked Carrier Air Wing Eight aboard USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78), and a U.S. Air Force B-52 Stratofortress operate as a joint force with the Gerald R. Ford, Nov. 13, 2025. US Navy photo
The “Tomcatters” of Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 31 – F/A-18E – from Naval Air Station Oceana, Va.
The “Ragin Bulls” of VFA 37 – F/A-18E – from Naval Air Station Oceana.
The “Golden Warriors” of VFA 87 – F/A-18E – from Naval Air Station Oceana.
The “Black Lions” of VFA 213 – F/A-18F – from Naval Air Station Oceana.
The “Gray Wolves” of Electronic Attack Squadron (VAQ) 142 – EA-18G – from Naval Air Station Whidbey Island, Wash.
The “Bear Aces” of Airborne Command and Control Squadron (VAW) 124 – E-2D – from Naval Air Station Norfolk, Va.
The “Rawhides” of Fleet Logistics Squadron (VRC) 40 Det. – C-2A – from Naval Air Station Norfolk.
The “Spartans” of Helicopter Maritime Strike Squadron (HSM) 70 – MH-60R – from Naval Air Station Jacksonville, Fla.
The “Tridents” of Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron (HSC) 9 – MH-60S – from Naval Air Station Norfolk.
Carrier Air Wing 8
USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) with 9 embarked squadrons of Carrier Air Wing EightArleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyerUSS Bainbridge (DDG 96)Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Mahan (DDG 72)Air and missile defense command ship USS Winston S. Churchill (DDG 81)
Littoral combat ship USS Wichita (LCS-13)
Guided missile cruiser USS Lake Erie (CG – 70)
Wasp-class amphibious assault ship USS Iwo Jima (LHD-7)
Amphibious transport dock ship USS Fort Lauderdale (LPD-28)
Amphibious transport dock ship USS San Antonio (LPD-17)
Guided missile destroyer USS Gravely (DDG-107)
Guided missile destroyer USS Stockdale (DDG-106)
“Militarily, the table is set quite effectively for air strikes,” retired Navy Adm. James Stavridis, who led U.S. Southern Command, or SOUTHCOM, from 2006 to 2009, recently told Task & Purpose. “Now it’s up to [President Trump] to decide.”
Politicians running deceptive political fundraising campaigns can’t count on hiding in the dark.
A case in point.
Earlier this year I started getting bombarded with high-intensity inflammatory emails, such as one urging me to support President Trump’s use of the Insurrection Act and another telling me, “Without mandatory voter ID in ALL 50 states, your vote will be replaced by an illegal alien”. And, of course, every email asked for a contribution.
I noticed none of the emails actually listed a political candidate associated with it, just something called Bill PAC. It turned out BILL PAC is a political action committee associated with William C. (Bill) Eigel, a conservative former state senator from the 23rd District in Missouri’s St. Charles County who’s now seeking the post of St. Charles County Executive. Some more digging revealed he’s running a deceptive national fundraising campaign targeting vulnerable seniors.
Those stories came to the attention of Rudi Keller, Deputy Editor of The Missouri Independent, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization covering state government, politics and policy. It’s an affiliate of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization. The Capitol Chronicle in Oregon is part of the network.
Keller took a more exhaustive look at Eigel’s BILL PAC and wrote a story that ran today in the Missouri Independent and The States Newsroom. His in-depth story further exposed the deceptive tactics of Eigel’s BILL PAC:
Former State Sen. Bill Eigel of Weldon Spring, shown in a 2024 photo, is using recurring donations from across the country to finance his bid for St. Charles County executive (Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent).
Keller exposed how people across the country, overwhelmingly seniors, are being lured into contributing to BILL PAC, unaware that it is supporting a local Missouri Republican, not a national conservative campaign.
A retired man from Reston, VA, a consistent donor to Republican state and federal candidates and committees, made an astonishing 65 separate online donations to BILL PAC, according to reports submitted to the Missouri Ethics Commission in 2025.
Keller tracked down some donors who had unwittingly committed to monthly recurring donations.
A retired woman in Texas has contributed $1,205 in 74 separate donations since December. All are about the same dates each month.
A 92-year-old Korean War veteran from Nebraska named Russell Wood, made 35 donations totaling $1,050 over the last year to Bill Eigel’s campaign for St. Charles County executive. But Wood told Keller he has never heard of Eigel or set foot in St. Charles County and had no idea he had made so many donations to Eigel’s campaign.
People running for public office at the federal, state and local level always run the risk of taking an “ends justifies the means” approach to campaigning, observes Judy Nadler at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University.
“The conduct of the campaign itself can say a lot about the ethical principles a candidate brings to public life,” she says. That’s something Eigel, Missourians and all voters should ponder.
