Senator Elizabeth Warren speaks during an event to introduce the “Medicare for All Act of 2017” on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., September 13, 2017. (Yuri Gripas/Reuters) Making the click-through worthwhile: Why Elizabeth Warren really fears the “woman of color” controversy, President Trump gets a win in the courtroom and some long-overdue questions about whether a self-promoting lawyer is really helping his clients, and an eye-opening article about American mercenaries operating in Yemen. The Pallid Excuses of Harvard Law’s First ‘Woman of Color’ Advertisement As I noted yesterday afternoon, back in 1997, Harvard Law School was touting Elizabeth Warren as their first “woman of color” law professor. A year earlier, the law school had told the Harvard Crimson, in response to claims that the faculty wasn’t diverse enough, that “although the conventional wisdom among students and faculty is that the Law School faculty includes no minority women, [Mike] Chmura [spokesperson for the Law School] said Professor of Law Elizabeth Warren is Native American.” A year later, a Harvard Crimson editorial declared, “Harvard Law School currently has only one tenured minority woman, Gottlieb Professor of Law Elizabeth Warren, who is Native American.” This was consistent throughout Warren’s career. As Benny Johnson noted, “Warren self-identified as a ‘Native American’ in the Association of American Law Schools Directory of law professors in every edition printed between 1986 -1995.” A 2005 report from the University of Pennsylvania’s Minority Equity Committee referred to Warren as a minority award winner. Advertisement Back in 2012, Warren initially claimed she didn’t know the schools were referring to her that way, which is extremely unlikely. This would mean that Warren wasn’t following the debate about minority representation at the law school back in the 1990s and that she didn’t realize the law school was citing her as an example of minority representation. But then a few weeks later she said she “provided that information to the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard.” As we now know, Warren is anywhere from 1/64 to 1/1024 Native American, and does not meet the criteria of “Native American” under anyone’s definition but her own. She certainly doesn’t meet the Cherokee Tribe’s criteria. Cherokee Nation Secretary of State Chuck Hoskin, Jr. issued a blistering statement yesterday: A DNA test is useless to determine tribal citizenship. Current DNA tests do not even distinguish whether a person’s ancestors were indigenous to North or South America. Sovereign tribal nations set their own legal requirements for citizenship, and while DNA tests can be used to determine lineage, such as paternity to an individual, it is not evidence for tribal affiliation. Using a DNA test to lay claim to any connection to the Cherokee Nation or any tribal nation, even vaguely, is inappropriate and wrong. It makes a mockery out of DNA tests and its legitimate uses while also dishonoring legitimate tribal governments and their citizens, who ancestors are well documented and whose heritage is prove. Senator Warren is undermining tribal interests with her continued claims of tribal heritage. What’s more, the story Warren has been telling about her family history for years doesn’t make much sense now: My mom and dad were very much in love and they wanted to get married. And my father’s parents said, ‘Absolutely not, you can’t marry her, because she’s part Cherokee and part Delaware.’ After fighting it as long as they could, my parents went off, and they eloped. It was an issue in our family the whole time I grew up about these two families. It was an issue still raised at my mother’s funeral. Warren describes her family being torn apart by racial animosity . . . when everybody in the family is white. The Boston Globe wrote a long article attempting to dispel the notion that minority status played any role in any of Warren’s job opportunities, promotions, or tenure, but it included this quote from David Wilkins, one of the only black law professors on Harvard’s staff who voted for hiring Warren: “Let’s be blunt. Elizabeth Warren is a white woman. She may have some Native American roots, but so do most people.” Elizabeth Warren is, by just about anybody’s definition, white. At the very least, she was comfortable with Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania describing her as a “person of color” or a racial “minority.” The “person of color” characterization is what really worries Warren, I suspect. It’s easy to imagine some future presidential debate stage, and Kamala Harris, or Cory Booker, or Deval Patrick turning to Warren and asking, “Did you really think you deserved to be called a ‘woman of color’ in American society?” Stormy Daniels Defense-Fund Donors Watch Their Money Go to the President How likely is it that Michael Avenatti is a better self-promoter than a lawyer? A federal judge on Monday dismissed the defamation lawsuit that Stormy Daniels filed against President Trump, saying his tweet attacking the porn star’s credibility was free speech protected by the Constitution. “If this court were to prevent Mr. Trump from engaging in this type of ‘rhetorical hyperbole’ against a political adversary, it would significantly hamper the office of the president,” Judge S. James Otero of the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles wrote in a 14-page ruling. “Any strongly-worded response by a president to another politician or public figure could constitute an action for defamation. This would deprive the country of the ‘discourse’ common to the political process.” As some have noted, if you donated to Stormy Daniels’s defense fund, a portion of your donations will now be going to Donald Trump to cover attorney’s fees. Attorneys familiar with the high bar for defamation would note that Daniels