Mobius Strip Journalism

Sitting on $13 billion, Johns Hopkins University cries poverty. NBC sobs.

NBC reported, “Johns Hopkins University to let more than 2,000 workers go after Trump’s USAID cuts.”

The story said, “The university, one of the country’s most significant and prestigious scientific research institutions, said in a statement Thursday that it would eliminate 1,975 jobs internationally and 247 in the United States as the result of cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development. An additional 78 U.S.-based and 29 international employees will be furloughed.”

The university said, “This is a difficult day for our entire community. The termination of more than $800 million in USAID funding is now forcing us to wind down critical work here in Baltimore and internationally.”

Here is what they didn’t say: Johns Hopkins has a $13 billion endowment that grew by $2.5 billion in the last fiscal year.

That increase was triple the $800 million in savings U.S. taxpayers will enjoy by dethroning this welfare queen.

Johns Hopkins, railroad millionaire and banker, deserved a better legacy than what the greed of these craven little cowards have done to the hospital and university he founded.

Donald Trump is going after the untaxed and unregulated Higher Education Industry that enjoyed $1.6 trillion from taxpayers in the name of student loans. That’s a lot of tuition, books and dorm fees that the industry collects—tax-free.

The press treats colleges like royalty, always deferring to professors no matter how kooky their ideas are. The ivory towers gave us cisgender, micro-aggressions and systemic racism.

NBC engaged in Mobius Strip Journalism that journalists twist so that there was only one side. The NBC story quoted no Trump official until Paragraph 10. The rest of the 25 paragraphs promoted the university’s side.

The network said, “It’s one of several universities across the country laying off workers or implementing hiring freezes as they reckon with sweeping cuts to research and higher education from the Trump administration. Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania and Notre Dame University have abruptly stopped hiring faculty.

“Additionally, the Trump administration canceled about $400 million in grants to Columbia University last week, citing alleged harassment of Jewish students, as well as $30 million in funding to the University of Maine, after the state’s governor clashed with Trump over transgender athletes in sports.

“More than 50 universities are under investigation as the administration seeks to end diversity, equity and inclusion programs.”

The 14th Amendment makes the funding of racism unconstitutional.

NBC said:

Dr. Judd Walson, an infectious disease physician and the chair of the department of international health at Johns Hopkins, said other programs had been similarly shuttered or reduced.

These include a tuberculosis research program and a clinical trial in Bangladesh designed to reduce outbreaks of cholera and other diarrheal diseases, he said.

If this really were important, the university would dig into its savings to pay for it. US AID is just a teat to suckle for the university—and its administration sucks hard.

NBC said, “In Baltimore, meanwhile, economic effects could ripple. Johns Hopkins paid out about $5 billion in wages in Maryland in the 2022 fiscal year and directly employed nearly 56,500 people in the state, according to university estimates. Johns Hopkins said it was responsible for more than $15 billion in economic impacts in Maryland during that time.

“Other pending Trump administration cuts could threaten Johns Hopkins further. The administration last month attempted to limit National Institutes of Health payments to universities for research grants by capping indirect costs, which cover things like utilities and building operations, to 15%.”

If Johns Hopkins were so community minded, why did dog walker Scott Presler have to go and clean up the filthy district that Elijah Cummings represented?

Instead of gratitude, the Baltimore Sun snarked, “We assume it was pure motives that led a Trump supporter to launch a cleanup in Cummings’ district, right?”

The editorial said, “It made for good photos, compelling videos and catchy Twitter hashtags. A group of conservatives rolled their pickup trucks into one of West Baltimore’s most impoverished neighborhoods Monday for a cleanup day. Loaded down with trash bags and shovels, they cleared alleyways of old tires, food containers, paper and other debris. They pulled up weeds and cut away overgrown grass. The group posted before and after pictures on social media showing their progress.”

They spent 12 hours removing 12 tons of trash and the local newspaper dismissed it as a photo op.

Instead of shaming the people who actually live in Baltimore for throwing waste into the streets and alleyways, the newspaper dumped on Presler for doing the job Baltimorons are too lazy to do.

(A Baltimorean who graduated from Johns Hopkins taught me the word. His father was an editor at the Sun.)

The editorial ended, “We also hope Mr. Presler keeps his promise to return to Baltimore once a month. It would definitely give his motives more credibility. It might also give him better perspective about the city’s problems than any single visit can provide. Maybe it could even lead him and his followers to advocate for federal housing, health care, transportation, education, criminal justice, civil rights and anti-poverty policies aimed at urban communities.

“In the meantime, we’ll see how clean the neighborhood still is when he returns in September.”

Why is Presler supposed to clean the streets and solve Baltimore’s problem when Johns Hopkins is sitting on $13 billion and cashing $800 million a year in welfare checks from the feds?

I mean, we know why. We also know why NBC and the rest engage in Mobius Strip Journalism. They just care about money and power, and not the truth and service to the public.