@kateriga.bsky.social: "Columbia … the poster child for university capitulation and getting absolutely nothing in return.”

Between Columbia taking Most Egregious Ring-Kissing (standing in for many other corrupted administrators and trustees in elite higher education) and the NYT vs. Zohran for Biggest Journalism Fail, this was an especially satisfying set of Golden Dukes 🏆💰

Between Columbia taking Most Egregious Ring-Kissing (standing in for many other corrupted administrators and trustees in elite higher education) and the NYT vs. Zohran for Biggest Journalism Fail, this was an especially satisfying set of Golden Dukes 🏆💰

The entire conservative legal movement and philosophy of “originalism” is premised on the illegitimacy of any SCOTUS decision that doesn’t fit the GOP party platform

There was a liberal court for a few years in the mid 20th century and the right wing response was to delegitimize for DECADES right up to the point they had a supermajority, at which point it became Wrong to do so. These people think you are stupid bsky.app/profile/chri...

why is it that my kindergartener is doing this instead of sitting on a rug listening to stories

Wait, it was EMIL BOVE who was told about the Tom Homan investigation during the transition?!?!? www.ms.now/news/border-...

It will be very interesting to learn about the young lawyers who end up choosing to clerk for this guy

Thank you for this thought-provoking and wide-ranging interview, @crampell.bsky.social!

In today's parlance, you could say Norman Rockwell got woke. Which makes the Trump administration's appropriation of his work for their authoritarian project both offensive and moronic.

A cross-national analysis finds that as governments become more populist, academic freedom declines doi.org/10.1017/S153...

As someone who has closely covered New College of Florida since early 2023, there are at least a dozen problems with this article (I stopped counting at 12). The most significant issue is how the reporter condenses runaway spending to a paragraph. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/28/u...

An exceptionally stupid and contingent set of circumstances made Stephen Miller the most influential ideologue in the US. There is no future for the left or liberalism that does not take as a core mission ensuring he is punished for his crimes & no one as hateful as him is ever close to power again.

Anemola Hartocollis's last deep dive into the higher ed world was a fawning puff piece about Joshua Katz, the Princeton professor who slept with his students, wrote hostile essays about Black student orgs, was kicked out of the ACLS, and fired by Princeton after two misconduct investigations.

Anemona Hartocollis doesn't mention that he was a scandal-ridden Florida Republican politician--known for charging an $8,000 meal at the French Laundry in Napa Valley--with no experience is higher education. www.tampabay.com/florida-poli...

Google is hosting a CBP app that uses facial recognition to identify immigrants, while simultaneously removing apps that report the location of ICE officials because Google sees ICE as a vulnerable group. “Big tech has made their choice.” www.404media.co/google-has-c...

Stay classy, DOJ

If it's a horrible hot take about higher education in the NYT, you can pretty much assume it's Anemona Hartocollis. Great thread by Don on the person who gives us awful take after awful take.

As soon as I saw the headline, I had a pretty good guess who wrote it. Hartocollis is the go-to reporter to restore the reputation of campus conservatives. She led the Times campaign to push out Claudine Gay at Harvard, which was initiated by New College trustee Chris Rufo.

New, from me: The NYT reporter who specializes in profiles of beleaguered right-wingers on campus went to New College...and found out that things were going ok! So let me explain some pretty massive errors of omission: 🧵 donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-nyt-re...

"Why Peter Thiel is leaving Silicon Valley" (2018)

Dean Martin, born Dino Paul Crocetti, son of Italian immigrant Gaetano Crocetti Frank Sinatra, son of Italian immigrants Antonino Sinatra and Natalina Garavanta Merry Christmas to everyone except Stephen Miller and his enablers and handlers

no will convince me that "Heritage American" is anything other than an heirloom farmer's market tomato name

NO, NYTIMES, IT IS NOT THE DEPARTMENT OF WAR https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/26/world/africa/trump-isis-strikes-nigeria-christians-facts.html

ICE detain father shopping on Christmas Eve—then steal his family's groceries. Then 3 agents divvy up his paid for food—taking what they want for themselves. "Can I just get the wife's number to call and let her know?" woman asks. "No, guess he should've complied," agent says. Yakima, Washington

Wild scenes. Absolutely wild. My brain can't comprehend this kind of behavior

Think your mail is private? In Columbus, ICE is playing "Postmaster General."