almost certainly qualified as a public figure, and that the case would have to demonstrate “actual malice” on Trump’s part. Trump threatens to sue people for libel and slander frequently, but rarely goes through and files the lawsuit. Either Trump eventually learned that threatening to sue and getting the headline and then forgetting about it is cheaper and more satisfying, or his lawyers persuade him that his chances of winning the lawsuit are extremely low. Advertisement Advertisement Is Stormy Daniels better off now than when she met Avenatti? Maybe, but if she is, that’s probably more because of her own, er, entrepreneurship and self-promotion than because of Avenatti. Is Julie Swetnick better off now than when she met Avenatti? Remember her? How Comfortable Are We with the Idea of American Mercenaries? BuzzFeed offers a dramatic story this morning about former American solders working for private contractors and killing what the United Arab Emirates government believed were high-value targets in Yemen: On that night, December 29, 2015, their job was to carry out an assassination. Their armed attack, described to BuzzFeed News by two of its participants and corroborated by drone surveillance footage, was the first operation in a startling for-profit venture. For months in war-torn Yemen, some of America’s most highly trained soldiers worked on a mercenary mission of murky legality to kill prominent clerics and Islamist political figures. Their target that night: Anssaf Ali Mayo, the local leader of the Islamist political party Al-Islah. The UAE considers Al-Islah to be the Yemeni branch of the worldwide Muslim Brotherhood, which the UAE calls a terrorist organization. Many experts insist that Al-Islah, one of whose members won the Nobel Peace Prize, is no terror group. They say it’s a legitimate political party that threatens the UAE not through violence but by speaking out against its ambitions in Yemen. BuzzFeed characterizes it as “militarized contract killing.” Advertisement You probably have one of two reactions to a story like this. One: “This is awesome. I want every anti-American extremist in the world looking over his shoulder and hiding in fear, and if this is the sort of thing that gets a person afraid to join an Islamist group, or that will cut down the next Osama bin Laden early in his career instead of late in it, God bless them.” Two: “Dear God, this is horrifying.<doc-sep>Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren released the results of a DNA test Monday that show she likely has a Native American ancestor between six and 10 generations back, but a Harvard Law School spokesman was calling her the school’s only Native American professor as early as Oct. 22, 1996, in a Harvard Crimson article. “Although the conventional wisdom among students and faculty is that the Law School faculty includes no minority women, [spokesperson Mike] Chmura said Professor of Law Elizabeth Warren is Native American,” read the article, which was titled “Survey: Diversity Lacking at HLS.” Warren has identified herself as Cherokee in the past and Monday released the results of a DNA test that shows she very likely had a Native American ancestor six to 10 generations ago. She was identified as Harvard Law School’s one Native American professor in the 1996 article. Warren claimed she was not aware of the media accounts, and “[a]sked when she found out the law school was describing her as a minority, Warren said, ‘I think I read it on the front page of the [Boston] Herald,'” reported The Boston Globe in 2012. The senator cannot become a citizen of the Cherokee Nation because she is not related to anyone listed on the Dawes Final Rolls, “a federal census of those living in the Cherokee Nation that was used to allot Cherokee land to individual citizens in preparation for Oklahoma statehood in 1907.” Some see Warren’s decision to release the results as a precursor to a 2020 run for president — CNN moved her up to No. 1 on its list of Democratic contenders after she made her DNA test results public. Warren grew up in Norman, Oklahoma. She has claimed her parents had to elope because of her mother’s Native American heritage. “As a kid, I never asked my mom about documentation when she talked about our Native American heritage,” Warren said in a 2012 campaign ad, according to PolitiFact. “What kid would? But I knew my father’s family didn’t like that she was part Cherokee and part Delaware. So my parents had to elope.” (RELATED: Elizabeth Warren Releases Results Of Her DNA Test) Warren is listed as a professor of law emerita on Harvard Law School’s website. She became a permanent professor at Harvard Law in 1995. The Daily Caller News Foundation reached out to Harvard Law School for comment but did not receive a response at the time of publication. Follow Evie on Twitter @eviefordham. Send tips to evie@dailycallernewsfoundation.org. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.<doc-sep>Although critics have charged that Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., has advanced her career with a narrative that she is a distant descendant of Cherokee and Delaware tribes, Harvard University never considered her ethnicity when it hired her as a law professor, according to a report Saturday. The Boston Globe reported interviews and documents showed that the issue was not considered by Harvard Law faculty when it considered her application in the 1990s. The report also saw no consideration of her race when she applied to work at Rutgers, the University of Houston, the University of Texas or the University of Pennsylvania. “She was not on the radar screen at all in terms of a racial minority hire,” Randall Kennedy, a law professor who was in charge of recruiting minority candidates to Harvard Law School, told the Globe. “It was just not an issue. I can’t remember anybody ever mentioning her in this context.” Neither