Trump’s Advice to Venezuela’s Democracy Champion: Don’t Go Home www.nytimes.com/2026/03/12/w...

USUALLY presidents getting blame or taking credit for gas prices (or local crime rates, or etc etc) is dumb, because it’s a commodity whose price is set on a global market, USUALLY for reasons having little to do with the White House’s occupant. But this is 100% directly Trump’s fault.

I seriously doubt he's thinking strategically like this, BUT the fact that he won't *sign* any other bills doesn't mean no other bills could become law. As long as Congress is in session, he can just sit on the bill for 10 days (Sundays excepted) and then it becomes law, just as if he had signed it.

Trump terrorized the refugees who had fled the thug government of Venezuela, murdered people in fishing boats, and now has totally sold out the organized opposition and is allied with the thugs. While also fulfilling the worst stereotypes the entire hemisphere had of the US.

Most of psychotherapy research is progress, not innovation. This review concludes that small, incremental benefits can arise from it: - Digital tools can increase access and engagement. - Personalization can improve response rates. - Simplified, scalable formats can reach more people.

I wrote up a quick story about an interesting funding proposal for public colleges in Illinois. Not everyone is happy with it.

Opposition to data centers surged in Wisconsin. Republicans remain mildly opposed but independents and Democrats became strongly opposed since October. open.substack.com/pub/charlesa...

Excited to present at #SPSP2026 alongside such wonderful researchers and to share our latest work on belonging with collaborators @pedram-zarei.bsky.social, @chrisrozek.bsky.social, and our research teams! Thanks to Joel Le Forestier for organizing this session at @spspnews.bsky.social!

They actually crafted this speech, though. It’s not Sorkin’s brand of speech but it *crafted*. Sure it’s nonsense glued together with lies and racism but it has structure, something his speeches rarely do. I regret to inform you that it could very well perform well.

Our instant poll of speech watchers, which found significant doubts that Trump is focusing on the nation’s most important problems or that he’ll lower the cost of living -- even among a friendly, GOP-heavy audience

“As we prepare for more waves of bad news, I’m remembering that there is always a next right thing to do, that I am never alone in my despair, and that when we come together, we can create new worlds that are kinder and more of what we all deserve." - B Loewe

“Hope expands the space of the possible and becomes a way of recognizing and naming the incomplete nature of the present.” Henri Giroux

You would never see USWNT partying with Kash Patel… just saying.

QEPD Willie Colón

Something is awry in higher education. Indiana University agrees to pay the football coach more than $100 million, shortly after cutting hundreds of academic programs. www.espn.com/college-foot...

New at Tusk: Trump is now openly defying the Supreme Court... and calling them traitors while he's at it

It's an absurd press conference because they have to pretend that the crap pouring out of his mouth has meaning. But the main takeaway is that he is accusing the Supreme Court of disloyalty to the United States and is ignoring their ruling.

"The terms of the loan and the source of the funds have not yet been released." This won't get paid back. These are UNRESTRICTED funds. They could have been used for research, teaching, staff, faculty, you know... university stuff. This is corruption. Plain and simple. www.ipm.org/news/2026-02...

This storm is still looking "good" (read: strong & dangerous) and I think we are in for a close call here. A few minutes after 7:00. Now's the time to finish up your plans.

If you have been following the clumsy — no, pathetic — attempt by CBS lawyers to collaborate with the FCC in reviving the pointless "equal time" rule, using Stephen Colbert and his show as their playground... then watch him explain it from his POV. Fascinating. www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQIl...

This is tomorrow at 1 PM ET! Come hear me, Heidi Tseu, and Joe Brenckle talk about public trust and higher ed leadership. Thanks to the Association of Governing Boards for organizing.

US News postponed its ranking of social work programs this year following a boycott of deans that was driven by issues with the peer reputation survey rollout. They're not against rankings per se, but stood up when a key component got screwed up.

New: "Effect of Artificial Intelligence on Learning: A Meta-Meta-Analysis" by Wagenmakers and colleagues revealing evidence for "severe publication bias and extreme between-study heterogeneity" in existing meta-analyses of the effects of AI on learning: osf.io/preprints/ps...

Benito ❤️

Benito ❤️

New @MULawPoll national survey looks at ICE, Renee Good shooting, deportations, Trump approval and 2026 generic ballot. charlesatpollsandvotes.substack.com/p/ice-renee-...

AAUP President Todd Wolfson issued the following statement in response to Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt's Executive Order issued today immediately eliminating academic tenure at the state’s public regional universities and community colleges.

These continued attacks on higher ed are about control & protecting power, which includes the ability to shape education, knowledge, & history. Policies protecting faculty & their academic freedom are obstacles to authoritarian control.

Some people will be tempted to think that having the state dictate faculty teaching loads we can repair trust in institutions and avoid authoritarianism when in actuality having the state dictate faculty teaching is part of an authoritarian program.

They’ve been on this for a minute. More teaching + post tenure review (and contracts) plus ai supercharged productivity surveillance tools also makes professors more vulnerable to student evals, which gives admin more power to fire you. That’s the plan.

Venezuela’s Authoritarian Grip Eases. But for How Long? www.nytimes.com/2026/02/03/w...

Here's my piece on compensation absurdities in higher. Only scratches the surface, but hopeful we can use this as a springboard to say: this weird thing we do? We don't have to keep doing it. Or, we can do this better. Let's aim higher www.chronicle.com/article/high...

The Heritage Foundation wrote Project 2025, which helped motivate many federal policy changes in the last year. Here is their follow-up document, which will definitely get traction at the Department of Education and in red states.

I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. Stay free

Sen Tillis just went off on Noem in what looked like a hallway scrum. Said in no uncertain terms that she should be canned.

‘The state has moved from telling us what we cannot teach to telling us exactly what we can…giving our students a really impoverished version of the discipline,’ Katie Rainwater ‘[Students] will be getting a sociology text, a sociology course without a soul…It is a sanitized version,’ Matt Marr

As the Department of Education prepares for negotiated rulemaking on accreditation, I'm watching two things: who gets selected as negotiators and how closely ED's initial proposal looks to the proposed higher ed compact or legislation that is stuck in Congress.

I personally don't tell people who have been fighting their hearts out daily for weeks not to celebrate wins of any size. I certainly don't do that when I've been nowhere near the place where the fight has been happening and have done little more than make some donations from miles away.

thought a bit about abolishing ICE, Democratic caution, and how this time the institutional change is probably the easy part goodpoliticsbadpolitics.substack.com/p/change-see...

It's that time of the year again.

Remember when these guys lied that they were preserving Confederate monuments because you had to leave up the whole messy contested historical record rather than erasing history?

There are 4 top races in the Wisconsin state Senate. Democrats need 3 of the 4 to win a majority. One of the Republicans just announced his retirement. open.substack.com/pub/charlesa...

Of course, there's no mention of the 200+ degree programs she cut or consolidated to help pay for this historic football win (by tripling the football budget).

Re the February Dear Colleagues letter that threatened funding for schools & universities over DEI-related efforts: ‘[Ed Dept]…moved to dismiss its appeal. It leaves in place a federal judge’s August decision finding that the anti-DEI effort violated the First Amendment & federal procedural rules.’

No one can be watching this Davos speech and reach any conclusion but that the President of the United States is mentally disturbed and that something is deeply wrong with him. This is both embarrassing and extremely dangerous.

so you should just know, if Indiana can win a national title, there's no reason for you to not have hope about...well, everything and anything