Hillary’s “basket of deplorables” speech *defended* conservatives. Paraphrasing: “Some call all Republicans racist, homophobic, and otherwise bigoted, but that’s unfair to millions. It’s only half, the rest are good people.” But the press made calling an openly bigoted campaign bigoted a scandal.

“Who’s gonna stop you for that” is Trump’s key political insight

"an internet witch hunt" Every single named person in this article who spread ugly lies about the Brown shooting, even putting an innocent student in danger, is a Republican. One is even a top DOJ official. This NYT headline makes it seem like it was an everybody problem. It was not.

Kind of wild how the take that some of Trump's supporters were "deplorable" was some huge scandal, but regularly screaming about "radical left scum" is just a thing he'll say with no media backlash.

It may seem a minor point but mentioning Harvard first in the ‘dispute’ suggests that the university is equally if not more culpable. It would have helpful to note that no administration has the legal right to use extortionate means to “exert influence over elite colleges…it views as too liberal.”

This is not a “duel,” which suggests both sides are equally culpable, but the latest salvo in the Trump administration’s ideological war on Harvard and higher education. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/24/u...

Holy shit!

DO NOT CONGRATULATE

NORAD Santa tracker is Woke

I have the “In Covid’s Wake” PDF and this section floored me. Here is some of the surrounding content — and citations. The professors cited laundered Twitter Files claims in their discussion of the Murthy v Missouri case — they stuck the *outcome of the case* in a footnote while centering the lies.

A small (personal) example of this book’s intellectual dishonesty: My father-in-law is reading In Covid’s Wake, and excitedly told me he found a passage where I’m quoted. The quote in question is me saying the FBI worked to censor speech on social media. Huh? When did I say that?!

Reposting this with alt text. Delete your Twitter. Now.

“.. We need to get better at treating this like a business,” ICE acting director Todd M. Lyons said .. as efficiently as Amazon moves packages: “Like Prime, but with human beings.” @washingtonpost.com www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

the White House comms strategy on this one was very much: NO NO NO HE HAS FRIENDS AND IS VERY NORMAL bsky.app/profile/andr...

I want to stress, also, how when we approached the Trump White House with a lengthy comment request on our findings, the only things they disputed - among the batch of lawless, titanically rancid shit - were a) Stephen miller was NOT regularly made fun of by his former GOP Hill colleagues…

Not The Onion

In a profile of Stephen Miller with @swin24.bsky.social, we reported he’s privately laughed off immigrant families’ “sob stories.” www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol... Speaking last night on Fox about the spiked CECOT story, Miller laughed about how ‘60 Minutes’ is “trying to tell sob stories."

If you’re wondering why your friends in academia are a little on edge right now, it’s because an eighteen-year-old who hasn’t done the reading, doesn’t look at the assignment, and has does no critical thinking skills more complex than “because I think it’s in the Bible” can literally end your career

I'd be delighted to have a hairstylist or a youth soccer coach visit for a night

Now that Stephen Miller is calling for CBS to fire journalists who are trying to tell the truth about Trump's mass deportations, it's a good time to check out our deep reported dive into Miller's real worldview and agenda:

Holy shit! On the morning of the Delaney Hall confrontation, an ICE thug who would shove @replamonica.bsky.social later in the day used a racial slur. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

This one was fun to write: did 2025 put a final stake thru the heart of the process school? Or was it maybe the beginning of a revival? (Take our course this spring for more!) @yalelawschool-yls.bsky.social @samuelmoyn.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2025/12/24/o...