So apparently the administrators at Northwestern have caved to the extortionist demands of the Feds. Faculty voted 595-4 AGAINST this measure.

Northwestern’s leaders will likely try to justify their choice to appease fascist extortion with some BS about needing to help researchers get federal funds that were illegally withheld, so it’s important to note that virtually all of the researchers said not to.

Northwestern bent the knee, choosing to give in to extortion at the expense of academic freedom. Among the provisions: -Pay a big bribe -Give the govt data on students -Validate BS about "fighting antisemitism" -Be cruel to trans students What to do about Vichy universities (now, later, or both)?

There are two methods for cranberry harvest- wet method and dry method. Pictured is the ‘wet harvest’ method where the cranberry bog is flooded and the plants are shaken to dislodge the submerged berries, which float. (Fun fact: in a flooded bog the workers become high ground for the spiders.)

Can't see how this could end poorly www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

If you use GMail, AI (Gemini) was turned on yesterday by default and now scans all of your content for machine learning. To turn off, go to Settings>General and scroll down. Uncheck the box for "Smart features." There's other "Smart" add-ons as well, but that's the one that reads your content.

NEW: The White House intervened in a DHS investigation. The target? Sex offender Andrew Tate. The WH person? Paul “Nazi Streak” Ingrassia. Who was previously also Tate’s lawyer. A banger from @robert-faturechi.bsky.social & Avi Asher-Shapiro www.propublica.org/article/andr...

Happy 40th birthday to Bill Waterson’s ‘Calvin and Hobbes’. A work of consummate, stubborn, human, and more-than-human art.

Of all my posts, this is the one that I wish would be shared widely. I hope people will donate to Bryan's legal defense, but even if you don't, it's important to be aware of the human rights horrors that are going on around us on a daily basis.

The debate over whether this is 'fascism' is a silly semantic one in which a small minority mean 'completed fascist authoritarianism' and the vast majority mean 'the people in power say and do things that demonstrate completed fascist authoritarianism is what they want to achieve.'

This piece makes it sound totally normal that the police gets to decide whether or not to "work with" Mamdani as mayor, and it continues, as nearly all the paper's coverage, to wield normative terms like "moderate" and left" in a prejudicial way. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/16/n...

A potential prelude to military action against Venezuela—even though the FTO designation as such confers no authority to use force. (And this supposed cartel may not even exist.) A regime change campaign in the guise of counterterrorism.

Brownshirts assemble. Redeemers ride. bsky.app/profile/alka...

Agents rappelled from a Black Hawk helicopter in a massive show of force. Authorities said Tren de Aragua “terrorists” had taken over the building. But after the cameras were gone, federal prosecutors did not charge anyone. With @frontlinepbs.bsky.social & @blockclubchi.bsky.social

This is an important new line being crossed. Trump isn't just pardoning the act of attempting to overthrow the government on January 6: he's pardoning *those people* for committing crimes generally. He may be creating a group of (federally) legally untouchable people.

NEW: In his first interview since his arrest for protesting outside the Chicago-area ICE facility, @revdrmichaelwoolf.bsky.social tells me he has "bruises all over my body." Even so, he said, “the cruelty that goes on that facility … must be 100 times worse." religionnews.com/2025/11/15/a...

"Some are trying to set the NPS “up to fail” as a pretext for privatizing some of the nation’s most popular parks, he claimed, while others are focused on “facade management”: preserving the jobs of staff in visible roles, like rangers, while cutting “everything else behind the scenes”,

Former UVA president Jim Ryan, who resigned over the summer due to pressure from the Trump Administration, just shared this 12-page letter with the Faculty Senate, detailing his experience with the Board of Visitors and DOJ. It's a surreal--and troubling--read. drive.google.com/file/d/1Is6x...

Scoop from @abbyvesoulis.bsky.social & me: new docs obtained by @weareoversight.bsky.social show DHS trying to obtain drivers license data from all 50 states to weaponize Trump’s false claims of voter fraud & possibly remove voters from rolls before midterms www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

I feel like Trump has pioneered a new form of spoils, where criminal allies of the President can expect to be compensated for their crimes.

I think a lot, especially living where I do now, that Ruby Bridges (now 71) is younger than my mom. Today I’m thinking about how she walked into William Frantz Elementary School when she was younger than my Small Niece is now.

I was told there was a crisis of free speech on campus that must be reversed

"According to project scientists working on NASA's next generation Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.. they were given only four days to empty a mission-critical laboratory." www.space.com/space-explor...

Important to understand the Epstein stuff and the fascism and the corruption are, in a lot of ways, really all the same story from different angles: powerful men who can and do abuse vulnerable people around them because they can, and because systems of elite accountability catastrophically failed

I love seeing a shred of accountability for Trump as much as anyone, but it's pretty striking that most people are prepared to believe a man who's a convicted serial rapist-sex trafficker and NOT ALL THESE WOMEN katemanne.substack.com/p/the-actual...

