Ken Schultz

“AI will never tell you that your work is subpar, your thinking shoddy, your analysis naive. Instead, it will suggest “a polish”, a deeper edit, a sense check for grammar and accuracy.”

Interesting point about how AI uses encouragement to increase usage.

One detail that has yet to be nailed down is whether Trump actually has the authority to impose these tariffs. We are now in a world where trade agreements have to be ratified by the Supreme Court, not Congress.

I can’t possibly like that response! 😆

Yep. Going to keep these thoughts to myself.

Spending my Saturday the way I spend every Saturday: signing up for a credit monitoring service in the wake of another data theft.

Writing a revision memo for an R&R and trying to come up with a diplomatic way to say “At the reviewers’ request, we drew tenuous connections to irrelevant papers, which we hope can be cut from the final version if accepted.”

I mean, how important could it possibly be?

"Much will depend on what Columbia and the government do in the future" seems like a massive understatement. Like, this deal we cut at Munich looks great, but much will depend on what Hitler does next!

Horrid little detail in this story

From our very thoughtful law school colleague, David Pozen, a first take on the Columbia deal.
balkin.blogspot.com/2025/07/regu...

They will argue that the presidential immunity created in Trump v. USA was only for the named plaintiff and that if other former presidents wanted the same protection, they should have been certified as a class.

Opinion | JD Vance Claims One of Our Worst Traditions as His Own

1/ Fantastic @jamellebouie.net column today on Vance's rather selective invocation of the Civil War as it pertains to citizenship. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/23/o...

Or any number of Republican or Democratic opposition researchers since 2016?

This is great. The part about severability is particularly interesting... and pernicious. You end up with an executive power ratchet where you only need a majority to delegate but a supermajority to take it back.

I just posted a new paper on @ssrn.bsky.social, titled "The Chadha Presidency". Here's the link, and I'll post the abstract in the next post. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

There’s a Supreme Court case called Trump v. USA that says a former presidents can’t be prosecuted for plausibly official acts. Does Trump not remember this? Or does he assume it only applies to him?

Face on close up of a hummingbird perched a bare twig. She had a small batch of red on her throat.

You lookin’ at me? 🪶

Why are we training ourselves to talk to the computer that is pretending to be one of us? Have we given up? Shouldn’t we be training the computer to understand us? This is how the machines win. They have already taken control of NVIDIA’s CEO, it would seem.

Did the Biden administration's targeted industrial policies help lift the Democratic Party in "left-behind" America? Well, no, and it might've shifted the targeted areas further away from the party, at least in the case of one place-based green subsidy. New working paper 🧵 1/9

Well, if we can use panini as a singular, I don’t see how we can object

This is like Mettler’s Submerged State, but for international institutions. Has anyone written that book?

This "invisible, mundane multilateralism" is something I really try to underscore Intro to IR. We talk a lot about the Universal Postal Union and the sheer amount of work that goes into the minor miracle of buying a postage stamp and being able to have a letter delivered anywhere in the world 🧵

Wow, that is stunning!

I will once again say: Any pundit/journalist who is interested in higher ed is welcome in my classroom* at a regional private university that is focused on serving first gen student and other underserved folks.

I teach social welfare policy at 12:30 on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Come on by.

At the Coalface Notes from the working end of academia during the assault

Sobering stuff as usual from Paul Musgrave, whom I miss being on here. musgrave.substack.com/p/at-the-coa...

New Life in a New Land *

* some exceptions apply, “new land” may have had previous owners

Not sure if I should be planting tomatoes, coffee, or copper. 🤷‍♂️

I would love to see Kilauea while it is erupting!

Yep, Anna’s. They are daily visitors to our yard.