[DetroitNews] The Florida Board of Governors voted Tuesday against the confirmation of former University of Michigan President Santa Ono as the University of Florida's next president, blocking the incoming UF president selection for the first time in its history amid sharp criticism from conservatives.
The University of Michigan hired him from the University of British Columbia, which had hired him from the University of Cincinnati, where he was much liked. But nothing interesting was happening here in those days. He’s a second gen. academic, having been born in Vancouver while his naturalized American father professed there for a few years, giving him birthright citizenship in both countries. By training he is apparently a pretty good immunologist.
The board, which oversees the state's universities, voted 10-6 against Ono following an hours-long meeting during which the governors grilled the former UM leader about hot-button topics, including diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies and gender-affirming care during his tenure in Michigan. In late March, Ono immediately shut down two DEI offices at Michigan and an effort dedicated to DEI, shifting the resources to other student programs.
The board's rejection came after the University of Florida Board of Trustees voted unanimously in May to approve Ono as the school's 14th president. Prominent conservatives, including Donald Trump Jr. and Republican U.S. Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, raised questions about Ono before the vote over pro-Palestinian protests, climate change efforts, gender ideology and DEI programs at the UM and his previous academic posts.
One of the governors, Carson Good, said after speaking with students, professors, alumni and Michigan Medicine doctors, he thought Ono was "great about coming forward, giving speeches, going to football games, being transparent." Still, he ultimately voted against the confirmation, saying the "philosophical difference is just too far."
At one point during the meeting, Good asked Ono whether doctors in the medical schools at either UM or the University of British Columbia, where Ono served as president from 2016-22, had ever "cut off minor boys' genitals or girls' breasts" as part of gender-affirming care programs.
Ono said he couldn't answer that question accurately because "I don't have a complete encyclopedic knowledge of everything that's happened."
Good also grilled Ono about a prior comment the former UM president had made, asserting that racism is one of America's "original sins." Good said, per Christian doctrine, original sin can only be escaped by a "total rebirth, total uprooting with divine intervention."
"I regret the use of those words. … I should have been precise," Ono said.
He was merely parroting the common wisdom in academia at the time instead of doing the intellectual work.
Ono's proposed contract included a number of ideological requirements, such as how well he stopped programs that focus on DEI. He was to cooperate with Gov. Ron DeSantis' Office of Government Efficiency — similar to the office created by President Donald Trump — and appoint other university officials and deans who are “firmly aligned” with Florida's approach.
James Finkelstein, a George Mason University Professor Emeritus of Public Policy who has tracked UM presidential developments, said “from the start of today’s Board of Governors meeting, it was evident that Dr. Ono’s appointment was in serious jeopardy, despite the earlier unanimous endorsement from the University of Florida’s Board of Trustees.”
“The opposition was coordinated, strategic and well-prepared. Dr. Ono seemed caught off guard and struggled to reassure skeptical board members of his sincerity in shifting away from DEI-related initiatives," Finkelstein said. “His rejection signifies a symbolic victory for the MAGA movement and highlights the growing politicization of leadership in higher education. If there’s a lesson for any sitting university president: Never (leave) your current position without having a signed contract in hand.”
Always good advice if it’s an option.
Ono announced via a May 4 letter addressed to the university community that he was the lone finalist for the top job at the University of Florida. He made clear that he planned to accept if confirmed by the board, but the letter contained no formal resignation from his post at the University of Michigan.
The search for the Florida job will start over. What happens with Ono remains unclear, including whether he could return to UM. Ono is a vision researcher, and his new UM contract that was approved last year included increased university support for Ono's laboratory by $1.4 million. A UM spokesperson didn't immediately respond Tuesday to a question about Ono's status at the university.
Last month in Michigan, the UM regents appointed Domenico Grasso, chancellor at UM Dearborn, as interim president on May 8, with immediate effect, and affirmed the appointment at a May 15 meeting.
When initially reached for comment by a Detroit News reporter on Tuesday, University of Michigan Regent Jordan Acker referred to a post he made on X shortly after the news of Ono’s rejection broke. That post quoted the author Fran Lebowitz and read: “He doesn’t believe in anything — just auditions for approval in whatever room he’s in.”