$300,000 That's it. Nine tsunami-tracking stations going offline over a $300,000 funding cut. That's like 1.5 ICE agents/year. Probably less than it cost just to fix potholes caused by Trump's birthday parade. What are we doing here?

Bernie Moreno prioritizing all the things Ohioans elected him to do - supporting private equity firing union workers, trying to start a war with Colombia, and secretly collecting information about his colleagues' cars

“Mr. Moreno returned to Chillicothe again on the first Saturday in June — not for a rally, but to deliver grim news to the union’s leadership: H.I.G. Capital would be closing the mill…Mr. Moreno said he had come to understand H.I.G. Capital’s plight. ‘I’m a business guy,’ Mr. Moreno said.”

A MAGA Senator [Bernie Moreno, R-OH] Promised Hope for a Dying Ohio Mill. Then Reality Set In. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/09/b...

"Rights, liberties, and freedoms are never secure when they lie dormant or unused." Interesting article in the latest volume of the Journal of Academic Freedom. Rather than thinking of #AcademicFreedom as a defense against attacks, we should make it an active practice. www.aaup.org/JAF16/conspi...

Happy FSTL day to all who celebrate

This is how you incinerate a field of science. 🔭🧪

Universal swing in action: "What we saw last night was a directional shift toward Democrats in 99.8% of counties that held partisan elections." www.gelliottmorris.com/p/seven-data...

From Erin Reed: Loudoun County—from which Trump threated to withhold fed funding for upholding restroom access—rejected anti-trans Rep & elected 2 trans rights Dems.--incl. one who represented trans students in court against outgoing anti-trans Rep Gov Glenn Youngkin.

The latest, 11pm: —Prop 50 wins —VA Dems flip Gov, LG, AG; & gain in House —Dems win NJ-Gov —Mamdani wins —PA Dems win supreme court —ME vote-restricting measure loses —Krasner & Bragg win —JD's half-brother loses —GA Dems flip 2 statewide offices + Dem are leading to flip so many local offices.

USDA has the authority and the resources to fully fund SNAP for November. The Administration’s refusal to act is a deliberate choice that will leave millions of Americans struggling to put food on the table during this Republican shutdown. /end rant.

“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy--they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made…”

Federal Judges have ruled a) that the President does have the authority to release emergency SNAP funds during the shutdown & b) that Trump *Must* do so. That means if payments don't go out, it's because Trump & the republicans defied the Judiciary to refuse to use their authority to send them out.

Prop. 50 has gone from an improbability to a near certainty. It’s one of the most important votes on the ballot in November. Democrats’ hopes of retaking the House in 2026 hinge on its approval. But the significance of Prop. 50 goes beyond its initial goal of offsetting Texas’ gerrymander.

These people are deadly serious about destroying free expression and the LGBT community but it’s also hard not to laugh because they all sound like the bad guys in Footloose

I want more people to care that SNAP benefits are being cut off on November 1. 40% of SNAP beneficiaries are children. This is callous and vile.

If you are presenting at this year's conference (just two weeks away!), don't forget to post your paper to the paper archive for this year's conference by the end of Oct. 23. Link and instructions for the archive at this year's conference homepage: associationforpoliticaltheory.org/content.aspx...

Trump does not believe in public goods. He views the federal treasury as his private purse; public employees are to be his personal advocates, or they get fired; public property (like the White House) his to do what he wants, even if it means gutting the East Wing without permission./1

Wow. Harvard nuking its PhD programs - Science PhD admissions reduced by more than 75% - Arts & Humanities reduced by about 60% - Social Sciences by 50–70% - History by 60% - Biology by 75% - The German department will lose all PhD seats - Sociology from six PhD students to zero

My response to the NYT’s “moderate to win” argument: The data shows the strategy is tapped out. Being seen as moderate by voters doesn’t boost votes, replacing every progressive with moderates would net 0 seats, and the graveyard of defeated D incumbents if full of moderates, not progressives.

Why I hate unitary executive theory with a strength of 10,000 suns. Turns out having a President who exercises total control over hiring and firing creates perverse incentives for people to commit to one man over a democracy.

By a 2-1 opinion, the Ninth Circuit just held that the president can federalize the National Guard forces and deploy them when protesters shine flashlights in the eyes of ICE officers. It’s one of the most dangerous and legally flawed court decisions I’ve seen this year. 1/23

Wow. New Economist poll finds only 34% of Americans say ICE's use of force has been justified, vs 51% who say it's been excessive. And they oppose agents wearing masks by 52-35. Yep, ICE is becoming a pariah agency, and that's gaining deep penetration in the culture:

If programs such as the ACL are eliminated as Trump wishes, experts warn that an increasing number of disabled and aging Americans could be institutionalized with little oversight to ensure their rights are protected against abuse and neglect.