Texas FAFO

Someone on TikTok pointed out there are more kids in Texas with measles than trans college athletes in all of America.
Guess which they want you focused on?

Texas has been playing games with their universities.

Earlier this month, Texas Tech chancellor Brandon Creighton announced plans to close all gender and sexuality programs across the system and prohibit graduate students from researching the topics. Texas A&M similarly closed its women’s and gender studies program in January. The University of Texas ordered faculty in February to refrain from teaching ill-defined “controversial” topics in class. Nearly all Texas public university systems have conducted some kind of course-review process that screens instructional materials for gender and sexuality content.

This means weird conservative administrators with no relevant experience are meddling in the content of courses…courses they would not be qualified to teach, but hey, they’ve got rubber stamps and spreadsheets, that’s all the power they need. They’re now discovering the consequences.

Texas A&M philosophy professor Martin Peterson is leaving the university after administrators told him in January that he couldn’t teach Plato’s Symposium in his philosophy class; they said the ancient Greek philosopher’s work violated the system’s restrictions on gender and sexuality content. Peterson’s colleague Linda Raznik, a philosophy professor and associate department head, is jumping ship with similar concerns about academic freedom. Lucy Schiller, a nonfiction writing professor at Texas Tech University, also has plans to leave her job.

They are just a few of the faculty members giving up their jobs at Texas public institutions as the systems deploy escalating censorship policies that restrict or explicitly ban any instruction, writing, research or discussion on gender identity and sexual orientation.

It’s almost as if they intend to demolish all of Texas higher education. Fortunately, I am no longer in the market for a job, because I wouldn’t ever consider working as an academic in Texas. I also wouldn’t encourage any students to enroll in a Texas school anymore — you don’t know where your university will be in a few years.

Texans deserve better.

“Viewpoint diversity” is a misleading way to say “conservative welfare”

Viewpoint diversity is how you get the unqualified wife of a corrupt wrestling promoter put in charge of the department of education

Harvard is suddenly more concerned with campus diversity, but specifically diversity that benefits wealthy conservatives. They’ve started a campaign asking for ten million dollar endowments.

The effort comes in response to longstanding criticism that Harvard’s faculty leans overwhelmingly liberal. Those concerns intensified last year, when U.S. President Donald Trump elevated the issue as part of a broader pressure campaign against the University.

In the now-infamous April 2025 letter, federal officials called for an audit of Harvard’s faculty to assess “viewpoint diversity” and demanded it hire a “critical mass” of new professors in departments deemed lacking. Garber rejected the Trump administration’s ultimatum, but the scrutiny has persisted.

This is nuts. Asking people to donate millions of dollars is not going to enhance diversity — that is a campaign that is only going to draw on a donor population that is going to be biased to favor extreme wealth, and is going to be populated with conservative, entitled people. Harvard is basically inviting people to buy professors to fill their faculty, at the urging of Donald Trump.

Making it even worse, they plan to set up these faculty in a special category that will be hired by the university, with 20 or 30 professors who will be selected for “viewpoint”, rather than their qualifications in their field, and that they will then be inserted into departments that don’t have the political perspective the administration desires.

I’m at a small university, and I find it hard to imagine an administration so flush that they can declare they’re going to hire a swarm of new people. But imagine if my U announced that they were hiring one or two people based on their political bias, and then they decide that there were too many people in the biology discipline who were Democrats, so we would get those new faculty without regard for the academic/curricular needs of our biology program.

Every college department can use more faculty, and offering us new hires would be wonderful, but WE know what our specific discipline needs to implement our curriculum, while the administration generally has only the vaguest of clues, and what they do know is what we tell them. I think the faculty would be horrified if we were suddenly saddled with a new face whose primary qualification is that they are Republican. This is a violation of the principle that we do not hire people on the basis of aspects of their life that are irrelevant to doing their job. We are specifically instructed that we can’t ask job candidates about their politics, their religion, their sexuality, their marital status, and on and on. “Viewpoint diversity” explicitly violates a policy implemented to remove bias from the hiring process.

It is true that that has led to more liberal viewpoints filling our ranks, but that’s because reality has a well-known liberal bias. One of the hallmarks of the conservative perspective is that it tries to deny reality in favor of prior preconceptions, and resist change. Maybe we shouldn’t put representatives of a political philosophy that despises education into the professoriate, did you ever consider that, Harvard?

We need better Supreme Court justices

Well, this is a fine how-de-do. Clarence Thomas is arguing for theocracy.

Thomas, 77, the Court’s longest-serving conservative member, laid the blame at the feet of intellectuals and the nation’s colleges and universities, which he said have allowed founding values to fall out of favor. He did not reference specific political figures or contemporary events.

He also did not reference specific values, but only platitudes. He simply took the time to condemn intellectuals, colleges, and universities — I guess he was corrupted by his time spent getting a JD from Yale.

Progressivism seeks to replace the basic premises of the Declaration of Independence and hence our form of government, Thomas said. [It] holds that our rights and our dignities come not from God, but from government. It requires of the people a subservience and weakness incompatible with a Constitution premised on the transcendent origin of our rights.