The Japanese culture emphasizes that the nail that sticks up gets hammered down. President Ono was clearly careful not to stick up, no matter his private opinions.
Pressed on whether the UM board would consider letting Ono return to Ann Arbor, Acker told The Detroit News: “A Michigan person will run Michigan."
In a letter sent Monday to Florida board members and posted online, Sen. Scott accused Ono of “failing to uphold the most basic standards of leadership” by allowing an encampment set up by pro-Palestinian student protestors to stand for nearly a month while UM president. The police clearing of the encampment was criticized by some students and professors on the Ann Arbor campus.
Scott was the latest official to voice his opposition to Ono, joining Florida Republican U.S. Reps. Greg Steube, Jimmy Patronis and Byron Donalds, who is a candidate for governor.
Writing in Inside Higher Ed, Ono said he supported DEI initiatives at first because they aim was “equal opportunity and fairness for every student.”
“But over time, I saw how DEI became something else — more about ideology, division and bureaucracy, not student success,” Ono wrote, adding that he eventually limited DEI offices at Michigan. “I believe in Florida's vision for higher education.”
DeSantis, a Republican who has pushed reforms in higher education to eliminate what he calls “woke” policies such as DEI, did not take a public stand on Ono but did say at a recent news conference that some of his statements made the governor “cringe.”
Ono faced similar pointed questions at Tuesday's meeting — especially from former Republican state House speakers Paul Renner and Jose Oliva — prompting board member Charles Lydecker to object to the procedure.
“We have never used this as a forum to interrogate. This is not a court of law. Candidly, this process does not seem fair to me," Lydecker said.
Oliva, however, questioned how to square Ono's many past statements about hot-button cultural issues with his more conservative stance now that he sought the Florida job.
“Now we are told to believe you are now abandoning an entire ideological architecture," Oliva said. “We are asking someone to lead our flagship university. I don't understand how it becomes unfair.”
Ono was questioned about a rule requiring UM students to be vaccinated against COVID-19. The mandate was updated in 2023 to include only students residing on campus in Ann Arbor. The Florida officials said that it was far later than they would have expected a vaccine requirement to have remained in effect.
Wasn’t that a statewide legal thingy required the governor or the legislature to change? Did he, as a mere university president have the power to impact that himself?
"We (in Florida) think of COVID being from March of 2020 to, like, July of 2020," said Good, noting Ono's background as an immunologist.
Ono said the mandate was recommended by both a chief health officer at UM and a committee "who are much more qualified than I — because they're actually doctors, I'm a scientist — to make that decision."
Meh. Doctors, God bless ‘em, are downstream consumers of scientific research. As a medical researcher, particularly as an immunologist, it should have been his expertise the doctors relied on to make their determinations.
#3
Medicine could be science but has decided to be a politicized pseudo science.
See the declaration that BLM demonstrations do not pose a risk with respect to the Wuhan pandemic while other demonstrations do.
See the denial of the empirically observable fact that the human species has exactly two sexes without putting forward any compelling evidence for this denial.
[NY Post] Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy threatened Wednesday to pull federal grants for California’s High-Speed Rail Authority after it spent nearly $7 billion in taxpayer funds over a decade and a half without laying a single foot of track.
In a more than 300-page report, Duffy detailed the missed deadlines and stretched budget for the long-running project — and gave the Golden State’s high-speed rail office 37 days to respond or lose out on around $4 billion in grants.
"This report exposes a cold, hard truth: CHSRA has no viable path to complete this project on time or on budget," he said.
"CHSRA is on notice — If they can’t deliver on their end of the deal, it could soon be time for these funds to flow to other projects that can achieve President Trump’s vision of building great, big, beautiful things again," he added.
"Our country deserves high-speed rail that makes us proud — not boondoogle trains to nowhere."
California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office and the California High-Speed Rail Authority did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/04/2025 11:11 ||
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#1
The Marx Brothers covered this already. With apologies to Animal Crackers:
Spaulding: This is better than exploring! What do you fellows get an hour?
Ravelli: Oh, for playing building a railroad we getta ten dollars an hour.
