Trump's higher ed ransom note is here - everyone would have to acquiesce to their unprecedented demands or not be "given priority for grants," plus they can demand "reimbursement" for "violations" www.wsj.com/us-news/educ... A mechanism to enforce fealty. An attack on academic freedom and democracy

University of Texas leaping to the top of the rankings of higher ed institutions most eager to cozy up to the authoritarian, taking over the top spot from previous leader, Columbia University. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/u...

This guy? Who literally said he wants to put civil servants “in trauma?”

This year, more than ever before, it is all of us or none of us. May we all be inscribed in the book of life. G’mar Chatimah Tova.

The way they turned everything into a YouTube comment thread

As a daily Metro commuter this is complete bs. Nothing about riding metro has changed since the National Guard came to DC.

A new report says that the number of books being challenged or removed from public schools across the country has risen exponentially in the past two years. A Clockwork Orange tops their list.

Hillary Clinton referred to SOME Trump supporters as”deplorable,” and the political media had a meltdown. Trump refers to all Democrats as anti-American radical communists and “the enemy within,” and it’s no big deal. His reckless and dangerous demonization has been fully normalized.

As always: the primary goal of disinformation isn't to make you believe the fake thing. It's to make you believe that everything is fake, so you shouldn't even bother attempting to discern truth.

OpenAI employees are very excited about how well their new AI tool can create fake videos of people doing crimes and have definitely thought through all the implications of this

Once again, it is *faculty*—not administrators—who brought this case and won. Including UC Faculty Association chapters of the AAUP.

Trump comments on the opposition: "I  thought [I] would be met with fury on the left, but they're sort of giving up."  "I really thought that we were gonna have to sort of fight it through. There's been no fight."

Dystopian anecdote: I asked Alexa to turn on the lights, and Alexa asked me… if I wanted to listen to the Charlie Kirk Show. 🤬

Look, another shooter whose politics will be declared utterly inscrutable

If a shooter’s politics are hard to pin down, he’s a leftist If a shooter’s politics are right wing, he’s hard to pin down

In which a top US Border Patrol official, incredibly, tells my tall and Anglo colleague @chipmitchell1.bsky.social that he's not the type they're looking for as they go about downtown Chicago arresting people based on "how they look" chicago.suntimes.com/immigration/...

Another Kavanaugh stop.

Trump is building a personalist regime where every university must bend the knee or lose funding and every business must bend the knee or face tariffs, H-1B fees, and regulatory blackmail. You can't cover each domain in isolation; they are all the same story.

“They’re, they’re animals anyway. That’s what I would tell my kids all the time,” said the ICE agent, according to body cam footage. spectrumlocalnews.com/nys/central-...

Trump is ordering the military to use “full force” against an American city, while the Supreme Court declares him the Sun King and Congress hides under a pile of coats. The checks and balances only work when the institutions aren’t run by utter cowards and the complicit

# of paragraphs for news orgs to mention there's no discernable need to deploy troops to Portland, Oregon The Guardian: 1st paragraph BBC: 4th paragraph AP: 5th paragraph Time: 6th paragraph Politico: 8th paragraph NPR: 9th paragraph CNN: 10th paragraph NBC: 12th paragraph Fox News: never mentions

We have allowed the lazy, grifting Silicon Valley charlatans into the front door, & in doing so, we have learned just how many of our own colleagues & administrators simply are not interested in the actual business of education. It's incredibly demoralizing. bsky.app/profile/mcop...

OpenAI's VP for education recently said the company wanted to become "core infrastructure" for schools and universities. Any infrastructure, though, always depends on habituating users to its technical affordances - so I've been trying to track how it's doing that 🧵 www.nytimes.com/2025/06/07/t...

This year, may the shofar be a wake-up call for all. As we enter 5786, our commitment to justice is greater than ever.

Just a reminder that, despite what these freaks would have you think, antivaxx is extremely unpopular and we need to attack them relentlessly for putting insane dipshittery over our health

This story reveals the dissonance between Trump-supporting self-proclaimed “conservative” island inhabitants and their desire for government intervention and hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to preserve their culture and heritage.

