Trump with his new Attorney General and two other associates. (Davidoff Studios/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In what experts are calling one of the most remarkable comebacks for a convicted sex offender in recent memory, on Friday Donald J. Trump announced that he was replacing Attorney General Pam Bondi with Ghislaine Maxwell.
Explaining his decision, Trump said, “Pam said there’s a client list, and Ghislaine said there isn’t. So I have decided Ghislaine would be better at this job than Pam.”
In another stunning reversal of fortune, Trump announced that Bondi would be taking Maxwell’s place in prison, adding, “I wish her well.”
He said he was confident that Maxwell would receive speedy confirmation by Senate Republicans, noting, “If they confirmed Hegseth they’ll confirm anyone.”
Trump announced that he was “firing” Lisa Cook, a distinguished economist, as a governor of the Federal Reserve Board. Paul Krugman wrote a new analysis overnight.
He posted:
Yesterday Donald Trump said that he had fired Lisa Cook, a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. My wording is advisable: He “said” that he had fired her. I’m not a lawyer, but it seems clear that he does not have the right to summarily fire Fed officials, certainly on tissue-thin allegations of mortgage fraud before she even went to the Fed.
Cook has said that she will not resign. So at this point the immediate onus is on Jerome Powell, the Fed chairman. He has the right — I would say the obligation — to say, “Show me the legal basis for this action.” If Trump’s officials can’t provide that basis, he should declare that as far as he is concerned, Cook is still a Fed governor.
If Powell caves, or the Supreme Court acts supine again and validates Trump’s illegal declaration, the implications will be profound and disastrous. The United States will be well on its way to becoming Turkey, where an authoritarian ruler imposed his crackpot economics on the central bank, sending inflation soaring to 80 percent:
And the damage will be felt far beyond the Fed. This will mark the destruction of professionalism and independent thinking throughout the federal government.
So, about the legal authority. The Supreme Court, shamefully, has said that Trump has the authority to fire officials at will throughout the federal government, effectively eviscerating the principle of a professional civil service. But even the Court specifically carved out protections for Fed governors, saying that they can only be removed “for cause.”
Normally “for cause” means neglect of one’s job or malfeasance on the job. Yet even Trump’s people have made no claims that Lisa Cook has failed to fulfil her duties at the Fed or done anything wrong in her role as governor.
So what is the complaint about Cook? Trump says that she committed mortgage fraud by taking out two mortgages, claiming both properties as her primary residence, back when she was a professor at Michigan State, before joining the Fed.
Even if true, this accusation wouldn’t meet the standard for immediate dismissal from the Fed.
Furthermore, there’s no reason to believe Trump’s assertions that she committed fraud. So far, the Justice Department hasn’t even made any formal charges, let alone won a conviction. And we have no clear evidence of wrongdoing. As far as I can tell, the only evidence seen by outsiders shows that she took out mortgages on two properties, and the security instruments associated with these mortgages say that both properties are “principal residences.”
But as Adam Levitin at Credit Slips, says, “principal” isn’t the same as “primary”: someone who has a home in the city and a second place in the country might well consider both “principal” residences. Furthermore, there is no evidence that Cook even knew what the security instruments said — she may have done nothing more than promise to make her mortgage payments.
And a claim of mortgage fraud requires both that the borrower make a deliberate misrepresentation — as opposed to making a mistake on a complicated process — and that this misrepresentation caused financial harm to the lender. We’ve seen no evidence at all for either proposition.
This is not a case a nonpolitical Justice Department would even consider bringing to trial, or have much hope of winning. And again, it has no relevance at all to Cook’s work at the Fed, providing zero justification for dismissal “for cause.”
But of course Trump’s attempt to fire Cook has nothing to do with allegations of fraud. Her real crime, in his mind, is that she isn’t an obedient minion (oh, and that she’s a black woman.) The goal of his attempt to fire her is to replace independent Fed officials with lackeys who will take Trump’s orders — not just by getting rid of Cook but by intimidating everyone else.
As I wrote yesterday, the real message here is “If you get in our way we will ruin your life.”
The immediate test here is how the Fed itself responds. Cook is doing the right thing by refusing to resign. Jerome Powell now faces a moment of truth: Will he back her up, until or unless Trump demonstrates that he has the legal authority to fire her?
