- Via the NYT: Stocks Rally on the ‘TACO Trade’. One thing is for sure: every time Wall Street thinks the tariffs are delayed, stocks rally. That isn’t everything we need to know about the tariffs, but it is useful information. And yes, the TACO thing is hilarious.
- Via the AP: Trump rejects claim he’s ‘chickening out’ on tariffs just because he keeps changing rates. Of course, he claims that.
- Speaking of TACOs.
- An opinion piece from USAT: Is Trump in mental decline? He sounds far worse than Biden ever did. My problem with these assessments remains that given Trump’s utter disconnection from reality and totally brazen penchant for lying makes it hard for me to fully assess what is decline and what is just Trump. I will actually state that as much as Trump is Mr. Word Salad, none of it has ever sounded like Biden’s debate performance in terms of straight-up sounding like a stereotypical confused old man. (Please note: this is not a defense of any of Trump’s nonsense).
- More attacks on higher education from the Texas Tribune: Political appointees would have more control over Texas universities’ courses and hiring under bill OK’d by House. The idea that any of this is an attempt to stop indoctrination is nonsense. What does it sound like to you when state governments pass laws to control curricula at universities? It doesn’t sound like freedom to me.
Senate Bill 37 passed in an 83-53 vote Saturday. It would create a state-level committee that would recommend courses that should be required for graduation and how to condense the number of those courses. Meanwhile, each public university system’s board of regents, who oversee the school’s operations and are appointed by the governor, would be charged with creating a committee to review curricula and reject any course deemed ideologically charged or that doesn’t align with the workforce demands. Specifically, the committees would ensure curricula do not “advocate or promote that any race, sex, ethnicity or religious belief is inherently superior to any other.”
[…]
The bill would also limit faculty’s influence on campus. Faculty councils or senates, bodies that have traditionally advised university administrators on academic and hiring decisions, would become smaller. In addition, SB 37 would require half of their members to be appointed by the university president, rather than elected. Any member would be subject to removal if they use their position for political advocacy.
The bill would also require regents to approve the hiring of more administrators. Traditionally, they have only gotten involved in the hiring of top leadership positions.
- From Barbara J. Risman writing from The Conversation: Anti-trans measures don’t just target transgender men and women – a sociologist explains how ‘male’ or ‘female’ categories miss the mark for nonbinary Americans.
- Via the News Tribune: Pierce County Sheriff Swank to Prosecutor Robnett: ‘You are my peril’. Worth it for the following. (The “he” in question being the sheriff and Mello being the County Executive who was trying to apply state law to contracts that the sheriff had entered into).
He told Robnett that he had asked the artificial-intelligence service ChatGPT the same question about Mello’s authority over him, and it had a “quite different response.”
- In case anyone doesn’t think the attacks on higher ed matter.
