“A Disgusting Abomination” Indeed June 4, 2025 The headline says it all: MUSK DERIDES TRUMP’S BILL, SAYING IT WILL “MASSIVELY INCREASE THE ALREADY GIGANTIC” DEFICIT He calls it “a disgusting abomination.” The CBO agrees the bill would add trillions to our National Debt. But Trump has no real interest in lowering the deficit — nor in preserving the strength of the dollar or the enormous advantage its being the world’s reserve currency confers. He’s more of a crypto-corrupto kinda guy. (My solution to the deficit problem. All of 250 words. With colors! Green for revenues, red for spending.) BONUS HEGSETH ORDERS NAVY TO RENAME SHIP HONORING GAY RIGHTS ACTIVIST HARVEY MILK Kerry K.: “This is really insane. The Harvey Milk is in the same class of Navy ships with the Sojourner Truth, the John Lewis, the Cesar Chavez and the Robert F. Kennedy. I wonder which of them will be next.” (Other vessels under consideration: the Thurgood Marshall, the Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Harriet Tubman, the Dolores Huerta, the Lucy Stone, and the Medgar Evers.) June is Gay Pride month. “A defense official said the timing of the decision was intentional.”
Move To Canada? Help Design My Sign? Save The IRS? June 2, 2025 If you can find a few minutes, watch Tim Snyder explaining why he moved to Canada. Last Year’s Move to Toronto It’s not what I thought — and a completely absorbing call to action. And, boy, do we ever need action! Speaking of which, where are you protesting June 14? The same day Trump is throwing a military parade for his birthday, with tanks in the streets. (Did you watch yesterday’s 90-second clip?) Here are your choices. They’re everywhere — but none is yet set for the little gay beach community I can’t bear to leave in the summer. (Patriotism has its limits.) So I may organize my own. The theme of the June 14 protests, as you probably know, is NO KINGS. The obvious protest sign for my community would be: “NO KINGS (Just Queens).” But I’m one of those gays not comfortable being called a queen — no disrespect to the vast majority of gays who are less uptight — so in case you can think of a good alterative, let me know! Alabama Al: Regarding the upcoming parade, and that clip you posted, I’m looking forward to three things: 1) Watching how badly tanks and other heave equipment will tear up Pennsylvania Avenue in D.C. The surfaces of the venues in Moscow, Beijing, Pyongyang, and other sites where grandiose military parades are held, are specially constructed to handle such stress. None of the streets in D.C. are. It may cost as much to repair the streets as the cost of the parade itself. 2) Watching how well American military units march. In countries that do regularly stage military parades, if the soldiers marching look particularly sharp and precise it’s because the military units you see are specialty units that do nothing but train for these parades. Though there are a number of small ceremonial units, the American military generally see their personnel as having better things to do than parade down streets. Don’t expect soldiers who may not have marched in formation since basic training to be precisely in lockstep. 3) Seeing whether Trump wears his “Commander-In-Chief” uniform. During Trump 1.0, he talked about having one designed, but was apparently dissuaded. He may be foolish enough to actually wear one this go around. → Thanks, Al! Another “headline that says it all,” added to yesterday’s. From FactCheck.org: RFK Jr. Denies Cuts to Scientific Research While Slashing Staff, Funding And finally, this message from the Patriotic Millionaires (whose ranks you should consider joining, if one of our crazy speculations hits): Stop Trump’s pick for IRS Commissioner! After a slew of Interim Commissioners leading the IRS in just four short months, Trump has officially nominated someone to be the permanent Commissioner: former Congressman Billy Long. While he was a member of Congress, Long sponsored legislation that would have abolished the IRS and instituted a 30% consumption tax instead. This would remove taxes such as the federal income tax, all while letting millionaires like us off the hook and taxing working people into (or further into) poverty.1 Since he retired from Congress, Long has