What if Trump uses some kind of force — deployment of U.S. Marshals? — to block Cook from continuing to work? Good. That will demonstrate to everyone the grotesqueness of this power grab.
And one way or another, this will end up in the courts, where we will find out whether our judicial system has any integrity left.
What will all of this mean for financial markets? The markets keep shrugging off the Trump administration’s lawlessness, and maybe they’ll do it again. But really, it doesn’t matter. This isn’t, ultimately, about monetary policy. It’s about whether we are still a nation of laws.
Yesterday, Trump took the unusual step of firing Lisa Cook, a governor of the Federal Reserve Board appointed by President Biden. As of now, it’s not clear that he has the authority to fire her. She might go to court to get injunctive relief. She said that Trump had no authority to fire her, and she will not resign. She is represented by high-profile lawyer Abbe Lowell.
A MAGA partisan claimed that she had committed mortgage fraud, but there have been no hearings, no independent review, no evidence. Just charges made on Twitter.
No President has ever removed a member of the Federal Reserve Board. Ever.
Paul Krugman is a Nobel-Prize winning economist who wrote a regular column for The New York Times for many years. He retired and started his own blog on Substack.
Yesterday morning, before Trump fired Cook, Krugman posted this column about Trump’s demand that Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook resign, after being accused of mortgage fraud. Trump’s staff has also accused two other enemies of Trump of mortgage fraud: New York Attorney General Letitia James and Senator Adam Schiff of California.
Trump wants to gain control of the Federal Reserve Board, which is supposed to be independent and nonpartisan, because it sets interest rates. He wants lower rates to boost the economy. He has bullied the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, to resign, although Trump appointed him in his first term.
Be sure to watch the two-minute video at the end.
Krugman writes:
Donald Trump is threatening to fire Lisa Cook, a member of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors, over allegations that she made false claims on mortgage applications before she went to the Fed.
I am not going to lead with a discussion of what Cook may or may not have done. That would be playing Trump’s game. Clearly, he’s just looking for a pretext to fire someone who isn’t a loyalist — and who happens, surprise, to be a black woman. If you write about politics and imagine that Trump cares about mortgage fraud — or for that matter believe anything Trump officials say about the affair without independent confirmation — you should find a different profession. Maybe you should go into agricultural field work, to help offset the labor shortages created by Trump’s deportations.
The real story here isn’t about Cook, or mortgages. It’s about the way the Trump administration is weaponizing government against political opponents, critics, or anyone it finds inconvenient.
You should think about the attack on Cook in the same context as mortgage fraud accusations made against California Senator Adam Schiff and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Or you should look at the attacks on Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, over the cost of renovations at the Fed’s headquarters. Or the still mysterious raid on the house of John Bolton, who at one time was Trump’s national security adviser.
The message here clearly isn’t “Don’t commit fraud,” which would be laughable coming from Donald Trump, of all people. Nor, despite what some commentators have said, is it all about revenge — although Trump is, indeed, a remarkably vindictive person. But mainly it’s about intimidation: “If you get in our way we will ruin your life.”
As with individuals, so with institutions. Universities are being threatened with loss of research grants unless they take orders from the White House. Law firms are being threatened with loss of access unless they do pro-bono work on behalf of the administration. Corporations are being threatened with punitive tariffs unless they support administration policies — and, in the case of Intel, hand over part ownership of the company.
This newsletter usually focuses on economics, and I could go on at length about the ways rule by intimidation will hurt the economy. There’s a whole economics literature devoted to the costs when an economy is dominated by “rent-seeking” — when business success depends on political connections rather than producing things people want. I’ve been writing a series of primers on stagflation. One of the way things could go very badly wrong would be politicization of the Federal Reserve, with monetary policy dictated by Trump’s whims, and it would be even worse if Fed policy is driven by officials’ fear of what will happen if they don’t follow Trump’s orders.
It’s also important to realize that the Fed does more than set interest rates. It’s also an important regulator of the financial system, a job that will be deeply compromised if Fed governors can be bullied by personal threats.
But there’s much more at stake here than the economy. What we’re witnessing is the authoritarian playbook in action. Tyrannies don’t always get their way by establishing a secret police force that arrests people at will — although we’re getting that too. Much of their power comes not from overt violence but from their ability to threaten people’s careers and livelihoods, up to and including trumped-up accusations of criminal behavior.
