And nothing was accomplished

We’ve been dealing with this ridiculous government shutdown, which was initiated because the Republican budget was promoting major cuts in health care support, among other billionaire favorites. If done properly, the purpose of such a shutdown would be to get concessions from the opposing party. Now the Democrats are talking about caving to the opposition.

The Senate on Sunday made significant progress towards ending the longest US government shutdown in history, narrowly advancing a compromise bill to reauthorize funding and undo the layoffs of some employees.

But the measure, which resulted from days of talks between a handful of Democratic and Republican senators, leaves out the healthcare subsidies that Democrats had demanded for weeks. Most Democratic senators rejected it, as did many of the party’s lawmakers in the House of Representatives, which will have to vote to approve it before the government can reopen.

“This healthcare crisis is so severe, so urgent, so devastating for families back home, that I cannot in good faith support this [resolution] that fails to address the healthcare crisis,” said Democratic Senator majority leader Chuck Schumer.

I hate having to agree with Chuck Schumer, but he’s right: this is just a surrender.

It wasn’t the whole Democratic party that gave up, but eight chickenshit Democrats who joined forces with the Republicans to try to endorse a “compromise” bill. These are the people who must be voted against in the future.

From top left: Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin, Jacky Rosen, John Fetterman and Catherine Cortez Masto. From bottom left: Democratic Sens. Jeanne Shaheen, Maggie Hassan and Tim Kaine, with independent Sen. Angus King.

I am not surprised to see Fetterman in there — he disappointed me long ago. But hey, Tim Kaine was a Democratic vice-presidential candidate once upon a time, with Hillary Clinton. Maybe I should have mistrusted him even more.

If this compromise bill goes through, brace yourself for a big jump in the cost of health care.

The compromise does not resolved the issue of the Affordable Care Act premiums, which one study forecast would jump by an average of 26% if the tax credits were allowed to expire.

Keep in mind that that 26% goes straight from your pocket into the coffers of insurance companies, because of the fucked up way health care is managed in this country, with unnecessary middlemen inserted into the process.

I get email…from the Daily Wire

Usually, I just ignore anything from Ben Shapiro and Co., but this time I was tempted by the headline, Mamdani’s Party: NYC’s New Mayor Celebrates Win By Channeling America’s Marxist Icon. Who would that be, I wondered. I had to read the rest.

Moments after being declared the winner of the New York City mayoral race, Democrat socialist Zohran Mamdani opened his victory speech with a nod to one of the most infamous radicals in American history.

Oooh. He was quoting infamous radicals? Tell me more.

Mamdani, 34, quoted Eugene Debs, a far-Left activist from the early 20th century who was stripped of his American citizenship after being convicted of sedition in 1918. Like Debs, Mamdani has embraced radical policies, including broad promises to provide a range of free services to New Yorkers.

“I can see the dawn of a better day for humanity,” Mamdani quoted Debs as saying.

The Daily Wire is afraid of Eugene Debs, well known Midwestern trade unionist and pacifist, and inspiration to Bernie Sanders? But of course they are. They don’t want a better day for humanity, they want a better day for billionaires.

Debs, who supported the violent communist revolution in Russia in 1917 and was deeply influenced by Karl Marx, had his citizenship restored by a joint resolution of Congress in the 1970s. From 1900 to 1920, Debs ran for president five times. He described capitalism as a “monstrous system” and said that his Socialist Party was defined by a “militant” spirit and “revolutionary” goals.

Debs was right. Not that Ben Shapiro cares about truth.

Debs campaigned for equality and against violence and war. He did run for president 5 times, because he believed in the electoral process. He was a pacifist in the run-up to WWI, which earned him the enmity of Woodrow Wilson — who was a terrible person and president, and pissing off Wilson was a mark of honor. Wilson had him charged with sedition. and he was sentenced to ten years in prison for it. Those years ruined his health and he died during the Depression, when everyone could see the failure of capitalism.

Debs made a passionate speech at his sentencing.

Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.