used his connections to enrich himself by exploiting a tax loophole commonly known as a “magnet for fraud.” He encouraged businesses to apply for the pandemic-era Employee Retention Tax Credit in exchange for a portion of the refund received by the company.2 Since his nomination to lead the agency was announced, we’ve seen several individuals who benefited from Long’s tax schemes donate to Long’s failed U.S. Senate campaign. In doing so, they are helping him pay himself back $130,000 that he’d previously lent his campaign years before.3 This is corruption in plain sight. The Senate could vote on Long’s nomination as early as next week. Click here to send a message to your senators demanding they reject Billy Long as the next IRS Commissioner. SEND A MESSAGE If confirmed, Long puts at risk all of the progress the IRS has made in serving working people and businesses, and in cracking down on wealthy tax cheats. If you ran a business, particularly a struggling one, would you ever fire your accounts receivable department? No. It would be the last department you would cut. But with Long heading the IRS, there’s a strong likelihood he will fire auditors or reassign them to other roles. He’s one of the lawmakers who continuously hacked at the IRS budget while in Congress. If he’s tasked with leading the agency, he’ll be sure to look after his wealthy friends and donors, because he doesn’t want them to get taxed and audited. During the last year of Trump’s first term—2020—households earning $1 million or more were audited at a lower rate than low-income households receiving the Earned Income Tax Credit.4 In contrast, during the Biden Administration and under the leadership of the most recent Senate-confirmed IRS Commissioner, Danny Werfel, the IRS hired more staff, allowing it to begin audits on 60 major corporations with over $500 billion in profits and notify Microsoft that it owed $29 billion in back taxes.5 The IRS also recovered over $1.3 billion from millionaire tax cheats in less than a year.6 Recent moves from the Trump administration, coupled with the president’s nomination of Billy Long who wants to abolish the agency, demonstrate a mutual desire to allow their tax-cheating friends and donors to continue avoiding taxes with impunity. The Senate must reject this nomination. Join us in calling on the Senate to vote against Billy Long’s nomination for IRS Commissioner. 1 He Promised Huge Tax Refunds. Now Trump Wants Him to Lead the I.R.S. 2 He Promised Huge Tax Refunds. Now Trump Wants Him to Lead the I.R.S. 3 Trump IRS Pick Was Just Enriched By Tax Schemers 4 New Analysis Shows Trump-Era IRS Audited Low-Income Workers at a Higher Rate Than Millionaires 5 IRS Investment Update: Business Account Launches, Noncompliant US Subsidiaries Targeted 6 IRS says it has recovered $1.3 billion in unpaid taxes from rich Americans → My only quibble is the use of “tax cheats” as a blanket term for all the millionaires from whom audits produced that $1.3 billion. Some surely were cheats. But some underpayment surely resulted from simple error (the tax code is complicated!) and some because the IRS insisted on its interpretation in a gray area as opposed to the taxpayer’s accountant’s interpretation (the tax code has gray areas!). That said: hurray for the IRS. It needs to be strengthened, not weakened — and appreciated for the vital work it does. Have a great day. Happy Pride.
90 Must-See Seconds June 1, 2025 Trump’s Birthday Military Parade — 90 must-see seconds. And if you have time, 4 quick ones and a superb #5 . . . 1. The headline says it all: World Scientists Look Elsewhere as U.S. Labs Stagger Under Trump Cuts Why would we want to be pre-eminent in science? 2. The headline says most of it: RFK Jr. May Have Just Ruined Our Best Weapon Against Bird Flu “He just made two bad decisions on vaccines, and he made them in the worst way possible.” 3. Tech Bro Had to Go Who knew? Maureen Dowd’s dad was a DC cop in charge of Senate security! Smart words, as always. 4. Click bait — but fun to take the quiz at the end: Why Does Trump Keep Saying Harvard Teaches Remedial Math? You may need to be a Wall Street Journal subscriber to see the quiz. 5. Heather Cox Richardson on 1950 and today. So worth everyone’s time. Happy Sunday!