Which brings me, finally, to the accusations against Lisa Cook. According to Bill Pulte, the ultra-MAGA director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Cook applied for mortgages on two properties, claiming both as her primary residence. This isn’t allowed, because banks offer more favorable mortgage terms on your primary residence than on investment properties.
Borrowers sometimes do sometimes commit deliberate fraud, claiming multiple properties as their primary residence when they always intended to rent them out. For example, Ken Paxton, Texas’s Attorney General, claimed three houses as his primary residence, renting out two of them, and has also rented out at least two properties that he listed as vacation homes. Somehow, however, Pulte hasn’t highlighted his case, let alone threatened him with a 30-year prison sentence.
The truth is that even when clear mortgage fraud has taken place, it almost always leads to an out-of-court settlement, with fees paid to the lender, rather than a criminal case. In 2024, only 38 people in America were sentenced for mortgage fraud. No, I’m not missing some zeroes.
So did Cook say something false on her mortgage applications? Pulte says so, but I’d wait for verification. Also, false statements on mortgage applications are only a crime if they’re made knowingly, which is a high bar. And nothing at all about this story is relevant to Cook’s role at the Federal Reserve. If the administration thinks it has enough evidence to bring charges, it should bring charges, not demand that she quit her job.
The important thing to understand is that we are all Lisa Cook. You may imagine that your legal and financial history is so blameless that there’s no way MAGA can come after you. If you believe that, you’re living in a fantasy world. Criticize them or get in their way, and you will become a target.
When Trump sent the military and ICE and the local police to control the streets of D.C., his close aide Stephen Miller scoffed at protests. He said the protestors were “elderly white hippies.” An anonymous artist posted this drawing on BlueSky:
Trump has been threatening to impose severe sanctions of Russia unless Putin agreed to a ceasefire. First, Trump set a deadline of 50 days, then changed the deadline to 10-12 days. No one takes his deadlines seriously because he frequently fails to enforce his threats or forgets them. When he met with Putin last Friday, Trump called the meeting a summit, although he apparently had no demands, no agenda.
Putin got what he wanted: a private visit with Trump on American soil. Respect. Being treated as an equal to the U.S.
Trump did not get the ceasefire he wanted. Or claimed to want. He left the meeting echoing Putin’s agenda: Ukraine must give up Crimea, which Russia seized in 2014, and Ukraine must agreee never to join NATO.
The optics of the meeting were to Putin’s benefit. Trump had American military roll out a red carpet for Putin. Trump got out of Air Fotce One, walked unsteadily down his red carpet, and waited for Putin. The video of Trump walking in a zigzag pattern, unable apparently to walk a straight line, echoed across social media. Then, as he waited for Putin, he clapped for him, repeatedly. Can you imagine Reagan applauding his Soviet counterpart on the tarmac, or any other American President?. His displays of deference towards Putin were passing strange.
Yesterday, military personnel from the United States of America literally rolled out a red carpet for a dictator who invaded a sovereign country and is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes including the stealing of children. Apparently coached by his team, Trump stood to let Russia’s president Vladimir Putin walk toward him after Putin arrived at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, putting Trump in a dominant position, but he clapped as Putin walked toward him. The two men greeted each other warmly.
This summit between the president of the United States and the president of Russia came together fast, in the midst of the outcry in the U.S. over Trump’s inclusion in the Epstein files and the administration’s refusal to release those files.
U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff had been visiting Moscow for months to talk about a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine when he heard through a back channel that Putin might be willing to talk to Trump in person to offer a deal. On August 6, after a meeting in Moscow, Witkoff announced that Russia was ready to retreat from some of the land it occupies in Ukraine. This apparent concession came just two days before the August 8 deadline Trump had set for severe sanctions against Russia unless it agreed to a ceasefire.
Quickly, though, it became clear that Witkoff’s description of Putin’s offer was wrong, either because Putin had misled him or because he had misunderstood: Witkoff does not speak Russian and, according to former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, does not use a notetaker from the U.S. embassy. Nonetheless, on Friday, August 8, Trump announced on social media that he would meet personally with Putin in Alaska, without Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky.