Hang on there, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, do I need to explain to you that our form of government was specified by the Constitution, not the Declaration of Independence? That document was a dramatic announcement of our grievances and intent to sever our subservience with a colonial power, England. The Declaration does have some wording about “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” and that we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, but it is otherwise a secular document focused on civil complaints and disagreements with a government. Officials do not swear to uphold the Declaration of Independence, which would be a weird thing to do, since a list of 18th century grievances is not relevant to a 21st century state.

It’s our Constitution you should care about. You know, the document that starts out

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

You know, the document that says our government comes from the people. Not god. It doesn’t even mention god or religion except in the first amendment, where it says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” But now a Supreme Court Justice has decided that no, our rights come from a god, on the basis of reading the wrong document? And by ignoring entirely a wholly secular document that is the actual source of any authority he might have?

“Progressivism,” whatever that means in his decrepit brain, does not require subservience and weakness, nor is it dependent on a transcendent origin of our rights. Some of the founding fathers he reveres weren’t particularly religious and didn’t need a clerical excuse to see a reason for establishing a government. You can be an atheist and support the Constitution!

Thomas also took aim at officials in Washington, he said, who lack commitment to righteous cause, to traditional morality, to national defense, to free enterprise, to religious piety or to the original meaning of the Constitution.

Yes, do take aim at government officials. I don’t think Donald Trump is at all pious, and is more committed to corruption than to free enterprise or righteousness, and he’s filled the upper levels of government with selfish hacks like himself. He’s also appointed several of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s peers. Any complaints should be rightfully directed at the institution he represents.

And hey, does taking bribes from wealthy conservatives count as a righteous cause?

Fuck your traditional morality, Clarence. It’s more like a traditional venality.

Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?

Yesterday, I said I was looking for reasons to tamp down excessive cheerfulness. No such assistance needed this morning!

Louisiana has taken care of it.

Yesterday, the Louisiana House of Representatives took the dangerous step of voting in favor of a truly disgusting anti-homeless bill. This bill is an extreme take on the already extreme copy-paste legislation peddled by the Palantir-funded, billionaire-backed Cicero Institute. In addition to making it a crime to sleep outside, this bill forces homeless people charged with a crime to make the false choice between jail or at least one year of forced treatment.

But it gets worse.

This bill requires homeless people to pay for the very treatment they are forced into. And if the person cannot pay the cost of treatment, this bill requires them to perform unpaid labor for the government or a community organization to pay off their debt. Louisiana has a long history – and present – of chain gangs, prison labor, and entrenched white supremacy. This bill clearly evokes debtor’s prisons, convict leasing, and the ugliest day of Jim Crow.

It’s a very 19th century approach to dealing with a social problem.

He was unqualified from the beginning

A few Democrats have grown a spine. They’ve filed articles of impeachment against Pete Hegseth. There is a long list of good reasons to kick his evil ass out of office.

The House Democrats also pointed at a growing number of boat strikes in the Caribbean. The military has repeatedly sought to frame individuals on the vessels as “narco-terrorists”.

House Democrats also accused Hegseth of compromising national security through “careless and improper conduct”, citing an episode where classified information was shared on Signal in 2025.

The defense secretary was embroiled in controversy last year after the Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was added to a Signal group chat about a planned airstrike on Houthi fighters in Yemen. Hegseth, vice-president JD Vance, and CIA director John Ratcliffe were also in the chat.

The articles also continued on to include Hegesth’s “efforts to withhold material facts relating to civilian casualties and operational conduct in Iran and Venezuela”; his attempt to punish the senator Mark Kelly, a retired US navy captain, for reminding service members that they can refuse illegal orders; and forcing transgender service members from the military.

“Pete Hegseth did not follow his oath to the US constitution,” Ansari told the reporter Pablo Manríquez. “He committed a war crime in Iran with the attack on a school that killed over 160 children. So not only do we need to end this war, but we need to hold accountable and prosecute anyone in the US administration who may have committed war crimes.”

Not to mention that he’s an incompetent boob who only got the appointment because he was a suck-up to Trump.

This motion will go nowhere, because the Democrats don’t have the votes, yet. It is encouraging, though, that some of them are stirring themselves to fight back against this outrageous and wicked administration, and it will highlight all those Republicans who so conscientiously neglect to recognize the deep harm their party has done to the country.

Losers

I am encouraged by the defeat of Victor Orban in Hungary. I’m happy for the people of Hungary throwing off the yoke of fascism and having hope for the future, and for the people of Europe as a whole building a stronger alliance.

But I’m selfish. I’m also happy to see JD Vance flop hard; it was unbelievable to me that Republicans from America were campaigning for Orban. Vance was politicking for Orban just recently, as part of his personal campaign to appear ‘presidential,’ and many right-wingers have been on the Orban train for a long, long time. The Hungarian election was a harbinger of the American elections to come, and the message is clear: Vance is a loser. Republicans are losers. Trump is a loser. They should be nervous, because they’re all just waiting for the axe to fall.

He always chickens out. Good.

Trump talked to some Pakistani leaders, and that was good enough. He has announced a ceasefire.