“Those Who Cannot Remember The Past . . .” May 31, 2025May 31, 2025 From Joyce Vance’s interview with Princeton Professor Kim Scheppele: After the end of the communism in Eastern Europe in 1989, Hungary was the star pupil in the class of new democracies, quickly installing a stable multiparty democracy checked by a powerful constitutional court. Fast forward to 2010, and Viktor Orban was elected at a time when Hungary was reeling, like many countries at the time, from the global financial crisis. As soon as he took office with a parliamentary majority big enough to allow him to amend the constitution with the votes of only his own party, Orban rewrote the entire constitution, weaponized the national budget against his opponents to destroy their ability to fight him, mass-fired many civil servants to replace them with loyalists, captured the constitutional court, brought most of the media under his control, attacked universities to eliminate academic freedom, used unlawful measures to fight immigration and eventually sidelined the parliament to govern by emergency decree. While it took the world nearly a decade to realize just how bad things were in Hungary, Orban had actually managed to capture virtually all independent institutions and destroy democracy within the first three years of his now 15-year rule. No one who knew Hungary in the 1990s would have expected it to fall so far so fast. Hungary is now classified by virtually all observers as a “competitive authoritarian” regime, no longer a democracy. Ring any bells? And isn’t it odd that America’s Conservative Political Action Conference — CPAC — has convened each year since 2022 in . . . Hungary? Professor Scheppele continues: The U.S. is on the same path as Hungary and Venezuela, whose autocratic leaders moved very quickly to destroy their previous constitutional orders and substitute personalistic rule. In Hungary and Venezuela, wholly new constitutions were written in the first year, and now the Trump administration is trying to swiftly and radically rewrite the U.S. Constitution in the only practical way available – through channeling a whole set of constitution-remaking cases to the Supreme Court that has already been packed in an irregular fashion with Trump-supporting justices. . . . Don’t think it can’t happen here. We are far along a path familiar from international examples that runs from democracy to dictatorship. A solid democratic history cannot save a country from autocratic capture once the key institutions that hold the executive in check are severely damaged. And we are witnessing the destruction of those key checking institutions with alarming speed. “Those Who Cannot Remember the Past Are Condemned To Repeat It” — George Santayana, 1905 Join . . . Indivisible! Join Field Team 6! Spread DIS-disinformation! Support the opposition! Join a No Kings protest Saturday, June 14 — or organize one of your own. Use ChatGPT to make a clever sign; then the nearest FedEx to print it on posterboard. You’ll be a star!
Heartwarming / Thought-Provoking / Silver Lining — And Despair May 30, 2025May 31, 2025 We begin with two heartwarming stories, each of which will take you barely a minute to read: 1. Mammals helping mammals. 2. George Clooney, from years ago. (Snopes verifies it’s true!) In case you have time to take a few Harvard courses on government, politics, and democracy — free, on-line — click here. David Brooks — a mentee of the late William F. Buckley, Jr. (who once took me out for an overnight sail on his little boat [he snored loudly] and who, more importantly to most, was the father of American conservatism) — clearly believes the world would be better off if Trump, Vance, Stephen Miller, et al, took those Harvard courses rather than try to destroy Harvard and, as he writes, the moral fiber of our country. Robert Reich, at the opposite end of the political spectrum from Brooks, agrees. His column, The End of Trump II, Part 1, is a breezy summary of the last four months. And if you have time, this recent interview — Reich on the gerontocracy — covers a lot of interesting ground. He discusses his forthcoming book, Coming Up Short, a nod to his height but really a reflection on how our generation (Reich, Trump, Bill Clinton, and yours truly are all the same age) has failed the country. If we somehow get through Trump 2.0, he says, the silver lining may be that . . . . . . we will have gained a deeper appreciation of all sorts of things we took for granted. I mean, how often did you have a conversation with anybody before Trump about the rule of law? About habeas corpus? About due process? About the Constitution? I think the Trump regime is bringing us back to first principles. And thinking freshly about why these things are so important, including, obviously, democracy itself. It is, over the long term, going to be very important for all of us.” DEPT. OF DESPAIR ParkerVision got a terrible ruling yesterday in its long-running case against Qualcomm that sent the stock down to 30 cents. On the theory that it’s sometimes darkest before the dawn, I bought more. Well, not just that theory alone. Two other things: > A patent-savvy attorney believes the ruling was SO bad — effectively overturning the opinion of the appellate court, which in his whole career he has never seen — that, he thinks, the case may finally get reassigned to a new judge. That would add months or years to the case . . . but if the jury ever does get to hear it, well, that’s one of the two reasons I bought more. > Also, while Qualcomm’s patent infringement may be the most willful and egregious, PRKR has claims against several other deep pockets in front of an entirely different judge. Only with money you can truly afford to lose!