Spaulding: I see...What do you get for not playingbuilding a railroad?
Ravelli: Twelve dollars an hour.
Spaulding: Well, clip me off a piece of that.
Ravelli: Now, for rehearsing getting ready to build a railroad, we make special rate. Thatsa fifteen dollars an hour.
Spaulding: That's for rehearsinggetting ready to build a railroad??
Ravelli: Thatsa for rehearsing getting ready to build a railroad.
Spaulding: And what do you get for not rehearsing building a railroad?
BREAKING - Rep. Maxine Waters has been fined $68,000 for major campaign finance violations. Her campaign illegally took donations, made banned cash payments, and misreported finances. Now she will be forced to send her treasurer to FEC training.
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] Donald Trump has opened an investigation into whether Joe Biden 'was competent' when he used an autopen to issue lame-duck pardons to family members and death row inmates.
According to Jake Tapper’s report of the investigations on which he based his book, President Biden was not.
Ed Martin - Trump's ultra-MAGA pardon attorney - said the Justice Department has been directed to investigate clemency granted by Biden in the waning days of his presidency, including the December pardon of his troubled son Hunter.
Martin's unprecedented probe was revealed in a Monday email to staffers that was obtained by Reuters. The attorney said the investigation involves whether Biden 'was competent and whether others were taking advantage of him through use of AutoPen or other means.'
An autopen is a device used to automatically affix a signature to a document.
Hunter Biden, who was convicted last year of three felonies over an illegal gun, and the former First Lady Jill Biden have been accused of wielding significant power over the president in his final days. The prodigal son was treated 'like a chief of staff' despite being 'provably, demonstrably unethical, sleazy and prone to horrible decisions,' CNN's Jake Tapper said in a recent interview about the behind-the-scenes health cover-up.
Trump and his supporters have made a variety of claims that Biden's use of autopen invalidated his actions because he was unaware of the orders he was signing.
It is not known whether Biden used an autopen for pardons. In March, Trump declared his predecessor's last-minute pardons 'void, vacant and of no further force or effect.' He also warned that members of the House committee investigating the January 6 riots could now face prosecution.
The email stated that Martin's investigation is focused on preemptive pardons Biden issued to several members of his family and clemency that spared 37 federal inmates from the death penalty, converting their sentences to life in prison. Just before he relinquished the presidency to Trump on January 20, Biden pardoned five members of his family, saying he wanted to protect them from future politically motivated investigations. The pardons went to Biden's siblings James Biden, Frank Biden and Valerie Biden Owens as well as their spouses, John Owens and Sara Biden.
Biden on December 1 pardoned his son Hunter Biden, who had pleaded guilty to tax violations and was convicted on firearms-related charges. Hunter faced up to 25 years in prison for the offences, although was expected to receive a much lighter punishment as his first offense. He had a scheduled sentencing date for the charges, but the pardon rendered that court date moot.
Martin's email did not specify which of the Biden family members pardons were being investigated. It also did not make clear who directed Martin to launch the investigation.
DailyMail.com has reached out to the White House and the Department of Justice for comment.
The Constitution gives the president broad power to issue pardons to wipe away federal criminal convictions or commutations to modify sentences.
Trump himself has made extensive use of executive clemency. For instance, he granted clemency on January 20 to all of the nearly 1,600 of his supporters who faced criminal charges in connection with January 6, 2021, which was a failed attempt to prevent congressional certification of Biden's 2020 election victory over Trump.
Martin told reporters last month that he viewed the presidential pardon power as 'plenary,' meaning it is absolute.
'If you use the autopen for pardon power, I don't think that that's necessarily a problem,' Martin said during a May 13 press conference, adding that he still felt the Biden pardons warranted scrutiny.
The investigation appears designed to use the Justice Department to amplify questions about Biden's health and mental acuity, a conversation that has intensified in recent weeks following his cancer diagnosis and a new book revealing Democratic concerns last year about Biden's condition.
Questions have since arisen about whether Biden actually signed many of the orders under his administration amid his noticeable cognitive decline after it was revealed they were signed with an autopen. The mechanical device signs documents rather than an individual. It has been used by presidents and lawmakers for decades.
