Polling “is DT doing what he promised?” is like polling “does DT say what he thinks and mean what he says?” Both are shit questions that ignore “is what he’s doing good, true, and what people want and need?” They reveal an impoverished view of gov’t as fundamentally unfulfilling and inauthentic.

It was a nice civil society while it lasted… “‘There is almost no digital content that can be used to prove that anything in particular happened.’ Such an effect is known as the liar’s dividend: that increasingly high-caliber A.I. videos will allow people to dismiss authentic content as fake.”

A fantastic column about corporate power, information disorder, corrupted political discourse, a collapsing First Amendment, and the consequences thereof, post-Kirk. “No citizen who simply settles for being a consumer of democracy should expect to have a real democracy ever again.”

Speech goals: (1) ensure top military leaders are all in one place and have to listen; (2) say outrageous, unconstitutional, violence-affirming things; (3) wait to see which leaders disavow those things; (4) purge those leaders and empower the rest.

Just gonna leave this right here. Wondering which big-name recording artist will crack the top 40 with a contemporary Horst Wessel Song, and when. Or maybe it’ll be a well propagandized, previously unknown Rich-Men-North-Of-Richmond-style viral sensation.

Related pragmatic problems include “autocrats use isolated instances of political violence as false pretexts to dehumanize and wage oppressive, large-scale warfare on political opponents” and “this will calcify martyrdom and vengeance within the right-wing victimization narrative.”

“Why would we put at risk laboratories that are working to cure cancers or perfect artificial limbs… or test the limits of artificial intelligence? We need to get up from under our desks and persuade fellow citizens that the institutions they’ve helped create with their tax dollars are important.”

I’ve heard “I didn’t vote for this” among folks who went the wrong way in the easiest two-item multiple choice test ever. Response: “Yes, you did. Maybe you didn’t INTEND for things to be this way, though there were many signs that they could. That said, how do you INTEND to act from here forward?”

"many ... wrongly believe there would be one clear unambiguous moment where we go from 'democracy' to 'authoritarianism.' Instead, this is exactly how it happens — a blurring here, a norm destroyed there, a presidential diktat unchallenged. Then you wake up one morning and our country is different."

Your occasional reminder that the current U.S. government — headed by a felon, his personal attorneys, and other criminal sympathizers — has used federal power 1) to protect convicted thugs who assaulted police in his behalf and 2) to punish the law enforcement officials who prosecuted those thugs.

Bad people are taking our public wealth - investments in our shared understanding of health, education, our environment, our economy - and reallocating it to pay cruel, violent, masked fascists to attack and imprison people in flagrant defiance of the rule of law.

“The assumption of our goodness protects us from accountability for indecent thoughts, words, and actions... But goodness is determined by the way you move through this world; and good people don't align with this kind of criminality and immorality, no matter what story they tell themselves.”

We educators of civic educators must rethink and rebuild. Questions: why, how, and what ought we teach now that “American democracy” is past tense; how do we assert public good and verifiable truth as core to our teaching; what kinds of micro/meso/exosystemic civics are practicable, to what ends?

Chaos and uncertainty, leading to wastefulness and claims that public goods are inefficient and ineffective, are features, not bugs, of this administration.

The arc of history bends toward impunity for those who use power and money to dismantle justice under false pretenses.

Formula for a minoritarian party to destroy public goods and rule over the majority indefinitely: exercise of power > reason + rule of law + public accountability.

Formula for a minoritarian party to destroy public goods and rule over the majority indefinitely: exercise of power > reason + rule of law + public accountability.

Advancements in science, medicine, public health, pollution and disaster mitigation, and renewable energies belong to 350 million Americans. They’re shared, multi-generational investments; our collective wealth. And they’re being dismantled and thrown away for secret police and concentration camps.

I feel like this post is just a brag, really. “This road exists in a functional democracy; and also, we care about the natural world and use our public resources to tell people about that.”

Thanks so much, @matthewfacciani.bsky.social, for the opportunity to connect! Misguided is a great podcast; and it’s an honor to be part of the program.

A clear, compelling discussion of how democratic erosion manifests in the domains of science and education, and a pragmatic risk-assessment tool to help scholars decide what to do about that, individually and collectively. And it’s free. Save; read; share.

There are 2 previous historical cases of countries destroying their science and universities, crippling them for decades: Lysenkoism in the USSR and Nazi Germany. The Trump administration will be the 3rd. It's not just budgets but research, institutions, expertise, and training the next generation.

Like the Onion’s oft-repeated gun violence headline: “‘No way to prevent Trump’s march toward fascist authoritarianism,’ says only democratic nation that refuses to enforce constitutional rules against fascist authoritarianism.”

Like the Onion’s oft-repeated gun violence headline: “‘No way to prevent Trump’s march toward fascist authoritarianism,’ says only democratic nation that refuses to enforce constitutional rules against fascist authoritarianism.”

It takes many villages. Counterattack, with legal and popular grounds to do so; and when the aggressors fold, keep attacking them for testing fascist autocratic action in the first place. War production framing = mobilizing and shifting material and intellectual resources to support counterattacks.

