While we change the DoD to the “Department of War,” they ought to rename HHS the “Department of Pestilence” and the USDA the “Department of Famine.”

Look what I got in the mail yesterday! @msteudeman.bsky.social’s excellent new book from @upmississippi.bsky.social about the role of feeling in Reconstruction Era education reforms. If you’re feeling jealous, you can get your own copy here: lnkd.in/gJxWTA8h

Michael Steudeman joins @NPR’s Throughline to explore the 19th-century roots of the Dept. of Education—drawing from his upcoming book ABSENCE OF NATIONAL FEELING. Listen + catch the book mention at the end! 🔗 buff.ly/TccdOzc #UPMississippi #Throughline #EducationHistory

I am playing Cyberpunk 2077, wishing it was Steampunk 1877

In today’s episode of Throughline from @npr.org, I discuss the post-Civil War Department of Education and its vexing legacy. The producers and voice actors did a fantastic job of bringing this research to life! www.npr.org/2025/06/12/1...

What I love most about archival research is that it’s the closest I’ll ever get to planning a heist. You have only the vaguest sense of what things will look like, and you have only a short time to get in, get the goods, and get out. A thrill ride start-to-finish!

You’re publishing a book about how campus activists pose a threat to democracy while those activists are being disappeared and deported. The rise of the Third Reich doesn’t obviate study of the Weimar Republic but it maybe does obviate asking whether the victims had it coming

Just to be clear, this post earlier is now a crime 👇

Instead of believing the myth that three expensive, genetically modified wolves are “de-extinct” dire wolves, let’s look at animals humanity has actually brought back from the brink of extinction using proven science and dedicated hard work: 🧵/6

This healed something in me

Remember SignalGate? (One of Trump's superpowers is being involved in so many scandals all the time that very few of them end up having staying power beyond a news cycle or two.)

The death of due process is the most egregious assault on human rights protections in any democracy. Without it, democracy simply does not exist. Call your senators, call your reps. Call the governor, call your HOA for all I care, but please make noise for the people they're trying to disappear.

Today on walkies, Hodges the hound was pooping when a schnauzer had the AUDACITY to walk by him. Barking furiously, Hodges stepped in his fresh feces and slipped. The other dog carried on walking, paying him no notice. Anyway, I thought it was a good metaphor for US trade policy this past week.

DJT’s war on public servants will decimate the Washington, DC local economy. The consequences will not be unlike when a massive factory leaves town or a corporation moves their headquarters to another city. abcnews.go.com/US/agencies-...

my most frequent google search for the past year is almost certainly “elmo brushy brush” (toddler parent 👋)

This guy had great hand-eye coordination

Sesame Street is just propaganda for books

Bring back the Whig Party

"What are we supposed to do, we don't control Congress" "What are we supposed to do, we don't have a supermajority" "What are we supposed to do, our supermajority has moderate democrats"

Who the hell is Al and why is he writing all my students’ papers for them?

Trump combines the worst traits of all our presidents: • Jackson’s cruelty & destructiveness • Johnson’s amnesty for white supremacists • McKinley’s imperialism • Wilson’s racist purges • FDR’s internment camps • Eisenhower’s Lavender Scare & mass deportations • Nixon’s red-baiting resentments

The takeover of Twitter was a preview of what we're all living with now and a stark example of why you can't let any one person have too much money: they go insane and make themselves everybody's problem

When Democrats gain control, they always ask themselves, “Would we accept the GOP using its power this way if the shoe were on the other foot?” When Republicans gain control, they ask themselves, “How can we ensure the shoe is never on the other foot again?”

🚨BREAKING. From a program officer at the National Science Foundation, a list of keywords that can cause a grant to be pulled. I will be sharing screenshots of these keywords along with a decision tree. Please share widely. This is a crisis for academic freedom & science.

The Internet Archive has to date downloaded 500 terabytes of US government websites, which it crawls at the end of every presidential term. The whole archive is fully searchable. This effort's housed by a donation-funded nonprofit, not a branch of the US government. blog.archive.org/2024/05/08/e...

Professor of evilology here. Evil people often lie to obscure their true motives. 🧵

I know that all these institutions know how to push back because when Obama directed them to enforce pre-existing Title IX law, universities said no. They flat out refused until there was a working group and specific guidelines. And even then, they *still* refused.

Sens. Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Bill Cassidy all voted for Trump’s conviction in the impeachment trial four years ago; yet none of them have mounted any opposition now. If the three acted together, they could stop this whole fascist assault in its tracks. Remember their complicity.

The good news about the party in power scraping the bottom of the barrel of 19th and 20th century eugenics talking points and strategies is that we have lots and lots of historical documents and events to learn from about how to combat this (for now) if we're willing to get to work.

remember stuff like this when they tell you that diversity means a lowering of standards

keywords of fascist imagination: gender ideology, family, patriotic education

I think that we should be talking about what Trump is trying to do to trans people in the context of the Nuremberg laws.

The upside, an unforced error: the news cycle the last 48 hours reminded people of the beneficial programs the government provides. Maybe some people thought about the taken-for-granted ways federal policy benefits them. The downside: it’s probably too late for that revelation to make a difference

right? why are we (the country in general) so easily shocked and awed?

we have a president with a tenuous grip on small legislative majorities who is out of the gate with a flurry of dramatically unpopular orders and who has just demonstrated his weakness on the international stage. if i were an elected member of his domestic opposition, i might try to draw real blood.

You are going to hear a lot of conservative activists over the next four years explain why an arcane constitutional provision unequivocally compels some aspect of Trump's policy agenda, and I would like you to remember they are full of shit and you do not have to pay attention to them

Can I get the Severance procedure for the part of me that reads the news?

Been thinking about this cartoon. For no reason. Really. It's from 1889 -- during the Gilded Age.

this sort of naked cynicism is jarring, but you’re going to see more of it because this is how kleptocracy works. it makes groveling and sycophancy the rational choice, because it will very often be rewarded.

Can't imagine the youth will be too bummed about their high energy video app being banned when they can just log onto blue sky and read sentences written by elder millennials

X? More like “Ex,” am I right?

This is just another way of saying "right-wing media relentlessly highlights anecdotes about liberal overreach" without realizing that is precisely what your own column is doing.

Someone needs to write this book for us burned out academics

I wish consumer appliances had developed to have little mechanical hands & arms like in 1940s cartoons. My dishwasher should involve robot appendages that grab & scrub each dish, not a big box that swishes water around

@msteudeman.bsky.social's new book about the emergence of federal education policy after the Civil War comes out this summer! If there is a rhetoric or education scholar you have not checked off your holiday shopping list, it appears that @upmississippi.bsky.social is accepting preorders.

At last! My book is now available for preorder with @upmississippi.bsky.social Absence of National Feeling analyzes how post-Civil War policymakers cultivated a rhetoric of public education to negotiate conflicts over federalism and civic belonging. www.upress.state.ms.us/Books/A/Abse...

Back in the '60s, San Jose Bees manager Rocky Bridges quipped, "I managed good, but boy did they play bad." A lot of the Democratic assessment of the 2024 election sounds similar: We campaigned good, but boy did they vote bad.