The American Political Action Committee (AmeriPAC), a Bellevue, Washington-based organization that says it is focused on electing “conservative, freedom-oriented candidates to public office”, is offering supporters a Liberty Cross Award Medal.[1] The medal , which features a bust of President Trump, bears an uncanny resemblance to a bronze Nazi War Merit Cross featuring a swastika.
Liberty Cross Award Medal Nazi War Merit Cross
AmeriPAC emails tell recipients that those who have earned the Liberty Cross Award Medal have demonstrated:
To receive their medal, all awardees have to do is fill out a short survey and make a donation of $10 or more. The message to me included a pre-checked box to make my contribution a monthly recurring donation.
The survey questions, reminiscent of the “loyalty questionnaire” administered by the US Government to Japanese Nikkei citizens and immigrants being held in WWII concentration camps, include:
Are you a steadfast patriot, who shows VALOR in the defense of truth?
Do you pledge LOYALTY to the America-First mission?
Do you STAND with President Trump against the Radical Left and all their plots and schemes?
Do you LOVE President Trump and all that he is doing to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN?
“At AmeriPAC, we want to personally restore our country for freedom-loving patriots like you,” the medal appeal says.
The Federal Election Commission (FEC) lists two similarly named fundraising committees: (1) AMERIPAC: THE FUND FOR A GREATER AMERICA, formed in 1992 to help elect Democratic leaders to the United States Congress. ID: C00271338; (2) The American Political Action Committee (AmeriPAC) Registered with the Federal Election Commission on August 24, 1980. ID: C99002396.
The second PAC is the one awarding the Liberty Cross Award Medal. According to the FEC, this PAC has raised $2,399,916.53 and spent $1,446,308.76 in the first three-quarters of 2025. Almost all of its spending has gone towards fundraising.
About 41% of the money spent on fundraising, $595,618.82, went to Red Spark Strategy, a Republican-leaning Arlington, VA.-based digital consulting and marketing agency. Another 11.05%, $159,876.80 , went to Frontline Strategies LLC and 10.63%, $153,726.29, went to Better Mousterap Digital LLC.
[1] A War Merit Cross Second Class without Swords. (Kriegsverdienstkreuz II. Klasse ohne Schwertern). Instituted October 18th, 1939 (1939-1945 issue). Constructed of bronze, with a fixed loop and ring for suspension, consisting of a Maltese Cross with pebbled arms, the obverse with a central wreathed mobile swastika.
“We have the best economy maybe in the history of the world,”President Trump insisted during his 60 Minutes interview on Nov. 2. Oregonians and other Americans who depend on food stamp benefits under SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, likely beg to differ.
While President Trump and his entourage were enjoying an over-the-top “Great Gatsby”-themed Halloween party at Mar-a-Lago last week, millions of Americans were worrying about the loss of their SNAP food benefits. The timing could not have been more unseemly.
On. display at Mar-a-Lago. “‘She’s got an indiscreet voice,’ I remarked. ‘It’s full of—’ I hesitated. ‘Her voice is full of money,’ [Gatsby] said suddenly.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
President Trump’s Great Gatsby-Themed Halloween Party at Mar-a-Lago, 2025
One-sixth of Oregon’s population. 0.16, 16%. No matter how you put it, a lot of Oregonians depend on SNAP benefits.
Currently, benefits average just over $6 per person per day. In fiscal year 2024, that translated into about 757,000 of our neighbors, including about 210,000 children and 130,000 adults aged 65 and older.
With the federal government shutdown, Oregon and other states have run out of money to distribute to the more than 42 million Americans who rely on SNAP. The Department of Agriculture has claimed it can’t spend $6 billion sitting in reserves, but two federal judges have ordered the Trump administration to use contingency funds to fund SNAP during the shutdown. The Trump administration responded in court filings that it would use contingency funds to provide partial SNAP benefits in November.
The administration said it would send partial payments this month, but eligible households may receive just half of their usual amounts and the partial payments could take weeks to arrive. (As of mid-day on Nov. 4, however, Trump muddied the waters by posting on Truth Social, “SNAP BENEFITS…will be given only when the Radical Left Democrats open up government, which they can easily do.”)
Further complicating matters, on Nov. 5 The New York Times reported that some normal food stamp recipients may receive nothing at all in November because of the way that the White House has chosen to pay partial benefits during the government shutdown.
“The problem stems from the way in which the administration has opted to fund benefits, and the intricate rules it has foisted on states this week to calculate aid amounts for the 42 million people enrolled in SNAP,” the New York Times said. “For nearly 1.2 million households, or almost five million people, the changes may result in benefits of $0 in November, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning group, which analyzed the government’s public filings and shared its findings early with The New York Times.”
On November 6, the situation changed again when a federal judge, John McConnell, ordered the Trump administration to fully fund November’s food-assistance benefits by November 6. Of course, the administration’s lawyers told the court it was appealing the order.