I listened to all that was said in this court in support and justification of this prosecution, but my mind remains unchanged. I look upon the Espionage Law as a despotic enactment in flagrant conflict with democratic principles and with the spirit of free institutions…

Your Honor, I have stated in this court that I am opposed to the social system in which we live; that I believe in a fundamental change—but if possible by peaceable and orderly means…

Standing here this morning, I recall my boyhood. At fourteen I went to work in a railroad shop; at sixteen I was firing a freight engine on a railroad. I remember all the hardships and privations of that earlier day, and from that time until now my heart has been with the working class. I could have been in Congress long ago. I have preferred to go to prison…

I am thinking this morning of the men in the mills and the factories; of the men in the mines and on the railroads. I am thinking of the women who for a paltry wage are compelled to work out their barren lives; of the little children who in this system are robbed of their childhood and in their tender years are seized in the remorseless grasp of Mammon and forced into the industrial dungeons, there to feed the monster machines while they themselves are being starved and stunted, body and soul. I see them dwarfed and diseased and their little lives broken and blasted because in this high noon of Christian civilization money is still so much more important than the flesh and blood of childhood. In very truth gold is god today and rules with pitiless sway in the affairs of men.

In this country—the most favored beneath the bending skies—we have vast areas of the richest and most fertile soil, material resources in inexhaustible abundance, the most marvelous productive machinery on earth, and millions of eager workers ready to apply their labor to that machinery to produce in abundance for every man, woman, and child—and if there are still vast numbers of our people who are the victims of poverty and whose lives are an unceasing struggle all the way from youth to old age, until at last death comes to their rescue and lulls these hapless victims to dreamless sleep, it is not the fault of the Almighty: it cannot be charged to nature, but it is due entirely to the outgrown social system in which we live that ought to be abolished not only in the interest of the toiling masses but in the higher interest of all humanity…

I believe, Your Honor, in common with all Socialists, that this nation ought to own and control its own industries. I believe, as all Socialists do, that all things that are jointly needed and used ought to be jointly owned—that industry, the basis of our social life, instead of being the private property of a few and operated for their enrichment, ought to be the common property of all, democratically administered in the interest of all…

I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.

This order of things cannot always endure. I have registered my protest against it. I recognize the feebleness of my effort, but, fortunately, I am not alone. There are multiplied thousands of others who, like myself, have come to realize that before we may truly enjoy the blessings of civilized life, we must reorganize society upon a mutual and cooperative basis; and to this end we have organized a great economic and political movement that spreads over the face of all the earth.

There are today upwards of sixty millions of Socialists, loyal, devoted adherents to this cause, regardless of nationality, race, creed, color, or sex. They are all making common cause. They are spreading with tireless energy the propaganda of the new social order. They are waiting, watching, and working hopefully through all the hours of the day and the night. They are still in a minority. But they have learned how to be patient and to bide their time. The feel—they know, indeed—that the time is coming, in spite of all opposition, all persecution, when this emancipating gospel will spread among all the peoples, and when this minority will become the triumphant majority and, sweeping into power, inaugurate the greates social and economic change in history.

In that day we shall have the universal commonwealth—the harmonious cooperation of every nation with every other nation on earth…

Your Honor, I ask no mercy and I plead for no immunity. I realize that finally the right must prevail. I never so clearly comprehended as now the great struggle between the powers of greed and exploitation on the one hand and upon the other the rising hosts of industrial freedom and social justice.

I can see the dawn of the better day for humanity. The people are awakening. In due time they will and must come to their own.

When the mariner, sailing over tropic seas, looks for relief from his weary watch, he turns his eyes toward the southern cross, burning luridly above the tempest-vexed ocean. As the midnight approaches, the southern cross begins to bend, the whirling worlds change their places, and with starry finger-points the Almighty marks the passage of time upon the dial of the universe, and though no bell may beat the glad tidings, the lookout knows that the midnight is passing and that relief and rest are close at hand. Let the people everywhere take heart of hope, for the cross is bending, the midnight is passing, and joy cometh with the morning.

That man could speechify. I’d vote for him in a minute.

If only there were a faction within the Democratic party that actually represented Eugene Debs’ values…but of course they’d be vilified as godless commies by the Right.

Cocking a snook at Republicans

It was a good night for Democrats and social democrats, with a big blue sweep all across the country. Mamdani won, although I think it helped that a corrupt clown like Cuomo (who was endorsed by Trump) was his opponent. Virginia turned a vibrant shade of purple. The California referendum on legalized gerrymandering passed, which I have mixed feelings about. Trump is literally hated by a significant fraction of the population, and I think he’s dragging the Republican party down. The Democratic party is also down — let’s hope that the leadership learns to recognize that their tepid timidity is not exactly electrifying the electorate.

Here’s one good summary of yesterday’s outcome.