Destroy The FBI; Protect The High-Jump! May 28, 2025 New Yorkers: Consider Whitney Tilson for mayor (7 minutes). Everybody else (including New Yorkers): Trump is Destroying the FBI and trying to destroy Harvard. The FBI tragedy is hugely more important than whether a trans high schooler can compete in the high jump — so I’d urge you to click that link. With luck, he won’t be able to destroy Harvard. It’s hard to see who can stop him from destroying the FBI. As for the trans girl, here’s the story. It’s not boxing or some contact sport — it’s the high jump! And local sports authorities had already arranged for her to get a “duplicate medal” if she won, so no girl-from-birth could be deprived of her rightful recognition. But the United States Government believes this is a matter too important to ignore. (Climate change? A hoax. Violent insurrectionists imprisoned by Trump-appointed judges? Pardon ’em. Stagflation . . . slashing Medicare . . . crippling the IRS . . . eviscerating the Social Security Administration? Fake news. A trans participant in a high school high-jump competition? There is a real and present danger the public demands we confront.) Back to Harvard. You may have missed the end of Tuesday’s post because of a MailChimp glitch. It should have read: And here is the kicker (though Pinker’s whole piece is worth your time): . . . Mr. Trump’s strangling of support [for science] will harm Jews more than any president in my lifetime. Many practicing and aspiring scientists are Jewish, and his funding embargo has them watching in horror as they are laid off, their labs are shut down or their dreams of a career in science go up in smoke. This is immensely more harmful than walking past a “Globalize the Intifada” sign. Worse still is the effect on the far larger number of gentiles in science, who are being told that their labs and careers are being snuffed out to advance Jewish interests. Likewise for the current patients whose experimental treatments will be halted, and the future patients who may be deprived of cures. None of this is good for the Jews. [His] concern for Jews is patently disingenuous, given Mr. Trump’s sympathy for Holocaust deniers and Hitler fans. The obvious motivation is to cripple civil society institutions that serve as loci of influence outside the executive branch. As JD Vance put it in the title of a 2021 speech: “The Universities Are the Enemy.” Join . . . Indivisible! Join Field Team 6! Spread DIS-disinformation! Support the opposition! Join a No Kings protest Saturday, June 14 — or organize your own. Use ChatGPT to make a clever sign; the nearest FedEx to print it on posterboard. You’ll be a star!
