Elizabeth Joh

Trump And Miller Compel Colleges Not To Enroll International Students Trump officials are using rules, policies and agreements to compel and discourage U.S. universities from enrolling international students.

Wow. Had not realized that Columbia’s settlement with Trump admin included a commitment to decrease international student enrollment. In what way does this help “combat antisemitism,” which is supposedly the administration’s objective?
www.forbes.com/sites/stuart...

It’s not just the dollars. It’s the goodwill the US generates, the connections we create student by student—what a devastating loss

A graph of manufacturing growth broken down by subsector

America has lost 116k manufacturing jobs over the last year—that's the fastest pace of job loss since the early COVID era and worse than any period from 2011-2019.

Big drops in the transportation (-49k) & electronics (-32k) industries drive most of the decline

The Changing Politics of Masks

Enjoyed talking to @nytimes.com Styles on the changing politics of masks: www.nytimes.com/2025/08/01/s...

This is awful. Reliable economic data is a key strength of the US economy.

When Argentina and Greece faked economic data it contributed to major crises.

I don't think Trump will be able to fake the data given the procedures. But there is now a risk plus an awful appearance.

Ivy League universities paid hundreds of millions to settle with Trump. Is UCLA next? President Trump's higher education battle comes to the University of California. After the Department of Justice found that UCLA had violated Jewish students' civil rights, the administration froze hu...

NEW: Now that $300+ million in UCLA grants are frozen, will the university follow Columbia, Brown to settle with Trump? @danielnmiller.bsky.social and I look at the possibility of a big payout — and how California complicates the Trump higher education battle www.latimes.com/california/s...

NEW: The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has kept in place a Los Angeles federal judge's ruling that bars immigration agents from using a person's spoken language or job, like day laborer, as the sole pretext to detain them.

Strikingly, the memo says straightforwardly that what happened in Los Angeles is the sort of operation that may be necessary "for years to come."

As one expert told me: "They see Los Angeles as a model to be replicated."

newrepublic.com/article/1987...

Trump’s Domestic Use of Military Set to Get Worse, Leaked Memo Shows A Department of Homeland Security memo obtained by TNR signals top-level discussions about a potential escalation of the Pentagon’s domestic anti-immigration role, and lays out new details.

NEWS --> An internal Homeland Security memo suggests Trump's use of military for domestic enforcement is about to get worse. It details top-level talks between Defense Department and DHS on what this should look like. Experts say it's alarming.

We obtained the memo:
newrepublic.com/article/1987...

The suspensions landed perhaps most heavily in math. NSF suspended a $25 million grant for the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (IPAM), an international center at UCLA that hosts about 2000 visiting researchers every year for workshops and other programs. One of its stars, Terence Tao, a Fields Medal winner frequently named as one of the greatest living mathematicians, also had his only NSF grant suspended. The $750,000 award was in its first year and supported Tao’s own research and a handful of graduate students in developing tools to tell whether a set of numbers is structured or random. Tao says he now cannot offer research assistant opportunities during the academic year, and he calls the cuts to IPAM “quite disastrous.”

NSF and NIH cut off almost 300 grants to UCLA. Story by @dangaristo.bsky.social www.science.org/content/arti...

Second US appeals court open to blocking Trump's birthright citizenship order U.S. President Donald Trump's order restricting birthright citizenship appeared on Friday to be headed toward being declared unconstitutional by a second federal appeals court, as judges expressed deep skepticism about a key piece of his hardline immigration agenda.

New: President Trump's order restricting birthright citizenship appeared on Friday to be headed toward being declared unconstitutional by a second federal appeals court, as judges on the 1st Circuit expressed skepticism about a key piece of his immigration agenda. www.reuters.com/legal/govern...

Whew

X may be liable for how it handled child porn reports The Ninth Circuit panel said the social media platform could have improved its reporting tools without needing to monitor user content.

X, formerly known as Twitter, can’t be held liable for not immediately removing child porn, but it can still face negligence claims for not reporting it and not having an easier way for users to flag it, a Ninth Circuit panel ruled Friday. www.courthousenews.com/x-may-be-lia...

Meta violated privacy law, jury says in menstrual-data fight The jury got to decide how seriously Big Tech takes privacy, the attorney for a class of Flo users said in closing arguments.

