Charlotte Canning

Most discussions about “misinformation” treat the problem as if people simply don’t have good enough critical-thinking skills. It sounds intuitive, but it’s not entirely accurate. The problem isn’t just individual ignorance, it’s the structure of the information environment people are placed into.

Hegseth did not in fact do this at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, which is a federal government institution, but—as this article itself mentions, near the end—at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute, a private, partisan, political organization adjacent to that library.

It is legitimately funny that Trump expected to be picking up another Republican seat in Texas in exchange for a pardon, and Cuellar was just like "nah."
So rare to see someone treat Trump like he treats everyone else.
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/pardon-the...

How SEC Universities Won the Enrollment Wars The ascendance of Southern flagships is a story of sun, football, and a sophisticated recruitment strategy.

Two articles that explain what weird vision the Chronicle class of higher ed executives is chasing everywhere all at once in the new dispensation.

1) Everyone wants to be the SEC, now that the NYU model of growth via real estate speculation, fed-funded research, grad-degree retail sales has failed

Really important thread 👇, to which I would add that we need to consider overlap of 1.) endowment managers of the NYU model, 2.) owners of EdTech platforms for student surveillance discussed here, & 3.) private equity capture of NCAA football undergoing chaotic privatization.

Instead of writing a letter, Congress should do its job. In the last 50 years alone, vaccines saved 153 million lives. Extremists, including Aaron Siri who sued to end FDA approval for the polio vaccine, are advising on childhood vaccine policy. Ending HepB vaccines for babies is just the beginning

Here's today's #ScholarSunday thread for the brunch crowd. Please share widely to get all this great public scholarship to all the folks, & thanks! @feministkelly.bsky.social 🗃️

My dad abhors any negative comments about immigrants. Asked him recently why he’s so strong on it: ‘Because we’re always happy to take the rich and clever ones. Which means it’s not about disliking immigrants. It’s about disliking the poor and vulnerable. And that’s a bad human instinct.’

In the era of slavery, free black people had to carry their "free papers" with them so they could prove to the authorities that they were free, or else they would be thrown in jail and sold.

First in the Nation: A Courageous Editorial Board Calls for Trump’s Impeachment American Democracy is under siege. The President of the United States is subverting the Constitution. One patriotic Editorial Board rises to the moment.

A 🧵
How many newspaper Editorial Boards have called for Pres. Trump's impeachment (or resignation)?

As far as we know, only one: @sentinelcolorado.com

Our 2 part series: journalism, trust, press freedom & how a local newspaper serves its community-and democracy.
open.substack.com/pub/mediaand...

There has been no debate here among constitutional scholars, historians, political scientists, anyone with a pulse really.

Any telling you that this very straightforward point, one that has been universally accepted for a century and a half, is now an "abstruse" issue is just a liar and a hack.

What is necessarily implied in this declaration of the Democratic Party? 1. That citizenship is not a birth-right, and from this it results that the majority may rightfully, in the several States of this Union, deprive the minority of all the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States. I submit that no greater political atrocity can possibly be committed by human agency. Let the people accept this proposition and they will become the architects of their own ruin. Nothing can be clearer than this, that under the representative system of government the rights of the minority are as sacred and inviolable as the rights of the majority. If the majority may rightfully disfranchise the minority of citizens on account of race, color or former condition of servitude, they may, with equal propriety, disfranchise citizens for want of stature or property, or on account of nativity, thereby, presenting to teh world the miserable spectacle of a government wherein a mere majority subjects to the absolute despotism of their will a minority of their fellow citizens, almost equal in number to themselves, and per chance, greatly superior in all the attainments and virtues which adorn, or elevate, or ennoble human nature.

On Aug 24, 1869, Ohio Rep. John Bingham, principal framer of the 14th amendment, gave a remarkable speech on “Equal Rights-Impartial Suffrage,” in which he said of those who sought to reject the principal of birthright citizenship, “no greater political atrocity than this can possibly be committed.”

100%.

The idea that they want only legal immigration was a lie from the start.

Gender-based violence is an everyday reality, and it starts with minimizing misogyny As we highlight 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence and the upcoming anniversary of the Montreal massacre, can we take a moment to reflect on all the different forms this violence takes?

“Every year, when I see 14 beams of light projected into the sky above Mount Royal, I have to catch my breath.

“36 years ago, 14 young women were murdered in one of the most violent examples of misogynistic terrorism Canada has ever known.”

An editorial by @mtltoula.bsky.social.

#December6

My grandmother was a small child when this happened and carried the memories with her for her entire life.

Money Doesn't Buy Elections. It Does Something Worse. Campaign ads barely move the needle. The real influence is hiding in plain sight.

Study after study shows campaign ads barely move the needle. So where does money’s real power come from? I ranked the five ways money corrupts politics—from least to most corrosive. What I’ve learned from 15 years of tracking political money:

Great thread

Imagine thinking that people come to America to "access unlimited welfare for life"

Donald Trump’s restitution scheme is among the greatest heists in US history Bogus claims of malicious prosecution could cost taxpayers hundreds of millions.

The Republican Party really only has one core principle now: Everything the government does must either benefit Donald Trump and his allies or punish his enemies.

@handsoffnyc.bsky.social is training thousands of New Yorkers on how to protect their neighbors from ICE. Today, they are currently running two trainings in Brooklyn and the Bronx, both of which hit capacity because interest was so high.

This is the way, y’all—we protect each other, and we know it.

I'm not sure it's in the self interest of America's tech bro billionaires to suggest that we bring back public executions to punish the most destructive people in our society.

A neat thing about birthright citizenship is how it tests whether a person cares at all about the Constitution. There's no argument against it, birthright citizenship is the unambitious text, the obvious intent of the drafters, and the undisputed way it was followed for the past 150+ years.

Nothing would make Putin happier than having Trump destroy the US-EU relationship and having the US ditch NATO.

That's his Christmas list of idea outcomes.

The IG report found that if Hegseth were a regular uniformed officer he would face disciplinary action or discharge, but as Sec Def, he held the power to declassify and therefore sat above the whole system and was not accountable under it.

Important words from @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social: "The US when white supremacists like Trump were young was whiter, but this was never a white country."

Read the whole thing.

Ukrainian History Global Initiative The Creative Humanities During a War of Destruction

We are told that, under stress, the humanities must be sacrificed. But amidst a war of aggression scholars in Ukraine have undertaken one of the most ambitious knowledge projects of our time. It's a privilege to be involved with Ukrainian History Global Initiative
snyder.substack.com/p/ukrainian-...

One noontime a few weeks ago, I went to lunch with a colleague from the University of Minnesota. We strolled around the corner from our offices to a mutually favorite spot, the Afro Deli, for a hybrid meal of gyro, samosas, falafel, and chai. This Afro Deli location was part of a local chain that had been founded by an immigrant from Djibouti who won a national award as small-business owner of the year. Half of the lunchtime crowd hailed from the university campus, half from the surrounding neighborhood of Cedar-Riverside, whose eponymous high-rise apartment complex is the epicenter of the Twin Cities’ Somali community of about 65,000.

Really excellent piece by a U of MN prof about Trump’s failure to understand MN and about the ugly parallels btwn Trump’s demagoguery about Somalis and historical anti-semitism
newrepublic.com/maz/article/...