George Orwell, Joe, And Carl May 28, 2025 If you’re short on time, the new book by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson is perfectly summed up in its subtitle: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again. A Shakespearean tragedy, complete with an epigraph from King Lear: “They told me I was everything. ‘Tis a lie, I am not ague-proof.” Knowing many of the players first-hand — one has been a friend for more than 30 years — I’ve been riveted. That friend is SO smart, SO decent, SO focused on doing good for the world . . . . . . and it would have been SUCH an obvious win for Joe to have quit while he was ahead, as I wrote after the debate (and would have written much earlier, had I known) . . . . . . that I keep thinking as I turn the pages: how could this have happened? A clue comes right up front, where the author’s quote George Orwell: We are all capable of believing things which we KNOW to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield. It may apply to the people in Joe’s inner circle who didn’t persuade him to step aside sooner . . . . . . and it definitely applies to the tens of millions — like Carl — who believe Trump won the 2020 election. That he had the largest Inaugural crowd in history. That Democrats hate America. Et cetera. (He, of course, would say I have it exactly backwards: that the Orwell quote applies to the tens of millions — like me — who believe Biden won the election. That he made America stronger by passing the infrastructure bill and the CHIPs act and strengthening our alliances. That Biden finally solved the border crisis with a durable bipartisan immigration bill — only to see Trump kill it.) I get emails from Carl after every post — sometimes more than one — where he tries to get me to see the light. A small recent sampling: > In response to Sunday’s post: You and your heroine Marilyn Kunce conveniently ignore the law-fare your communist Democrats and the bias press put this country through. You and she conveniently ignore the moral depravity of antisemitism your communist Democrats ignore and put this country through. You and she should move and live in the cartel run Mexico. (Carl frequently calls me and others Marxists and communists without, apparently, knowing what Marxism or communism is.) > In response to the one about kids now being able to buy machine guns: This is why Jewish kids need machine guns! [Photo of the terrorist who murdered two outside Washington’s Jewish Museum last week.] But your silence confirms you don’t give a Schiff! And earlier that day: << Kids can now buy machine guns! >> Everyone needs them now since Democrats opened the border and let in millions of unvetted criminals! (Carl believes “millions” of undocumented immigrants are criminals — a wild, preposterous exaggeration. In fact, the undocumented are less likely to commit crimes — and crime is way down from when Carl was in his heyday.) << Ten who got $365 billion richer last year may now get a huge tax cut! >> The top 1% of taxpayers paid 40.4% of all federal income taxes. But you knew all that and just don’t give a Schiff! Andy you’re still a Schmuck and sadly will never change. (The top 1% paid 40.4% of all federal income taxes. But if you add payroll taxes and sales taxes to the total tax collected from Americans each year, their share drops to 22%. And in any event — so what? The top 1% own something like 31% of our collective net worth . . . so should perhaps shoulder 31% of the overall tax burden?* Or even more, because they can so much more easily afford it? And have so much more greatly profited from the America’s system and infrastructure?) > In response to 1.0 Actually Wasn’t That Bad, Other Than . . . (“I don’t know who wrote this,” it began) Carl entirely ignored the endless list of horriblenesses and offered, instead: I don’t know who wrote this… [seashell photo] But THEY do: << The Secret Service is investigating after ex-FBI Director James Comey posted an Instagram photo of seashells arranged to make the numbers “86 47” — a message that White House officials swiftly condemned as an attempt to put out a “hit” against the 47th president. >> And THIS is the type of people you are proud to be associated with! Andy you were so much better than this. What happened? (I’ve never met James Comey but would be proud to be associated with him.) There must be more than a thousand of these — he’s been sending them for years. And I take them to be well-intended. Having accepted the Trump reality, he believes that it is I, not he, to whom Orwell’s observation applies. Carl knows we should have secure borders (and we all agree he’s right) but ignores the fact that Trump killed the bi-partisan bill referenced above . . . and the fact that a decade earlier the Republican House speaker killed the sweeping immigration reform act approved by the Senate 68-32 that Obama was eager to sign and that would have passed the House had he allowed it to come up for a vote. Carl knows crime is bad (and we all agree he’s right) but believes we want to “defund the police.” Many of us want to improve policing — bodycams, for example, have become widely accepted across the political spectrum as a good idea. But defund the police? Virtually no Democrat is or ever was for that. He knows men shouldn’t be allowed to compete against women in sports (and of course, again, we all agree). It’s just around the edges that many of us would rather leave these determinations to the NCAA and the Olympic Committee, for example, than to the federal government. We are not likely to change Carl’s mind. But only 23% of adult Americans voted for Trump. Some who did, believing his promises, now feel betrayed. And the huge percentage who voted for no one — who simply stayed home — might now be motivated to save our precious democracy. We can do this! Join . . . Indivisible! Join Field Team 6! Spread DIS-disinformation! Support the opposition! Join a No Kings protest Saturday, June 14 — or organize one of your own. Use ChatGPT to make a clever sign; then the nearest FedEx to print it on posterboard. You’ll be a star! *Perhaps, in meaningful part, by raising the estate tax on billionheirs and closing generation-skipping loopholes?