He’s not right about Omar Fateh, who is running against Jacob Frey for mayor of Minneapolis. Minneapolis has ranked choice voting, and while Frey is ahead in the first pass, he didn’t reach the threshold — it’s going to take a few more days to tally up all the votes. Also, Kaohly Her, a Hmong woman and DFL candidate, won the St Paul mayoral race.

This is a good start to retaking the country from fascists. It is not the bigger 2026 midterm elections, though, and most definitely not even close to a 2028 presidential election, but we’re going in the right direction. I’m sure Trump is already annoyed and might be scheming to commit even more radical crimes in the near future.

Ding-dong, the witch is dead!

Dick Cheney

Begin your day with a glad heart, everyone! The monster has dropped dead, those lips will no longer lie, those hands will no longer pull a trigger, that heart (which wasn’t the one he was born with) will no longer pump poison. Now he gets to rot, just like the hundreds of thousands, at least, he was responsible for murdering.

We get to suffer for a little while with the long-winded excuses and praises the media will deliver in the next few days. Just look forward to the time when he will be forgotten. It won’t be long.

Fuck that guy.

He’s a sleazy furniture salesman at heart

In a sane country, this latest brag would be the kiss of death for his entire party.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt is standing by President Donald Trump’s latest, and most eyebrow-raising, renovation yet: a full-blown marble makeover of a White House bathroom. Posting on social media Friday afternoon, Leavitt gushed over the president’s flashy revamp, writing, “President Trump is making the People’s House more elegant and beautiful for generations of Americans to come!”

While we’re in the midst of a government shutdown, while we’re expected to support a budget that destroys health care and brings great profit to insurance companies and billionaires or starve the poor (or both!), Trump is focused on interior decorating and remodeling a bathroom, and on tearing down part of the White House and building a lavish ballroom.

While I agree that the original institutional green bathroom looked dated, I A) expect the president of the United States to be focused on more significant issues, and B) and think the boring, ticky-tacky idea of slapping marble and gold all over everything is no less cliched. I’d say I want the next president of the USA to bring on a wrecking ball and strip out all the gold plated fittings, except that what really should happen is that they will instead focus on repairing all the deep structural damage done to the country, cleaning up the raging corruption and firing the carpetbaggers reigning over our institutions.

Does the current president have nothing better to do?

Cancel that Nobel Peace Prize

This could have been predicted. The cease fire in the Middle East is falling apart.

Israel on Tuesday carried out military strikes in Gaza after the nation accused Hamas of violating the ceasefire by attacking Israeli troops and not returning the remains of Israeli hostages killed in Hamas captivity.

The Trump administration claims that the peace deal still holds, even though the persistence of military strikes means there is, by definition, no peace in the region.

The ceasefire deal “doesn’t mean that there aren’t going to be little skirmishes here and there,” Vice President JD Vance said Tuesday during a visit to Capitol Hill. “We know that Hamas or somebody else within Gaza attacked an [Israeli] soldier. We expect the Israelis are going to respond, but I think the president’s peace is going to hold despite that.”

JD Vance is such a slimy little toady.

At least Trump can fall back on his other 6 or 7 war-ending negotiations. Can anyone name them?

New vermin for a new generation

The Department of Homeland Security is recruiting with a new trope, same as the old trope.

I was never into Halo, but my sons were avid players. I just wasn’t good enough to join in, but I remember the Flood from the many battles waged into the wee hours of the night in my basement. I had to look them up to remind myself of what the Flood were.

The Flood, designated as LF.Xx.3273 by the Forerunners (Latin Inferi redivivus meaning “the dead reincarnated”) and referred to as the Parasite and the infection by the Covenant, is a species of highly virulent parasitic organisms that reproduce and grow by consuming sentient lifeforms of sufficient biomass and cognitive capability. The Flood was responsible for consuming most of the sentient lifeforms in the galaxy – including the vast majority of Forerunners – during the Forerunner-Flood war in ancient past, prompting the activation of the galaxy-sterilizing Halo Array in 97,445 BCE.

Cool. Comparing immigrants to virulent parasitic organisms and threatening to literally destroy them. This is exactly what Julius Streicher would do if he were reincarnated today and was trying to enlist young men to his cause.

The Flood do look like they’d make excellent farm laborers, but they don’t resemble the Central and South American people I know.

Behold, the magnificent swoop of my slippery slope!

Various conservatives are celebrating the publication of a new issue of the Journal of Controversial Ideas, or Peter Singer’s slush pile of pseudoscientific justifications for bigotry. The ideas aren’t so much controversial as they are bad. For instance, here’s one charming example from 2024, Intelligence and Immigration, by Christopher Heath Wellman. You could tell from the title alone that this was a trash fire of burning bigotry, but here, taste the abstract.