While the legal wrangling persists, it’s appalling that so many Oregonians, the majority children, disabled or seniors, are in such dire straits that the federal government has to step in to help them get enough to eat.
According to an analysis of USDA data by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), Oregon ranks third in the percentage of the state’s population that relies on SNAP. Only New Mexico and Louisiana are in front of Oregon.
Meanwhile, in a reflection of the number of Oregonians living on the edge, Oregon food banks report they are being hit with a deluge of SNAP participants desperate for food, even though they got their last benefits as recently as last month. At the same time, food banks are seeing some of the thousands of federal employees who are going without pay during the government shutdown. That’s all consistent with the Federal Reserve’s report on America’s economic well-being in 2024 that found 37% of Americans couldn’t pay for an unexpected $400 expense without turning to a credit card and 60% of adults said that changes in the prices they paid compared with the prior year had made their financial situation worse.
In Oregon, high unemployment is partly to blame.
According to the most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Oregon’s unemployment rate was 5.0% in August 2025, higher than the national rate of 4.3%, and has been climbing steadily for more than two years. The rate has been influenced by increasing layoffs and an overall cooling off of the state’s labor market. Oregon unemployment rate is higher than every state in the Pacific Northwest., including Alaska, Idaho, Montana, and Washington. .Too many Oregonians are also working less than they’d prefer, leading to a rising so-called “underemployment rate”.
Oregon’s economy also relies heavily on service, retail, and tourism jobs , many of which are seasonal, that pay lower wages, even with Oregon’s mandated hourly wage levels, resulting in many hard working families falling below the income threshold for SNAP eligibility.
And Oregon’s economy is retreating, diminished from job losses at Intel, PacificSource, Wells Fargo, Nike, OHSU and even Powell’s Books, which has had four rounds of layoffs this year. Despite President Trump’s claim he is leading a resurgence of manufacturing in the US, U.S. manufacturing has contracted for seven straight months—the exact opposite of what Trump and other tariff proponents predicted.
Overall, the number of jobs U.S. employers have announced they would cut in 2025 has reached 1,099,500, up 65% from the first 10 months of 2024, according to Challenger, Gray and Christmas, a Chicago-based outplacement firm.
Aggressive outreach is another reason for high SNAP usage. Some see getting more people on SNAP as a good thing, but that’s questionable when food stamp enrollment has surged from 17.3 million individuals in 2001 to 41.7 million in 2024, and that in the same period enrollment as a percentage of the population has doubled from 6.1 % in 2001 to 12.3 % in 2024.
Oregon’s SNAP error rate in fiscal year 2024 was 14.06%, eighth-highest in the nation. That was down from error rates of 16.7$ in fiscal year 2023 and 22.9% for fiscal year 2022, but there’s still really no excuse for such high error rates.
If anything, then, increasing dependence on food stamps by Oregon’s population reflects a failure of the state’s economy in providing opportunities for its people and holding down taxes. That’s not a good thing.
Five years ago, Reed Hastings, the co-founder and CEO of Netflix, and his wife, Patty Quillin, donated $120 million to two historically Black colleges, Spelman College and Morehouse College, and the United Negro College Fund. “HBCUs have a tremendous record,” Hastings and Quillin said in a news release announcing their gifts.
I wrote about the optimism at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU’s) at that time, when they seemed to be on a roll with large grants from philanthropists and a commitment to improvement.
Five years later, however, graduation rates remain dreadful, leaving many Black students, particularly Black men, with abandoned dreams, college debt and no degree. And without that degree, the default rate of borrowers is three times as high as it is among those who graduated.
There are 104 HBCUs in the United States, of which 78 are “ranked”, been placed on a specific list by a third-party organization, such as U.S. News & World Report. The average four-year graduation rate for first-time, first-year students at the ranked HBCUs in 2025 was an abysmal 23.2%. The average six-year graduation rate for students at ranked HBCUs in 2025, 32%, was better, but still dreadful.
In contrast, the average four-year graduation rate for US colleges in 2025 was 50.8% and the average six-year rate was 60.1%, almost double the rate at ranked HBCUs.
It should be noted, however, the graduation rate at HBCUs varies widely. According to U.S. News & World Report, the top five HBCUs for graduation rates, based on 2025 data, were:
Rank
Institution Name
State
Four-Year Graduation Rate
1
Spelman College
GA
68%
2
Howard University
DC
60%
3
Xavier University of Louisiana
LA
48%
4
Fort Valley State University
GA
44%
5
Virginia Union University
VA
41%
In contrast, the 4-year graduation rate at LeMoyne-Owen College, a private, historically black Christian college in Memphis, Tennessee is 7% and the 6-year graduation rate is 18%, while the 4-year graduation rate at Alabama State University in Montgomery, Alabama is 14% and the 6-year rate is 28%. Additionally, the retention rate stands at 60%, which is also below average, ranking in the bottom 15%.