The Oversight Project in March 'gathered every document we could find with Biden's signature over the course of his presidency'.
'All used the same autopen signature except for the announcement that the former President was dropping out of the race last year.'
It went on to share two examples from documents that it claimed showed the use of the autopen including a document from August 2022 as well as one from December 2024 with what appear to be identical signatures.
The group also posted an image of Biden's signature as a comparison from when he announced he was dropping out of the race. That image shows a slight variation from the other shared documents.
DailyMail.com also examined more than 25 Biden executive orders documented on the Federal Register’s office between 2021 and 2025. It found the same signature on each.
A separate examination of 25 Trump signatures on orders on the Federal Register's website from his first and second administrations also found the signatures were all the same.
The Oversight Project now says investigators must determine 'who controlled the autopen and what checks there were in place' to determine whether Biden actually made any of the orders. Still, it questioned if that was something that could be determined in the 'correct legal process.'
Biden, who is 82, last year dropped his reelection bid amid questions about his mental acuity after a disastrous presidential debate performance. Biden was the oldest person to serve as U.S. president, and Trump is the second oldest. The former president's closest aides have dismissed those concerns, saying Biden was fully capable of making important decisions. No evidence has emerged to suggest that Biden did not intend to issue the pardons.
In addition, a Justice Department memo from 2005 found it was legitimate for a subordinate to use an autopen for the president's signature.
Lots of special pleading there, O Daily Mail reporter. Let us discuss the nature of knowing and knowledge — you seem to have a poor grasp of the concept.
I want FAUCI in handcuffs doing the perp walk and getting his mugshot taken like Trump.
His illegal bio-war experiments killed seven million people.
That's more than Hitler killed Jews.
And what did we do to Dr. Mengele?
#7
We didn’t do anything to Dr. Mengele. He died in 1979 by drowning following a stroke while swimming at a Brazilian seaside resort, which at least sounds like an unpleasant way to go. His death was only discovered in 1985.
Are we being played using the latest announced investigation process?
How many Investigations have we seen, that never seem to be seriously addressed other than generating headlines, or the reports are sanitized/heavily retracted?
When will we see the full release and arrests regarding of the Epstein files?
How about a release of, ALL the JFK/RFK/MLK documents and the exposure of the DC Swamp Elite that set up and/or covered up these assassinations?
When is the Fort Knox Gold Audit trip going to be done? Or do they need to Gold plate more Lead bars 1st, as some jokingly say?
#10
Well fine, whatever, pick a Nazi that we chased down and hanged after WW2.
Didn't we haul some concentration camp clerk out of an old folks' home at age 92 and put him on trial a few years back?
SEVEN.
MILLION.
There is no statute of limitations on what Fauci did.
#11
He went easy on Hillary. He was trying not to rock the boat and he got impeached for it, not once but twice, and damn near assassinated, not once but twice. He should have fired Christopher Wray right after he fired James Comey. No more Mr. Nice Guy. Put 'em all in jail where they belong. Can't wait to see them pushing Old Joe into the court house in a wheel chair so he can claim that he's too sick to go to jail. Well, maybe, if he really does have cancer. (And that's a big if. They lie about everything, you know.) But Jill, Jim and Hunter need to go to jail.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
06/04/2025 13:56 Comments ||
Top||
#12
"the Justice Department has been directed to investigate clemency granted by Biden in the waning days of his presidency,"
There would be nothing to investigate if the "clemency" was indeed verifiably "granted by Biden."
The issue is potential forgery and usurpation of presidential powers.
Even if Biden was very frail but of sound mind and willing to grant these pardons there was no need to use an autopen.
His staff could have drafted a proclamation containing all grants of clemency. One signature would have been needed.
#13
Didn't we haul some concentration camp clerk out of an old folks' home at age 92 and put him on trial a few years back?
SEVEN.
MILLION.
There is no statute of limitations on what Fauci did.
Fair enough — German jailed several elderly concentration camp guards. And we extradited whatsisname — the one who had lied on his immigration form when he arrived in America after the war — he had become a plumber or a janitor or something, married and had children and grandchildren who were devastated when they learnt what Daddy did in the war…
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