Harvard – UPDATED May 27, 2025May 27, 2025 [Sorry . . . I added one more not-to-be-missed Pinker passage at the end.] Steven Pinker, long-time Harvard critic: In my 22 years as a Harvard professor, I have not been afraid to bite the hand that feeds me. [Numerous examples . . .]. So I’m hardly an apologist for my employer when I say that the invective now being aimed at Harvard has become unhinged. According to its critics, Harvard is a “national disgrace,” a “woke madrasa,” a “Maoist indoctrination camp,” a “ship of fools,” a “bastion of rampant anti-Jewish hatred and harassment,” a “cesspool of extremist riots” and an “Islamist outpost” in which the “dominant view on campus” is “destroy the Jews, and you’ve destroyed the root of Western civilization.” And that’s before we get to President Trump’s opinion that Harvard is “an Anti-Semitic, Far Left Institution,” a “Liberal mess” and a “threat to Democracy,” which has been “hiring almost all woke, Radical Left, idiots and ‘birdbrains’ who are only capable of teaching FAILURE to students and so-called future leaders.” This is not just trash talk. On top of its savage slashing of research funding across the board, the Trump administration has singled out Harvard to receive no federal grants at all. Not satisfied with these punishments, the administration just moved to stop Harvard from enrolling foreign students and has threatened to multiply the tax on its endowment as much as fifteenfold, as well as to remove its tax-free nonprofit status. . . . Worth reading in full. Including Pinker’s criticisms of Harvard. Former Harvard president Drew Gilpin Faust concludes her Memorial Day op-ed: We Are Not Being Asked to Run Into Cannon Fire. We Just Need to Speak Up. The “new birth of freedom” Lincoln promised in the Gettysburg Address all but faded with the overturning of Reconstruction and the re-establishment of white supremacy in the era of Jim Crow. Only a century later, with the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965, did the United States at last fully commit itself to multiracial democracy and the war’s emancipationist vision. But even this belated progress is now being reversed with voter suppression efforts, challenges to the 14th Amendment’s establishment of birthright citizenship and the evisceration of the Civil Rights Act, most recently with an executive order abandoning the regulations that have been central to its enforcement. The unfinished work of freedom seems to be in full-throttle reverse. Douglass invoked the “eloquence” of the dead. We should listen to them. As a historian, I have read dozens of these men’s letters and diaries, windows into why they fought, into what and whom they loved and what they hoped for at the end of a war they knew they might not survive. Together they did save the Union, the nation that has given me and so many others opportunities that the war-born imperative of ever-expanding freedom has offered. These men made our lives possible. They were impelled to risk all by a sense of obligation to the future. We possess a reciprocal obligation to the past. We must not squander what they bequeathed to us. This debt and this duty should be at the forefront of our minds this Memorial Day. We must honor these men, their bravery, their sacrifice, and especially their purposes. We are being asked not to charge into a hail of Minié balls and artillery fire but only to speak up and to stand up in the face of foundational threats to the principles for which they gave the last full measure of devotion. We have been entrusted with their legacy. Can we trust ourselves to uphold it? Trump’s war on Harvard is ostensibly being waged to root out anti-Semitism, notwithstanding the fact that the University’s 2024-minted (Jewish) president, Alan Garber, launched his Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias months before Trump’s election . . . . . . the 311-page Final Report of which clearly acknowledges the problems Harvard had begun to confront before Trump was elected. “You had me at hello,” as they say (great clip!) — or, in this case, months before “hello.” And yet Trump is waging war on scientists, many of them Jewish, because that’s where the great bulk of the government’s grants to and contracts with Harvard goes — science. Principally, life-saving medical research. Not to obscure courses, sparsely attended, of the kind Professor Pinker references further on in his op-ed: Of course, Harvard also has plenty of offerings like Queer Ethnography and Decolonizing the Gaze, but they tend to be boutique courses with small enrollments. One of my students has