The relative intelligence of prospective migrants likely does little to move the needle on the central issue in the ethics of immigration, namely, whether states are morally entitled to forcibly exclude outsiders. Even so, I argue that varying levels of intelligence may be relevant to a number of theoretically interesting and practically pressing issues. In particular, such variations may in some cases (1) affect the number of refugees a country is obligated to accept, (2) be relevant to the advisability of encouraging refugees to resettle rather than attempting to help them where they are, and (3) have implications for relational egalitarians who are especially concerned with inequalities among fellow citizens.

The body text is even worse; it’s a meandering opinion piece with no evidence presented, and I was shocked that it didn’t even bother to cite Rushton, the source of all of its biases. I mention this to prepare you — there is little quality control in this “journal” which is prepared to publish the most egregious nonsense. If you desperately want an article defending blackface, they’ve got it. To be fair, they sometimes also publish criticisms of the garbage they put on their pages. For instance, there is an article titled Deflating Byrne’s “Are Women Adult Human Females?” that logically skewers the whole definitional approach to excluding trans women from the category of “woman”.

But what caught my eye in this journal was an article titled On the Intellectual Freedom and Responsibility of Scientists in the Time of “Consequences Culture” by Lee Jussim and others, including Luana Maroja and Jerry Coyne…names of reactionary culture warriors I’ve seen many times before, usually in the context of yelling about racism and misogyny, which they practice ably. I read it, and dismissed it out of hand, because it’s nothing but a slippery slope argument, which most of us know is a fallacy.

It practically telegraphs its intent in the abstract.

The 20th century witnessed unimaginable atrocities perpetrated in the name of ideologies that stifled dissent in favour of political narratives, with numerous examples of resulting long-term societal harm.

It’s not a good sign when it warns of past unimaginable atrocities as its premise. Don’t worry: it will fail to deliver any examples of similar atrocities in the contemporary world. In fact, it’s going to ignore actual atrocities to instead whine about small slights to scientists, blaming it all on those parts of contemporary society that are under genuine assault from the establishment.

Despite clear historical precedents, calls to deal with dissent through censorship have risen dramatically. Most alarmingly, politically motivated censorship has risen in the academic community, where pluralism is most needed to seek truth and generate knowledge. Recent calls for censorship have come under the name of “consequences culture”, a culture structured around the inclusion of those sharing a particular narrative while imposing adverse consequences on those who dissent. Here, we place “consequences culture” in the historical context of totalitarian societies, focusing on the fate suffered by academics in those societies. We support our arguments with extensive references, many of which are not widely known in the West. We invite the broader scientific community to consider yet again what are timeless subjects: the importance of freely exchanging views and ideas; the freedom to do so without fear of intimidation; the folly of undermining such exchanges with distortions; and the peril of attempting to eliminate exchanges by purging published documents from the official record. We conclude with suggestions on where to go from here.

I don’t know, I was looking forward with a little glee to the descriptions of the adverse consequences imposed on the kinds of assholes who compare their plight to the Holocaust, but it fails to deliver. The inciting incident for all this anxiety was one specific paper.

In 2020, Tomáš Hudlický submitted an essay to Angewandte Chemie (Hudlický, 2020) reviewing the evolution of organic synthesis since Seebach’s prior reflection on the field three decades before (Seebach, 1990). The essay, which included a discussion on the organic synthesis community, was peer-reviewed, accepted by the journal, and a pre-publication version was uploaded to the journal server. Among several topics Hudlický addressed, he argued that in some cases, institutional policies mandating “equality in terms of absolute numbers of people in specific subgroups is counter-productive if it results in discrimination against the most meritorious candidates” (Hudlický, 2020). Then, in an unprecedented action, the published article vanished from the journal’s server, with the DOI returning a 404 error (Howes, 2020). The withdrawal notice would appear some days later declaring that “the opinions expressed in this essay do not reflect our values of fairness, trustworthiness and social awareness” (Withdrawal, 2020).1 Unofficial copies can be found online, and further information can be found in Howes (2020) and Sydnes (2021).

Wait…the problem is the removal of a paper on organic synthesis, which wandered into a discourse on why maybe we’ve got too many chemists in certain subgroups who are less meritorious? Yes, remove such papers; they shouldn’t have passed peer and editorial review. I think even the authors of this terrible article that it would be misleading to lard a technical paper in chemistry with advocacy for social engineering, except that they’ll only do it when they agree with the social engineering part. A scientific review should be to the point, and not scurry off into topics on which the author is not at all qualified.