Harvard nor Warren immediately returned Fox News’ requests for comment Sunday. The Globe noted that Warren listed herself as a “minority” before Penn offered her a job. However, the law school’s dean and affirmative action officer wrote in a 1987 equal opportunity compliance statement form that Warren was the best candidate for her job despite being “white.” The report also noted that nearly three years after she took the Penn job, she asked the university to change her listed ethnicity to “Native American.” A 2005 university publication noting a teaching award that she won a decade earlier listed her as a minority, the Globe added. The newspaper reported that it examined hundreds of documents, many of them never before available, and talked to 31 law school professors from that period at Harvard. All but one said her Native American heritage was not discussed as part of the decision to hire her. One said he was unsure if the issue came up, but if it did, it had no bearing on his vote. Warren on Sunday posted on her website documents related to her job and school applications and again asserted that her heritage played no role in her career advancement. “My family is my family,” the outspoken progressive told the Globe. “But my background played no role in my getting hired anywhere.” President Trump repeatedly has referred to Warren as “Pocahontas” in mocking her claims of heritage. Warren, 69, is seeking reelection in November, and is set to face one of three Republicans running in a primary on Tuesday. She repeatedly has said she’s not running for president in 2020, but continues to position herself as a national leader in the Democratic Party. The Associated Press contributed to this report.<doc-sep>
In 1993, the Harvard Crimson reported that the “Law School faculty voted yesterday to offer a tenured position to Visiting Professor of Law Elizabeth Warren.” The article goes on to celebrate that this hiring “marks an advance in the student and faculty effort to improve faculty diversity[. ]” Warren began teaching at Harvard in 1995. Then… In 1995, an article in the Harvard Crimson celebrated Warren as “Native American.” Although the conventional wisdom among students and faculty is that the Law School faculty includes no minority women, Chmura said Professor of Law Elizabeth Warren is Native American. In response to criticism of the current administration, Chmura pointed to “good progress in recent years.” According to Chmura, of the 21 professors appointed since 1989, 10 were women or minorities. In addition, all three of last year’s appointees were women. Then, a 1996 piece in Fordham Law Review celebrated Warren as Harvard Law School’s “first woman of color.” On top of this, there is also a 1999 Affirmative Action Plan Book published by Harvard that appears to identify Warren as Native American. Her name is not listed, but it could not possibly be anyone else. This document is important because, as Breitbart News reported at the time, “Harvard is considered a federal contractor, its employment practices fall under the regulation of the Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP).” This compliance program “requires “a contractor, as a condition of having a federal contract, to engage in a self-analysis for the purpose of discovering any barriers to equal employment opportunity.” A mere 13 years later, though, during her first run for the U.S. Senate, Warren claimed she had no idea she was being celebrated by her employers as the “first woman of color” or how in the world the school discovered she self-identified as “Native American.” But the far-left Politico reported in 2012 that “for several years, ending in 1995” Warren “described herself as a minority on a law professors’ listing[. ]” It gets worse. The Boston Globe, a left-wing news outlet that basically works as a campaign surrogate for Warren, reported Monday that during “her academic career as a law professor, she had her ethnicity changed from white to Native American at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.” Warren also did the same at “Harvard University Law School, where she was a tenured faculty member starting in 1995.” On top of all that, back in 1984, Warren not only appeared to plagiarize a recipe for a cookbook titled Pow Wow Chow, she signed her name, “Elizabeth Warren — Cherokee.” So here is Warren, between 1984 and 1995, parading around as a Native American, as a Cherokee, and doing so in the most public ways possible — in books and in school directories. But in 2012, she says she has no idea how her employers discovered she identified as American Indian or that she was even being celebrated by Harvard as an all-important first in the Diversity Olympics. And now we know, thanks to numerous documents discovered over the years and a DNA test released Monday, that it was all a lie. Warren’s DNA test proves she is no more Native than the average white American. In fact, there is a good chance she is even less so. While the average American has .18 percent Native ancestry, Warren could be as low as .1 percent or only as high as a pathetic 1.6 percent. Moreover, Warren’s DNA was not even compared to Native samples. DNA from Mexico, Peru, and Colombia were used instead. What this means is that Warren might be 1/64 to 1/1024 Mesoamerican, not Indian. Warren claims family lore convinced her she is Cherokee, but even those claims have proven to be lies. To begin with, some members of her family vehemently deny any talk of Indian ancestry in the family. Secondly, and with all the evidence proving the exact opposite, Warren still stands by her claim that her parents were forced to elope due to family strife over her mother being Indian. The only problem with this is that a marriage certificate and contemporaneous news stories show that Warren’s parents were married at a church and the wedding was celebrated in the community.