Emily Slomski

Gerrymandering has been a top headline for the past week. Here is an overview of what gerrymandering is - or as we like to call it - election rigging.

Download our “Stop MAGA Election Rigging” toolkit at MADVoters.org/take-action to learn more and take action.

🗃️ Submission to “Student AI use is inevitable so let’s lean into it” BY HISTORIANS is confounding. Thought we all knew about contingency: nothing is inevitable, the past, present, or future. AI is not a foregone conclusion. As present day historical actors, we can make choices, incl not using AI.

🚨 Indiana already has some of the most gerrymandered maps in the country.
Now JD Vance is flying into Indy on Thursday, 8/7, to meet with Gov. Mike Braun about redrawing them AGAIN — five years early.

This is a full-blown power grab. #INLegis

The entire Trek fandom should be pro-Palestine because it’s literally Bajor

Book people: the following small presses have just lost funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. Please consider supporting them!

A Thread.

No fucking shit, we bombed them.

I know it’s always been true, but the cruelty of living in a place that sets off fireworks for celebration while we fund bombings that kill and harm so many is so overwhelming tonight. I’ve cried every day of this administration but tonight is a night of deep mourning for me.

I think people intuitively understand that stripping funding from public goods that sustain life and delivering it to death squads that kidnap people and destroy lives are the same project, but we should say so

I am grieving the barbarism that is going to unfurl from all this. People are going to die. Livelihoods gone. All to feed a corrupt kleptocracy.

I see every day up close how different it is from the first time around. There are no guardrails. A disaster. I’m sorry we have to live through this.

people: mamdani is going to turn NYC into a theocracy!!!!

SCOTUS: it's ok if ur religion thinks being gay is evil and don't want ur kids to read about it in school

🚨In its fourth decision, the Supreme Court holds that parents who object to LGBTQ books in the classroom have a First Amendment right to "opt out" their children from seeing those books. Alito writes for the 6-3 majority, with all three liberals dissent. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24p...

Note to media:
“Trump says” is not a story. He says A LOT. He lies a lot. Do some sifting, discerning, contextualizing. Otherwise it’s just stenography. And you’re embarrassing yourselves.

Indiana has come back from down 15 or more FIVE times, the most such comebacks in a single postseason in the play-by-play era (since 1997).

Pacers are 5-3 when they go down by 15 or more this playoffs.

Braun defends move on IU trustees while terminated members speak out Exercising his new authority from a last-minute change to the state budget, Braun terminated the three elected IU trustees this week despite his recent assurances that he planned to let them serve unt...

Another day, another story of radical Republicans attacking public higher education. Indiana hasn't always been like this, btw. There's a (formerly) superb research university here for them to destroy and they're destroying it as fast as they can.
indianapublicmedia.org/news/braun-d...

It says a lot that Purdue’s student paper is able to openly request stories of those affected by DEI closures on campus while IU’s is seemingly not.

EXACTLY THIS!

Musk: we "saved" a few $million by cutting basic weather services! Awesome!

Sad Reality: 9 people died this weekend in area that stopped doing overnight tornado warnings.

No single person has ever proved the efficiency and value of federal employees as effectively as Musk.

say it again:

4 million people work in higher ed, the largest employer in 10 states, second largest employer in 10 more, and in 60 of the 100 biggest cities

ROI for NIH and NSF for local economies is conservatively 4x, often close to 10x

demolishing higher education is economic sabotage

WaPo: 27 dead after severe storms

Forecast offices now closed overnight

DOGE cuts
⤷ tornado forecast offices closed overnight
⤷ 27 Americans dead after overnight tornadoes

“Abolish ICE” is the moderate position. Radical is “prosecute every ICE employee under RICO.”

The fascism playbook hasn't changed—only the speed we're flipping through its chapters.

Petition for a Plan to Protect Purdue from Project 2025 · Greater Lafayette Indivisible What do we want? 1. For Purdue to publicly protect its mission, its community members & free inquiry. 2. For Purdue’s provost and president to band together with other higher education le...

I signed this petition organized by Greater Lafayette Indivisible. They still need more signatures. Can you sign and share as well? www.mobilize.us/indivisiblel...

Please just we have to make sure this is the fault entirely of the Republican Party

Graphic of Washington Post poll from April 18-22, 2025, showing "Majorities of Americans oppose various Trump proposals" highlighting two lines in particular: "Increasing the Federal Government's role in how private universities operate" - 28 percent support, 70 percent oppose "Reducing federal funding for medical research" - 21 percent support, 77 percent oppose

University leaders need to understand: they are holding INCREDIBLY good cards.

It is so rare in today's polarized era to have the support of 70+ percent of the public against the Trump admiministration on anything. Universities have that—AND winning legal arguments.

U. of Florida Calls Off Dean Search After DeSantis Intervenes A spokesperson said the governor’s office stepped in after a right-wing group posted videos of the finalists on social media and claimed they were “radical progressives with disdain for Florida’s DEI ...

NEW: DeSantis directed the University of Florida to cancel a nearly-complete search for its next dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences — because the governor believed the finalists were not in alignment with the state's opposition to DEI

My heart is with these advocates! As someone who has tracked and attended IN legislative sessions on issues that are life and death, watching legislators mess around and joke in the wee hours is such a betrayal. And I especially feel this issue as IN passed an opt-in bill for the 287 (g) program.

On Lawfare Daily, @tylermcbrien.com spoke to @juliarosekraut.bsky.social about her 2020 book “Threat of Dissent” and the chilling effect ideological exclusions and deportations have on constitutionally protected political speech. www.lawfaremedia.org/article/lawf...

Seriously, the rational thing to do with LLMs would have been "that's cool, come back when you have a real application for this that justifies the cost and you've made it more energy efficient." We don't have to dump billions into every new computer knickknack! We can have higher standards!!

There are times
when I worry
that I am running out
of ways to say
that we must take care
of each other.

But most of the time
I am just worried
that we are running out
of time in which
to start taking care
of each other.

And so
I will just keep saying:
take care
of each other.

Good morning.
Listen, you have to just decide.

They are not taking the Black Smithsonian.

Resolve it in your spirit.