That raises questions about why philanthropist MacKenzie Scott recently pledged $38 million to Alabama State and made pledges to some other HBCUs with abysmal graduation rates, such as the University of Maryland Eastern Shore (4-year graduation rate – 19%; 6-year rate – 37%) and Morgan State University ( 4-year graduation rate – 13%; 6-year rate – 37%).
A report from the Center for Minority Serving Institutions at Rutgers University included the observation that “philanthropists should consult data to make better informed decisions around giving, considering the donations to both high performing institutions to reward growth and lower performing institutions to stimulate growth.” The problem with that approach, however, is it can endorse propping up failing institutions that are failing their students.
They are not doing their students any favors if they end up leaving so many with debt and no degree.
One issue for Black HBCU’s is that some have an almost blanket acceptance rate. That leads to unready students, which inevitably leads to the low graduation rates. For example, LeMoyne-Owen College has a 97% acceptance rate and Alabama State University has a 98% acceptance rate.
Too often, high acceptance rates are accompanied by low scores in college readiness tests.
A key standardized college admissions test that assesses high school students’ academic readiness for college is the ACT test. A student’s Composite score, ranging from 1-36, is the average of a student’s English, math, and reading test scores.
Some American universities look for students with scores in the 30s, others may consider scores in the mid-20s as competitive. According to ACT, the average score is 34 for admitted students at Harvard University and 23 for admitted students at University of Massachusetts Boston.
The average ACT composite score of students admitted to Spelman College is 26; for Howard University, 24. In contrast, the average ACT composite score of students admitted to LeMoyne-Owen College is 16, to Alabama State University, 18. The ACT college readiness benchmarks range from 18 for English to 23 for Science.
Johnny C. Taylor Jr., former president and CEO of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, a Washington D.C.-based, nonprofit organization that represents 47 public HBCUs, has attributed much of the high non-completion rate to the HBCUs accepting a lot of students with low standardized test scores and GPAs, students encountering time-management and behavioral issues, and a lack of financial literacy.
Many Black HBCU students also have to deal with being first generation college attendees, who tend to graduate at much lower rates across the board than continuing-generation students.
The United Negro College Fund (UNCF) has also found that students at HBCUs borrow more than students from non-HBCUs because African American families generally have lower assets and incomes that limit their ability to contribute toward college expenses.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the median income of Black households in the United States in 2024 was $56,020, significantly lower than the $92,530 median income figure for non-Hispanic White households. ”With only minor fluctuations, the racial gap in median income has remained virtually unchanged for more than a half-century,” the Bureau noted.
High HBCU drop-out rates compound the problem of paying off college debt as drop-outs earn less.
Too many Black students at HBCUs also come from failing high schools with a below-average teaching environment involving inexperienced and less qualified educators and benefit from easy college admission standards at some of the less-competitive HBCUs.
A recent UNCF report pointed out that poor high school preparation often means Black students are more likely to need remedial college courses than other student groups, and the lack of preparedness hampers their success. “Increasing the number of African Americans receiving college degrees depends in large measure on whether students receive a quality K-12 education that prepares them for college coursework and college success,” the report said.
In the midst of all this, there are some hopeful positives. Some HBCUs have been seeing record enrollment growth and overall HBCU enrollment for the 2024-2025 school year rose by 5.9% compared to Fall 2023, the third year of increases. It’s worth noting, however, that enrollment growth at some HBCUs is occurring as the Associated Press has just reported that new enrollment figures from 20 selective colleges provide mounting evidence of a backslide in Black enrollment. On almost all of the campuses, Black students account for a smaller share of new students this fall than in 2023. At Princeton and some others, the number of new Black students has fallen by nearly half in that span.
In the fall of 2025, North Carolina A&T State University held down the #1 spot as the largest HBCU for the twelfth straight year with 15,275 students, up 6.7% from the previous school year. In the same vein, Spelman College increased its 2024 enrollment by 24% in 2025, Winston-Salem State University had a 4.7% enrollment increase and Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, founded in 1865, saw a 45% increase in new students in the fall of 2025,
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports, however, that HBCU enrollment growth is not shared equally across all the nation’s HBCUs. For example, enrollment fell at eight of the 10 HBCUs in North Carolina over the last decade, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, and overall enrollment at HBCUs has yet to rebound to its 2010 peak of 327,000. In addition, enrollment growth will need to be accompanied by increases in graduation rates in some cases. For example, the 4-year graduation rate at Shaw University is only 9% and the 6-year graduation rate is just 16%.
As was the case five years ago, if philanthropists and HBCUs really want to help Black college students, they will put money and effort into ensuring they get a K-12 education that prepares them for college and that HBCU students graduate with a good education. HBCUs that fail this test are still doing their students no favors, undercutting the very people they claim to champion.
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