developed an artificial-intelligence-based “Woke-o-Meter” that assesses course descriptions for Marxist, postmodernist and critical social justice themes (signaled by terms like “heteronormativity,” “intersectionality,” “systemic racism,” “late-stage capitalism” and “deconstruction”). He estimates that they make up at most 3 percent of the 5,000 courses in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ 2025-26 course catalog and 6 percent of its larger General Education courses (though about a third of these had a discernible leftward tilt). More typical are offerings like Cellular Basis of Neuronal Function, Beginning German (Intensive) and The Fall of the Roman Empire. And if Harvard is teaching its students to “despise the free-market system,” we’re not doing a very good job. The most popular undergraduate concentrations are economics and computer science, and half of our graduates march from their commencement ceremony straight into jobs in finance, consulting and technology. And here is the kicker (though, again: the whole piece is worth your time): . . . Mr. Trump’s strangling of support [for science] will harm Jews more than any president in my lifetime. Many practicing and aspiring scientists are Jewish, and his funding embargo has them watching in horror as they are laid off, their labs are shut down or their dreams of a career in science go up in smoke. This is immensely more harmful than walking past a “Globalize the Intifada” sign. Worse still is the effect on the far larger number of gentiles in science, who are being told that their labs and careers are being snuffed out to advance Jewish interests. Likewise for the current patients whose experimental treatments will be halted, and the future patients who may be deprived of cures. None of this is good for the Jews. The concern for Jews is patently disingenuous, given Mr. Trump’s sympathy for Holocaust deniers and Hitler fans. The obvious motivation is to cripple civil society institutions that serve as loci of influence outside the executive branch. As JD Vance put it in the title of a 2021 speech: “The Universities Are the Enemy.” Join Indivisible! Join Field Team 6! Spread dis-disinformation! Support the opposition!
Harvard — UPDATED May 27, 2025May 27, 2025 [Sorry . . . I added one more really good passage from Pinker, at the end.] Steven Pinker, long-time Harvard critic: In my 22 years as a Harvard professor, I have not been afraid to bite the hand that feeds me. [Numerous examples . . .]. So I’m hardly an apologist for my employer when I say that the invective now being aimed at Harvard has become unhinged. According to its critics, Harvard is a “national disgrace,” a “woke madrasa,” a “Maoist indoctrination camp,” a “ship of fools,” a “bastion of rampant anti-Jewish hatred and harassment,” a “cesspool of extremist riots” and an “Islamist outpost” in which the “dominant view on campus” is “destroy the Jews, and you’ve destroyed the root of Western civilization.” And that’s before we get to President Trump’s opinion that Harvard is “an Anti-Semitic, Far Left Institution,” a “Liberal mess” and a “threat to Democracy,” which has been “hiring almost all woke, Radical Left, idiots and ‘birdbrains’ who are only capable of teaching FAILURE to students and so-called future leaders.” This is not just trash talk. On top of its savage slashing of research funding across the board, the Trump administration has singled out Harvard to receive no federal grants at all. Not satisfied with these punishments, the administration just moved to stop Harvard from enrolling foreign students and has threatened to multiply the tax on its endowment as much as fifteenfold, as well as to remove its tax-free nonprofit status. . . . Worth reading in full. Including Pinker’s criticisms of Harvard. Former Harvard president Drew Gilpin Faust concludes her Memorial Day op-ed: We Are Not Being Asked to Run Into Cannon Fire. We Just Need to Speak Up. The “new birth of freedom” Lincoln promised in the Gettysburg Address all but faded with the overturning of Reconstruction and the re-establishment of white supremacy in the era of Jim Crow. Only a century later, with the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965, did the United States at last fully commit itself to multiracial democracy and the war’s emancipationist vision. But even this belated progress is now being reversed with voter suppression efforts, challenges to the 14th Amendment’s establishment of birthright citizenship and the evisceration of the Civil Rights Act, most recently with an executive order abandoning the regulations that have