Jon M. Wargo (he/him/his)

How will Trump’s attacks affect higher education?

Let’s look to history

Germany's universities were the world's premier research institutions

Hitler destroyed them

How long did they take to recover?

They haven’t

I just saw a kindergarten mom in tears on TikTok because her child’s classroom wasn’t filled with rugs and lamps and bins full of fun things...

It’s important to understand what a state-funded classroom looks like versus a teacher-funded classroom. Your beef is with the state, not the teacher.

Yeah JD, we remember. We will never forget your boss was best friends with the guy who ran a literal child sex trafficking ring.

And then that guy was "silenced" forever.

And now we will just not talk about anything else until they...

#ReleaseThe_EPSTEIN_Files

A video arguing that women shouldn’t be able to vote was just shared by Trump’s Secretary of Defense, the guy in charge of our whole military.

And Democratic Party leaders still can’t stand up to this administration?! Our rights are on the line and all our party leaders offer us is silence.

It’s time to wake up - we are literally on the verge of losing our democracy if Donald Trump cheats his way to those seats in Texas.

Don’t let this fade away

President Trump said the quiet part out loud: He wants lawmakers to redraw maps to help his party win elections, instead of representing our communities.

We're fighting back.

timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine...

Serve your country! Defend your culture!

Just in case it’s not already clear that ICE is a white supremacist thug army, Homeland Security is recruiting with a “defend your culture” slogan.

Ralph Wiggem “I’m in danger” meme

*Academics in early August

Andrew Cuomo couldn’t allow his first, tepid recognition of reality — that the Israeli government, with the full support of the Trump administration, is starving the people of Gaza — last more than a few hours without walking it back.

This is someone who believes in nothing.

Probably nothing. 🤡

The mid-decade Texas gerrymander is just the warmup act for everything that Republicans are going to do to rig the midterms.

TEXAS @repcasar.bsky.social : “Imagine in another country a corrupt president was trying to change the election laws. Then that president’s political ally threatened to remove all the legislators of the other party to get it done. That’s what’s happening in Texas right now.”

Y'all! Read, cite, and share @kpsinedu.bsky.social's new article! 👇Super proud of you, dude! #literacies

Before you see a hundred or so posts saying that Texas has issued arrest warrants for the absent Dem legislators, you should be aware that they are civil warrants issued by the House that are not effective outside the state

www.texastribune.org/2025/08/04/t...

and here's David Mamet revealing that getting snubbed by Terry Gross is what radicalized him into conservatism

MEDIA: Please report on the TX story w/context. Tx law requires redistricting every 10 years after census figures come in. TX did that.

Trump, afraid to lose the midterms told Tx Republicans to find 5 more seats for the House. Meaning gerrymander away 5 Dem seats. The Republicans did it.

The problem is far bigger than Jeffrey Epstein | Rebecca Solnit Treating the scandal as an aberration misunderstands the global epidemic of violence against women

"One of the reasons the epidemic of violence against women is so unacknowledged is because cases like these are talked about individually, and often treated as though they are shocking aberrations rather than part of a pervasive pattern that operates at all levels of society."

PBS: Public Broadcasting Service Watch full episodes of your favorite PBS dramas, find in-depth news analysis and explore documentaries on history, science, art and more!

For $5/month or $60/yr you get access to PBS Passport and the entire Masterpiece library plus Great Performances, etc. Defunded but not defeated. www.pbs.org/passport/lea...

Columbia. Harvard. UPenn. George Mason. UVA. UCLA.

One by one, universities are being attacked—financially, politically, ideologically.

Faculty & staff: don’t wait for it to hit your campus. Join the national movement defending higher ed.

standtogetherhighered.org (sign up on homepage)

Everyone knows that unemployed people are like people infected with Covid. If you don’t count them, then they don’t exist.

Man who says elections (that don’t go his way) are “rigged” also claims economic numbers (that aren’t going his way) are “faked”. Who’d’ve thunk it?

The success of this request won’t matter. They’re setting up their plan:

1) Push the issue and create false narratives.
2) Get state laws rejecting same sex marriage then argue “states rights”/ “federal overreach”.
3) Openly defy, sue, and pursue favorable conservative courts and eventually SCOTUS.

No One Is Defying Trump Like Brazil’s President

“Because we have already lived through dictatorships, and we don’t want any more.”

~Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/30/w...

Paul Krugman Brutally Wrecks Trump’s Europe Deal: “Scam on His Voters” As the emerging details of Trump’s trade agreement with Europe puncture his hype, economist Paul Krugman explains at length why it’s actually a big loss for our country—and especially for his MAGA bas...

Striking stuff from @pkrugman.bsky.social, who dismantles Trump's Europe deal from top to bottom. It will actually undermine US manufacturing, the "concessions" Trump won are fake, and Trump voters will be hit hard by the tariffs.

All on the pod. Don't miss this one:
newrepublic.com/article/1985...

hey, since this fascist accountant is going to unload the oppo clip on lindsey graham — consider supporting Dr Annie, who actually wants to serve South Carolinians: drannieandrews.com

As a survivor of sexual assault, Pressley says effort to subpoena Epstein files is personal Pressley, a sexual assault survivor, said Epstein’s victims and the public “deserve transparency, accountability, and healing.”

For too long, our institutions have been more concerned with protecting predators than centering survivors.

That has to change.

For me and for all survivors, releasing the Epstein files is deeply personal.
www.boston.com/news/local-n...

Having actually read the agreement (you can too below), no self-respecting university administrator should sign anything remotely resembling this.

president.columbia.edu/sites/defaul...

@tylerwmartin.bsky.social made Khua Kling for dinner! Yum! 😋