Jimmy Kimmel said nothing about Kirk on the air and his statement deplored his murder and sent prayers to his family. Insane to pursue his show like this.

Tylenol a bridge too far?

A devastating account from @nickkristof.bsky.social in the @nytimes.com about the deadly impact of Pres. Trump's aid cuts. So many more lives are at stake. Congress must push back and restore life-saving aid. (Action resource ⬇️)

I feel the urge to stockpile Tylenol for when it’s illegal and I don’t have any money.

Unclear why anyone would take his assertions about lethal U.S. strikes in the Caribbean and drugs any more seriously than these claims.

Did he declare the $50k as income on his taxes? Under Schedule C (for corruption)?

Call me old fashioned, but aren’t both parts of this relationship currently, uh, married to other people?

In today's Letter, @hcrichardson.bsky.social has it all: extra-judicial killings, persecution of political enemies, censorship, ongoing purge of government officials, concealing information, & colluding with enemies of the state through inaction. Welcome to fascism. We won't have it. We are America.

All headlines just from today 🇺🇸

Anna Paulina Luna just made yet another comparison between Charlie Kirk and Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Again: Kirk very publicly and enthusiastically criticized King within the past year and a half, calling the Civil Rights icon "a bad guy" and decrying the 1964 Civil Rights Act as a "mistake."

NEW: The Pentagon told journalists it will require them to pledge they won’t gather any information — even unclassified — that hasn’t been expressly authorized for release, and will revoke the press credentials of those who do not obey. @washingtonpost.com

They are disappearing people.

Of all the stupid things that this regime has done, this is right up near the top. Postdoctoral researchers come to the US on H-1B visas. This will further destroy the US science enterprise. Stupid stupid stupid.

I wrote recently about my more than 20 years in higher ed: "The biggest change I have observed is that I, my colleagues, and our students are intensely surveilled in the hope that we can be publicly shamed, fired or expelled if we say or do something wrong." donmoynihan.substack.com/p/how-the-hi...

Here is my best understanding of the timeline: *A MAGA student recorded professor, objected to gender content *Had one or more meetings with A&M President, which she also records *He first tells her no-one is getting fired *Recording released, political pressure, he fires professor, later resigns

Authoritarian regimes always come up with exceptions and "emergencies" to justify taking away people's rights

The idea that the combined MMR is dangerous but separately the vaccines are fine was created out of whole cloth by Andrew Wakefield, a disgraced former doctor who had a patent on a non-combined version of the MMR. We've known his research was bunk for almost 30 years.

Get involved, especially locally. I’m in my HOA, I go to town halls, I have a book club, I attend community events. It keeps me half-sane and reminds me of the power of people!

IMPORTANT PERSPECTIVE: What I have not seen anyone discussing is that Nexstar pulling Kimmel, forcing ABC’s hand, comes as Nexstar is leading the way for the industry on trying to get FCC approval for media consolidation. www.poynter.org/business-wor...

The union representing the musicians from Jimmy Kimmel’s band releases a statement calling the FCC’s pressure on Disney “state censorship.”

Folks look at you like you're crazy when you say we're in the midst of the worst, most unprecedented Article I constitutional crisis in American history, & then, well, 👇🤷‍♂️

Don't buy the canard that this is about Charlie Kirk. Abusing state power to lean on corporate leaders and get Jimmy Kimmel off the air because he told jokes about the president and made him feel bad was always the plan.

What is to prevent Brendan Carr from canceling the licenses of affiliates who accurately report election results unfavorable to Trump? Or a scandal involving a Trump associate? Or bad economic numbers. Unbridled authoritarianism.

Kirk's murder is being weaponized to corral us into a smaller and smaller arena of speech, and it is our job to refuse to be confined, to keep speaking out, to keep making irreverent jokes, supporting progressive voices, chastising the high-profile cowards, and talking among ourselves.