Jussim’s paper dwells on this incident with several paragraphs of breast-beating, and references to the KGB, ostracizing Sakharov, Lysenkoism, and the authoritarian territory of collective denunciations. I kept waiting for the grisly adverse consequences to Hudlický that they promised me, but they didn’t describe any. He had a paper removed from a journal. That was it. He wasn’t banished to a concentration camp in the Everglades, his family wasn’t bombed, he wasn’t even tortured. He wrote a flawed paper, the editors removed it, done.

Surely, they must have many more examples of tormented scientists to discuss. They do, sorta.

Hudlický’s is not the only case of “consequences culture”. This phenomenon is becoming pervasive in modern Western societies. Numerous academics across various fields in the USA (Abbot, 2021; Hooven, 2023; Lyons, 2022), Canada (CBC News, 2022; Howard-Hassmann, 2022), Germany (Sibarium, 2022), the UK (Adams, 2021; Gibbons, 2021), and New Zealand (Clements et al., 2021; Coyne, 2021a; Leahy, 2021) have been subjected to mistreatment after running afoul of activism of one kind or another. Between 2014 and 2023, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), logged more than 1,700 attempts to deplatform or discipline faculty for speech that should have been protected by academic freedom (FIRE, n.d.-a, n.d.-b), with incidents occurring at an increasing rate (Flaherty, 2021). Several other online databases have also been compiled (Acevedo, 2023; Cancel Culture Database, 2025). Looking into these cases, one finds that in many instances, the views expressed were neither extreme (Danagoulian, 2021; Howard-Hassmann, 2022), nor factually incorrect. In fact, some simply challenged questionable science or policy, or defended science from an assault by pseudoscience (Coyne, 2021a). For example, a medical student was expelled and forced to “seek psychological services” for challenging the validity of microaggressions (Cantu & Jussim, 2021; Hudson, 2021). Indeed, the problem is not limited to academia: those same regressive authoritarian tendencies are evident in other strata of Western society (Applebaum, 2021; Tabarovsky, 2020), as are attempts to deny their existence or minimise their dangers (Young, 2021).

Interesting that they cite FIRE, a far-right, Islamophobic organization that explicitly claims that far-right, Islamophobic professors must be defended, but doesn’t mention TPUSA, which maintains a Professor Watchlist and calls for the firing of liberal professors. Most of the sources mentioned are about aggrieved conservative professors claiming that they were denounced for declaiming their bigoted views, but there’s a notable lack of examples of mistreatment. The one specific example given is a medical student being advised to seek psychological services, which is not the public whipping and flaying I was hoping for. Darn.

They then declare that science hasn’t been as repressive as those liberals claim, so we get a bizarre section that they purport shows the dishonesty of the people who disagree with them.

Just as Herbert et al. selectively dismiss some lived experiences, they overlook historical facts that complicate their narrative. They claim, for instance, that the “gentlemen of the Royal Society” of London 150 years ago “could not imagine that Asians, African-Americans, Jews, Arabs, women, or LGBTQIA+ individuals would find a place among them” (Herbert et al., 2022), despite there being clear, albeit rare, examples that they did imagine such individuals. They elected Arab and Jewish members as far back as 1682 (Turkmani, 2011) and 1727 (Samuda, n.d.; Vieira, 2014), respectively, had at least one member who in 1781 admitted to being gay (Namier & Brooke, 1964; Onslow, n.d.), and elected Ardaseer Cursetjee, a marine engineer from Bombay, as a fellow in 1841 (Cursetjee, n.d.). The Royal Society counted pioneering women such as Margaret Cavendish among its speakers (1667; Wilkins, 2014) and Caroline Herschel (1750–1848) among the authors of its Philosophical Transactions (Herschel, 1787, 1794, 1796; Royal Society, 2017). A Jamaican mathematician, Francis Williams, was admitted to the meetings of the Royal Society, and, highlighting the importance of dissenting voices in attempting to overturn the status quo, he was proposed as a fellow of the Royal Society in 1721 – against a majority that rejected him on the basis of race (“on account of his complection [sic]”; Carretta, 2003; Williams, 1997).