Deportation is the formal removal of a non-citizen, usually for breaking an immigration law or committing a crime, through a systematic legal process in which the deportee’s constitutional rights are upheld. If all of those conditions aren’t met, it’s not deportation; it’s something else.

This statement from the NSF is insane. Science is, in essence, designed to separate the true from the false. Understanding how falsehoods spread is key to the scientific endeavor. It is not a violation of free speech to be proven wrong.

Yes. More of this. AAU and other academic alliances, follow suit. Such “immediate and strategic support” also should include resources to strengthen government relations and help faculty and leadership widely disseminate the kinds and consequences of attacks on higher education to the public.

Yes. In the face of an existential crisis, this is part of what war production framing - mobilizing and shifting material and intellectual resources like American manufacturers mobilized and shifted industrial resources during WWII - might look like in higher ed.

Or, like, an Association? Of American Universities? Hey, wait a sec… [searches AAU website for mutual defense policies and press; finds encouragement that federal agencies follow due process and congrats to J. Bhattacharya for NIH confirmation] Well, shit.

In the face of an existential crisis, this post (and the Big 10 mutual defense compact) is what war production framing - mobilizing and shifting material and intellectual resources like American manufacturers mobilized and shifted industrial resources during WWII - might look like in higher ed.

In the face of an existential crisis, what would a war production framing - ie., mobilizing and shifting material and intellectual resources like American manufacturers mobilized and shifted their industrial resources during WWII - look like in higher education? A step in the right direction.

THIS is the message. The public goods that a small number of mostly unelected, very rich people are corrupting, stealing, dismantling? They belong to Americans; collectively. All 350 million of us. 1/3

Those trying to understand the tariffs as economic policy are dangerously naive. No, the tariffs are a tool to collapse our democracy. A means to compel loyalty from every business that will need to petition Trump for relief. 1/ A 🧵 to explain his plan and how we fight back.

Many tools in a functional democracy - legislative and judicial authority; multi-party coalitions; independent press and legal institutions; organized popular resistance; impeachment and removal for criminal activity; recall and snap elections. But the US is not a functional democracy.

Not sure how impactful “say their names” discourse is as a political strategy; but haven’t seen it show up for the growing number of international scholars being captured by the Trump admin without due process. Alireza Doroudi; Kseniia Petrova; Rumeysa Ozturk; Mahmoud Khalil.

In the face of an existential crisis, what would a war production framing - ie., mobilizing and shifting material and intellectual resources like American manufacturers mobilized and shifted their industrial resources during WWII - look like in higher education?

In the face of an existential crisis, what would a war production framing - ie., mobilizing and shifting material and intellectual resources like American manufacturers mobilized and shifted their industrial resources during WWII - look like in higher education?

In the face of an existential crisis, what would a war production framing - ie., mobilizing and shifting material and intellectual resources like American manufacturers mobilized and shifted their industrial resources during WWII - look like in higher education?

In the face of an existential crisis, what would a war production framing - ie., mobilizing and shifting material and intellectual resources like American manufacturers mobilized and shifted their industrial resources during WWII - look like in higher education?

In the face of an existential crisis, what would a war production framing - ie., mobilizing and shifting material and intellectual resources like American manufacturers mobilized and shifted their industrial resources during WWII - look like in higher education?

In the face of an existential crisis, what would a war production framing - ie., mobilizing and shifting material and intellectual resources like American manufacturers mobilized and shifted their industrial resources during WWII - look like in higher education?

In the face of an existential crisis, what would a war production framing - ie., mobilizing and shifting material and intellectual resources like American manufacturers mobilized and shifted their industrial resources during WWII - look like in higher education?

I sincerely think that universities should suspend their productivity standards for scientists and ask them instead to hold town halls in schools, public libraries, museums, shopping malls, and anywhere else and communicate what is being lost with the collapse of the research ecosystem.

What are the “differing opinions” administrators want to make room for? “No, some people are not welcome here?” What does “here” refer to? The classroom; the school; the community; the US? Some or all of the above? This is what resegregationist politics looks like at the local level.

“Restoring patriotic education and civics?” You mean the kind that emphasizes defense of the Constitution against domestic enemies; represents Nazis, autocrats, corruption, and purges of civil servants as bad; and teaches that impounding congressionally appropriated spending is impeachable?

Teachers’ suggestion that a text’s age is an essential criterion for judging its relevance to youth is misguided. More important: to what extent does a text reveal conditions and dilemmas associated with youth’s sociopolitical present? Relatedly, what are HS teachers doing with 1984 right now?

This is a head-spinning barrage of threats to democracy in less than a month. Shock and awe indeed. brightlinewatch.org/accelerated-...

“Official” isn’t synonymous with “political leader.” Some lead (eg., Pritzker, Mills, Sanders, AOC, Crockett, Murphy, Raskin); others follow, wait quietly, talk only about barriers to action. So who in higher ed are the Pritzkers, Millses, Sanderses, AOCs, Crocketts, Murphys, and Raskins among us?