President Donald Trump said he’d agreed to a two-week ceasefire with Iran on Tuesday, less than two hours before his 8 p.m. deadline to destroy a “whole civilization.”

Trump said the ceasefire agreement was made on the condition that Iran agree to reopen the critical Strait of Hormuz.

Based on conversations with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Asim Munir, of Pakistan, and wherein they requested that I hold off the destructive force being sent tonight to Iran, and subject to the Islamic Republic of Iran agreeing to the COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE, and SAFE OPENING of the Strait of Hormuz, I agree to suspend the bombing and attack of Iran for a period of two weeks. This will be a double sided CEASEFIRE!, Trump posted on Truth Social.

The reason for doing so is that we have already met and exceeded all Military objectives, and are very far along with a definitive Agreement concerning Longterm PEACE with Iran, and PEACE in the Middle East, Trump wrote.

See? He thinks he won already. Iran said nothing.

How about if we just ignore him from now on and focus on the Epstein files and getting him out of office?

He’s absolutely, utterly insane, and a danger to the world

I hope TACO Trump chickens out by 7pm Central time, but right now he’s blustering and posturing even more than usual.

A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. | don’t want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS? We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World. 47 years of extortion, corruption, and death, will finally end. God Bless the Great People of Iran!

Right. God bless the people of Iran while threatening to obliterate them. He’s either steeling his nerve to pull the trigger on an action that will make him even more of a criminal in the eyes of the civilized world, or he’s hoping for something revolutionarily wonderful to act as a pretext to back off. I don’t think he’s going to get one. Iran despises him, and by association, the rest of the United States, so I suspect they’re going to do nothing, in expectation that he’ll waste another few billion dollars in futile destruction.

I don’t know what will happen tonight, but one thing I do know: Iranian civilization will still exist tomorrow, and Trump will look like an impotent, hateful fool.

Are you relieved, Canada?

A biographer for Queen Elizabeth, John Hardin, recounts the story of his meeting with Donald Trump. Trump talked about annexing Canada, but backed off when it was explained that Canada still recognizes the king as head of state — he has a weird respect for royalty. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have the same respect for history or the rule of law, because he still wants to redraw the US-Canada border.

After Hardman confirmed the British monarch remains Canada’s head of state, Trump went on to complain about Canada’s “terrible politicians.”

“They’re nice to my face and then they say bad things behind my back,” Trump told Hardman, who then writes the U.S. president noted a majority of Canadians live just above the Canada-U.S. border due to the cold weather in northern Canada.

“The problem is some guy drew that straight line to make a border,” Hardman says Trump told him. “He should just have drawn it 50 miles further north and then there wouldn’t be a problem.”

However, Hardman writes that Trump conceded redrawing that border would be a difficult task to achieve during his final term as president, and acknowledged Canada’s history and sovereignty.

“I suppose Canadians have got 200 years of history and all that, ‘Oh, Canada’ thing,” Trump told Hardman. “You can’t deal with that in three-and-a-half years. I guess it’s not going to happen!”

Come on, Canada. He just wants a 50 mile wide strip of Canada — there wouldn’t be a problem if he just took it over. He’s not going to do it because Canada has a king, and it’s too much trouble to take it in the remaining three years of his term. You can breathe a sigh of relief.

We can’t, here on the American side, because we’re still stuck with a fucking moron for a president.

The man is insane

Trump has proposed a 2027 budget. Here’s the bottom line.

The budget would increase funding for presidential priorities – such as the military, which would receive US $1.5 trillion, a 44% increase – while reining in spending on many domestic programmes.

A few details:

If you thought last year’s science budget was bad, this year’s is the annihilation of American science. If you’re celebrating the accomplishment of the Artemis 2

NASA faces a 23% cut to its total budget and a 47% drop in funding for its science division. More than 40 projects would be terminated. “It’s an extinction-level event for science,” says Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at the Planetary Society, a non-profit organization in Pasadena, California, that advocates for space exploration. “It would undermine and prevent NASA from being the world leader in space exploration.” NASA declined to comment on Dreier’s statement.

It’s not just NASA!

The proposal would eliminate funding for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research. It would also shutter three of the NIH’s 27 institutes and centres – those focusing on minority health and disparities, international research and alternative medicine.

The worst, to me, is cutting the NSF budget to less than half. That’s what funds most of the basic science in biology (biomedicine is a little different, that’s NIH, which has also been cut.)

And what, pray tell, are the president’s priorities? He’s going to tell us, while also addressing Russell Vought, the Project 2025 guy.

Not daycare, not Medicare, not Medicaid, none of the “little things”, which includes science — we can’t afford anything but war. We’re too busy paying for wars.

We have one little glimmer of hope. The president does not have the power to set the budget — everything he has said is a “recommendation”. Congress sets the budget. This will be negotiated next fall, starting in October, at a time when many congresspeople are thinking about the 2027 elections, and we have to put the fear of the electorate in their minds, starting now. Trump wants to tax people more and cut essential services to fund more war, and I don’t think that’s a winning election message. Throw them out!