Awesome. Some non-white, non-male people got into the Royal Society despite a majority rejecting them on the basis of race. That is not the win that Jussim thinks it is. It’s saying that it was easier for a mediocre white man to get into the Society than for an exceptional black man to do so. Maybe we should reject all barriers to entry that privilege white men, as DEI principles propose? How many great women and non-European people were deprived of opportunities historically?

The article concludes with a bit of pablum, rather than workable suggestions on where to go from here.

We have two choices. For scientists, those choices are simple. The first is whether to do honest science to the best of our abilities and help others to do the same, or to make science subservient to ideological goals which permit falsehoods as long as they serve the agenda. The second choice is whether to speak up when one sees a falsehood, because, as the epigraph to this article states, “Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid”. The idea, that voicing one’s views merits punishment is untenable, and needs to be scrapped. Similarly, the politicisation of science needs to stop.

Yes! Do honest science and help others! I can agree with that, although they go on to suggest that everyone else is pursuing ideological goals, unlike them, and are lying to serve the agenda. The problem is that Jussim et al. do have ideological goals that oppose our ability to serve others — they want science to support a conservative agenda. To that end, they are complaining about liberals, women, gay and trans people, Muslims, and anyone to the left of Charlie Kirk, and ignoring the active politicization and repression of science in America today.

It’s kind of a weird choice to get irate at gay women protesting about the discrimination they face at the hands of established conservative professors at a time when Trump is shutting down science funding and appointing looney tunes kooks to run our scientific institutions. But you do you, Lee Jussim, Mikhail Shifman, Luana Maroja, Jerry Coyne, David Bertioli, Arieh Warshel, Gernot Frenking, and Barry L. Bentley. Since you’re so committed to free speech, I’m sure you won’t mind if I say you’re all entitled, privileged, whiny-ass-titty-babies who are simply aligning yourselves with a dominant repressive and authoritarian culture. Assholes.

I should mention that Tomáš Hudlický died in 2022. It was not at the hands of fanatical liberal mob; he died of natural causes while holding the position of Professor and Canada Research Chair in Organic Synthesis and Biocatalysis at Brock University, shortly after giving a lecture at a conference.

He is a very stupid man

I don’t even need to name him, you all know who I am talking about. He’s challenging Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Jasmine Crockett to an IQ test, because he’s decided that the are ‘low IQ individuals’, on some basis. He’s also very racist.

You give her an IQ test. Have her pass the exams that I decided to take when I was at Walter Reed. I took– those are really hard. They’re really aptitude tests, I guess in a certain way. But, they’re cognitive tests. Let AOC go against Trump. Let Jasmine go against Trump. I don’t think Jasmine– the first couple of questions are easy, a tiger, an elephant, a giraffe, you know. When you get up to about five or six, and then when you get up to ten and twenty and twenty five, they couldn’t come close to answering any of those questions.

He did not take an IQ test. He took a basic cognitive exam, which is very, very easy to pass, unless you have serious cognitive deficits. I don’t know that he passed it as he claims, because he has obvious age-related cognitive problems, and I doubt that he’s in better mental shape than either of two young healthy women.

He’s making these claims while on a diplomatic trip to Japan, embarrassing us all.

Good god, how much longer do we have to suffer with this fool in charge?

The era of destruction

Deservedly or not, Harvard is the premiere research institution in the US, internationally renowned, magnificently endowed, so it’s shocking that Trump is demolishing our research capabilities nationwide.

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences slashed the number of Ph.D. student admissions slots for the Science division by more than 75 percent and for the Arts & Humanities division by about 60 percent for the next two years.

The scale of reductions in the Social Science division was not immediately clear, though several departments in the division experienced decreases over the coming two years ranging from 50 percent to 70 percent.

We’re used to thinking that STEM departments are safe…but no more.

The Organismic and Evolutionary Biology department will shrink its class size by roughly 75 percent to three new Ph.D. students, according to two professors. Molecular and Cellular Biology will reduce its figure to four new students, and Chemistry and Chemical Biology will go down to four or five admits, one of the professors added.

The reduction in admissions slots puts a figure to FAS Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra’s announcement in late September that the school would be admitting Ph.D. students at “significantly reduced levels.” Hoekstra cited uncertainty around research funding and an increase to the endowment tax — which could cost Harvard $300 million per year — as sources of financial pressure.

This isn’t just Harvard — universities across the country are tightening their belts to the point that whole disciplines are getting chopped. How do we recover from this?

All Trump knows how to do is destroy, just like he’s demolishing the east wing of the White House.

That’s symbolic of how this administration will be seen by history: a flag waving over a wrecking crew.