been central to its enforcement. The unfinished work of freedom seems to be in full-throttle reverse. Douglass invoked the “eloquence” of the dead. We should listen to them. As a historian, I have read dozens of these men’s letters and diaries, windows into why they fought, into what and whom they loved and what they hoped for at the end of a war they knew they might not survive. Together they did save the Union, the nation that has given me and so many others opportunities that the war-born imperative of ever-expanding freedom has offered. These men made our lives possible. They were impelled to risk all by a sense of obligation to the future. We possess a reciprocal obligation to the past. We must not squander what they bequeathed to us. This debt and this duty should be at the forefront of our minds this Memorial Day. We must honor these men, their bravery, their sacrifice, and especially their purposes. We are being asked not to charge into a hail of Minié balls and artillery fire but only to speak up and to stand up in the face of foundational threats to the principles for which they gave the last full measure of devotion. We have been entrusted with their legacy. Can we trust ourselves to uphold it? Trump’s war on Harvard is ostensibly being waged to root out anti-Semitism, notwithstanding the fact that the University’s 2024-minted (Jewish) president, Alan Garber, launched his Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias months before Trump’s election . . . . . . the 311-page Final Report of which clearly acknowledges the problems Harvard had begun to confront before Trump was elected. “You had me at hello,” as they say (great clip!) — or, in this case, months before “hello.” And yet Trump is waging war on scientists, many of them Jewish, because that’s where the great bulk of the government’s grants to and contracts with Harvard goes — science. Principally, life-saving medical research. Not to obscure courses, sparsely attended, of the kind Professor Pinker references further on in his op-ed: Of course, Harvard also has plenty of offerings like Queer Ethnography and Decolonizing the Gaze, but they tend to be boutique courses with small enrollments. One of my students has developed an artificial-intelligence-based “Woke-o-Meter” that assesses course descriptions for Marxist, postmodernist and critical social justice themes (signaled by terms like “heteronormativity,” “intersectionality,” “systemic racism,” “late-stage capitalism” and “deconstruction”). He estimates that they make up at most 3 percent of the 5,000 courses in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ 2025-26 course catalog and 6 percent of its larger General Education courses (though about a third of these had a discernible leftward tilt). More typical are offerings like Cellular Basis of Neuronal Function, Beginning German (Intensive) and The Fall of the Roman Empire. And if Harvard is teaching its students to “despise the free-market system,” we’re not doing a very good job. The most popular undergraduate concentrations are economics and computer science, and half of our graduates march from their commencement ceremony straight into jobs in finance, consulting and technology. And here is the kicker (though, again: the whole piece is worth your time): . . . Mr. Trump’s strangling of support [for science] will harm Jews more than any president in my lifetime. Many practicing and aspiring scientists are Jewish, and his funding embargo has them watching in horror as they are laid off, their labs are shut down or their dreams of a career in science go up in smoke. This is immensely more harmful than walking past a “Globalize the Intifada” sign. Worse still is the effect on the far larger number of gentiles in science, who are being told that their labs and careers are being snuffed out to advance Jewish interests. Likewise for the current patients whose experimental treatments will be halted, and the future patients who may be deprived of cures. None of this is good for the Jews. The concern for Jews is patently disingenuous, given Mr. Trump’s sympathy for Holocaust deniers and Hitler fans. The obvious motivation is to cripple civil society institutions that serve as loci of influence outside the executive branch. As JD Vance put it in the title of a 2021 speech: “The Universities Are the Enemy.” Join Indivisible! Join Field Team 6! Spread dis-disinformation! Support the opposition!
Happy Memorial Day May 26, 2025 I couldn’t say it nearly as well as Heather Cox Richardson — read it here. Or Robert Hubbell — here. Both, so worth reading as you fire up the grill.