A jury found Friday that Meta violated the California Invasion of Privacy Act when it intentionally recorded the sensitive health information of millions of women through the period tracking app Flo. @mhattridge.bsky.social www.courthousenews.com/meta-violate...

good lord

US employers slash hiring as Trump advances a punishing trade agenda U.S. hiring is slowing sharply as President Donald Trump’s erratic and radical trade policies paralyze businesses and raise doubts about the outlook for the world’s largest economy.

U.S. hiring is slowing sharply as President Donald Trump's erratic and radical trade policies paralyze businesses and raise doubts about the outlook for the world's largest economy.

Corrupt. Dangerous. Deeply deeply damaging.

sure it’s cooking the numbers but there aren’t any historic examples of what happens when countries do that no sir no way

I was just informed that our Country’s “Jobs Numbers” are being produced by a Biden Appointee, Dr. Erika McEntarfer, the Commissioner of Labor Statistics, who faked the Jobs Numbers before the Election to try and boost Kamala’s chances of Victory. This is the same Bureau of Labor Statistics that overstated the Jobs Growth in March 2024 by approximately 818,000 and, then again, right before the 2024 Presidential Election, in August and September, by 112,000. These were Records — No one can be that wrong? We need accurate Jobs Numbers. I have directed my Team to fire this Biden Political Appointee, IMMEDIATELY. She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified. Important numbers like this must be fair and accurate, they can’t be manipulated for political purposes. McEntarfer said there were only 73,000 Jobs added (a shock!) but, more importantly, that a major mistake was made by them, 258,000 Jobs downward, in the prior two months. Similar things happened in the first part of the year, always to the negative. The Economy is BOOMING under “TRUMP” despite a Fed that also plays games, this time with Interest Rates, where they lowered them twice, and substantially, just before the Presidential Election, I assume in the hopes of getting “Kamala” elected – How did that work out? Jerome “Too Late” Powell should also be put “out to pasture.” Thank you for your attention to this matter!

Unquestionably the most dangerous and corrupt attack on the independence of US economic data in American history. Trump is firing the head of the BLS, a longtime civil servant confirmed 86-8 by the Senate, simply because the job numbers came in below his expectations today

"WASHINGTON, D.C. (August 1, 2025) – The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) announced today that it will begin an orderly wind-down of its operations"

cpb.org/pressroom/Co...

Ughhhhhhhhhhh “Instructure, which owns the widely used learning management system Canvas, announced a partnership with OpenAI to integrate into the platform native AI tools and agents, including those that help with grading, scheduling, generating rubrics and summarizing discussion posts.”

“The labor market is in trouble.”

> @byheatherlong.bsky.social

States Have More Data About You Than the Feds Do. Trump Wants to See It.

States know even more about you than the federal government does. The Trump administration is now trying to access that data, too: www.nytimes.com/2025/08/01/u...

Medicare Part D Drug Plan Premiums Set to Rise Trump administration aims to soften the blow by negotiating with insurers.

To recap:
-ACA premium hikes "more than 75% on average" by Jan 1
-1/3 of Medicaid cuts already in place
-Medicare cuts scheduled for Jan 1 without Congressional action
-And now Medicare Part D premiums going up by "a lot," also by Jan 1
www.wsj.com/health/healt...

Trump freezes $200 million in UCLA science, medical research funding, citing antisemitism The Trump administration has frozen roughly $200 million in National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health and other federal agency-funded research UCLA, citing allegations that UCLA discr...

BREAKING: The Trump administration has canceled $200 million in research grants to UCLA, citing allegations over antisemitism. The move came after Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi said UCLA would pay a "heavy price" over its handling of last year's pro-Palestinian encampment www.latimes.com/california/s...

Worth remembering: The Constitution explicitly gives the power to set tariffs to Congress. They could stop this nonsense by the end of the day.

“The president cut your health care so he could build himself a golden ballroom” is a pretty easy message to sell

New tariff executive order just released, and the official start date for tariffs was pushed to next week from instead of tomorrow, but we're raising tariffs for roughly 68 countries plus the EU, with some tariffs now as high as 41%. Literally Liberation Day 2 Electric Boogaloo.

a map of all the countries Trump has sent tariff threats to

Current tariff state of play—here's all the new tariff threats Trump has made since the July pause

None, except the tariffs on Brazil, have actual official paperwork yet—Trump needs to file that (plus for the ~150 missing countries) or we revert to April 2nd tariff rates at midnight