This has been true in higher ed as long as I've been in it: claims that programs need to be close or reduced due to "budgets" but the details show that the programs in question actually bring in money, meaning the actual reason is ideological.

The first school I worked at started calculating profits and losses for departments. They quickly dropped it when they discovered that history (etc.) were highly "profitable" (cheap profs, little overhead, and huge classes) whereas STEM degrees were not.

Professors:

My words earlier this year: "In the U.S. today, to tolerate, permit or encourage the monstrification of any non-citizen and consequently deny them due process is to tolerate, permit and encourage this to happen to U.S. citizens." Now it's birthright citizenship. www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

Lonsdale is, among other things, the founding board chairman of that "University of Austin" thing that Bari Weiss is backing. That's the school that "prepares thoughtful and ethical innovators, builders, leaders, public servants and citizens through open inquiry and civil discourse."

The Declaration of Independence, the American Constitution and the Gettysburg Address. Liberty and equality for all in a constitutional republic. Not blood and soil nationalism. America is not an ethnostate where your rights depend on ancestry.

This is a powerful illustration from Amnesty International depicting “The Box” at Alligator Alcatraz. This is where they would put detainees to torture them. In the hot sun, swarmed by insects. This was used as a torture device. ICE and DeSantis must answer for these crimes against humanity.

Whether these men were on a list or not is irrelevant THERE. IS. NO. JUSTIFICATION. FOR. KILLING. SHIPWRECKED. MEN.

See, you made the classic mistake of reading Douthat. Don't do that.

Ross Douthat, architecture critic vs. Reality

After this, federal agents tear gassed the public on their way out of Elgin, per our photographer who was present. The Feds tear gassed eight Chicago neighborhoods this fall and now a suburb.

just to be absolutely clear, he is deliberately and knowingly slurring trans people here. fuck him.

Heartbreaking. The University of Nebraska will terminate its entire Earth science department. One of the country's most successful and respected geology & climate programs: gone. When ideologues & politicians are threatened by the very act of studying climate change, I wonder: who of us is next?

An internal list of military targets? Naming everyone on board, fulfilling wartime rules of engagement, ready in time for a covert boat trip, but requiring 40 minutes to justify a second strike? May we see it?

Straight to jail, admiral. Do not pass go. Take Hegseth with you.

Yeah. All of the strikes have been just as illegal as if Iran sunk a Disney cruise because it suspected passengers carried weed. But this one is so blatant—helpless survivors on an already-damaged ship—that it's impossible to fabricate any rationale. It's a crack worth widening.

Some protesters began throwing snowballs. It got bad from that point forward. ICE did not appear to detain any of the protesters but did deploy gas on the neighborhood which included children. Local police seemed to do nothing to help. ICE apparently is allergic to snowballs.

A protest turns into chaos as ICE terrorize a neighborhood. / multiple clips This just happened so location isn’t known yet. If someone recognizes this neighborhood please tell me. I’m still trying to find out. There were children in the crowds when ICE deployed gas.

A Palantir billionaire just called for public hangings. “It's time to bring back masculine leadership to protect our most vulnerable,” writes Joe Lonsdale. This is where Silicon Valley authoritarianism is heading: www.thenerdreich.com/joe-lonsdale...

It would cost $30 billion to end homelessness in the USA.

This is not complicated. They blew up a boat that posed no imminent threat and then killed the survivors. There's no legal regime on Earth worth a damn that wouldn't see that as murder, crimes against humanity, or war crimes, depending on the specific code in play.

"If federal agents are brazen enough to fire pellets directly at a member of Congress, imagine how they behave when encountering defenseless members of our community," Grijalva said. ​

This is the energy we need from everyone

CNN Finds Israel Killed Palestinian Aid Seekers and Bulldozed Bodies into Shallow, Unmarked Graves

Anyone who has participated in or attended a naturalization ceremony knows how meaningful and joyous these ceremonies tend to be. The cruelty of this is heartbreaking and enraging.

This case is not cert-worthy. This is a bad sign.

This is so fucked. Straight up Nazis running our gov, and dems are just standing by. wtf.

At best, this is a war crime. At worst, it’s simply murder. Bradley is going to need that pardon.

These are just petty, cruel people.

Look at the new kid doing her job. The others in congress need to see this and see what it looks like to lead.

ICE fired a munition at Rep. Adelita Grijalva as she demanded answers during a raid in her own community. No warning. No accountability. Just armored agents treating Tucson like a war zone. If they’ll fire at a Congresswoman on camera, imagine what they do to everyone else. Sick MFers.

JD Vance is that one unemployed friend who hits up the chat group at 2:26 a.m.

look deleting the post is obviously stopping the actual ICE raids but every single bit of pushback matters bsky.app/profile/airb...

people like Sabrina Carpenter saying essentially "decent people don't want the stench of ICE or this White House anywhere near them" to an audience of millions that includes a lot of young people helps empower them against ICE while reminding ICE agents that everyone hates them, both big wins

A court with a normal-ish conservative majority would have been tolerable. I'm not eager for court packing, impeaching justices, and other such options. But this court sticking around post-Trump is untenable. They've already torched their own legitimacy, the only question is what do we do about it.

My theory, fwiw, is that Supreme Court Justices are not immune to Twitter brain poisoning. I suspect all six have horrific information environments and have therefore lost the ability to understand the people who don't agree with them.

Absolutely heartbreaking.

Also, it's all grift.

I'm hoping we can add the cost of massive legal settlements for victims of the abductions and camps. Maybe this is the way to end the reign of terror, and quick.

$2B/month to illegally hold 500 detainees is how you end up running out of $170B in funding two years short of the period it was intended to cover

i very sincerely think this is going to be an absolutely enormous political problem for the white house by 2027

Performative cruelty. They don't actually care about the immigrants, one way or the other. They want to scare the rest of us into compliance, without actually hurting perceived white people. Because if they broke into my house, my white neighbors might become radicalized.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announces another boat strike in response to a request/wish from Turning Point USA’s Andrew Kolvet.

ICE agents’ refusal to wear proper identification has opened the door for impersonators to harm others. A 17 yr old US citizen had a gun pulled on him by a man claiming to be ICE. ICE’s unchecked aggression has already created an environment where abuse thrives.

So when I talk about people needing to be attentive to how they discuss Alex Karp’s hair and his mistreatment of it, I’m talking about how awful people are about Black hair in general bsky.app/profile/chan...

Here’s my Spotify Wrapped 🎵✨

I understand why people stay on services that suck but not Spotify. There’s so many other platforms that are 1-to-1 the same but with less garbage if not objectively better.

In a country full of AT&Ts, Amazon, Starbucks and CBS… be a Costco. Stand up for DEI. Pay a living wage. Fight the tariffs.