That the president of the United States offered a meeting to Putin on U.S. soil, ground that once belonged to Russia and that Russian nationalists fantasize about taking back, was itself a win for Putin.
As Jonathan Lemire noted yesterday in The Atlantic, in the week before the meeting, leaders in Ukraine and Europe worried that Trump would agree to Putin’s demand that Ukraine hand over Crimea and most of its four eastern oblasts, a demand that Russian operatives made initially in 2016 when they offered to help Trump win the White House—the so-called Mariupol Plan—and then pressure Ukraine to accept the deal.
In the end, that did not happen. The summit appears to have produced nothing but a favorable photo op for Putin.
That is no small thing, for Russia, which is weak and struggling, managed to break the political isolation it’s lived in since invading Ukraine again in 2022. Further, the choreography of the summit suggested that Russia is equal to the United States. But those important optics were less than Russia wanted.
It appeared that Russia was trying to set the scene for a major powers summit of the past, one in which the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), also known as the Soviet Union, were the dominant players, with the USSR dominating the U.S. Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov showed up to Alaska in a sweatshirt with the Russian initials for USSR, a sign that Russia intends to absorb Ukraine as well as other former Soviet republics and recreate itself as a dominant world power.
As Lemire notes, Putin indicated he was interested in broadening the conversation to reach beyond Ukraine into economic relations between the two countries, including a discussion of the Arctic, and a nuclear arms agreement. The U.S. seemed to be following suit. It sent a high-ranking delegation that included Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Special Envoy Witkoff, press secretary Karoline Leavitt, Central Intelligence Agency director John Ratcliffe, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, deputy White House chief of staff Dan Scavino, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Exactly what the White House expected from the summit was unclear. Trump warned that if Putin didn’t agree to a ceasefire there would be “very severe consequences,” but the White House also had seemed to be walking back any expectations of a deal at the summit, downgrading the meeting to a “listening exercise.”
After Trump and Putin met on the tarmac, Trump ushered the Russian president to the presidential limousine, known as The Beast, giving them time to speak privately despite the apparent efforts of the U.S. delegation to keep that from happening. When the summit began, Rubio and Witkoff joined Trump to make up the U.S. delegation, while Putin, his longtime foreign policy advisor Yuri Ushakov, and Lavrov made up the Russian delegation. The principals emerged after a three-hour meeting with little to say.
At the news conference after their meeting, Putin took the podium first—an odd development, since he was on U.S. soil—and spoke for about eight minutes. Then Trump spoke for three minutes, telling reporters the parties had not agreed to a ceasefire but that he and Putin had made “great progress” in their talks. Both men appeared subdued. They declined to take reporters’ questions.
A Fox News Channel reporter said: “The way it felt in the room was not good. It did not seem like things went well. It seemed like Putin came in and steamrolled, got right into what he wanted to say and got his photo next to the president, then left.” But while Putin got his photo op, he did not get the larger superpower dialogue he evidently wanted. Neither did he get the open support of the United States to end the war on his terms, something he needs as his war against Ukraine drags on.
The two and a half hour working lunch that was scheduled did not take place. Both men left Alaska within an hour.
Speaking with European leaders in a phone call from Air Force One on his way home from the summit, Trump said that Putin rejected the idea of a ceasefire and insisted that Ukraine cede territory to Russia. He also suggested that a coalition of the willing, including the U.S., would be required to provide security guarantees to Ukraine. But within hours, Trump had dropped his demand for a ceasefire and instead echoed Putin’s position that negotiations for a peace agreement should begin without one.
In an interview with Fox News Channel personality Sean Hannity after the meeting, Trump said he would not impose further sanctions on Russia because the meeting with Putin had gone “very well.” “Because of what happened today, I think I don’t have to think about that now,” Trump told Hannity. “I may have to think about it in two weeks or three weeks or something, but we don’t have to think about that right now.”
Trump also suggested he was backing away from trying to end the war and instead dumping the burden on Ukraine’s president. He told Hannity that “it’s really up to President Zelensky to get it done.”
Today Chiara Eisner of NPR reported that officials from the Trump administration left eight pages of information produced by the U.S. State Department in a public printer at the business center of an Alaskan hotel. The pages revealed potentially sensitive information about the August 15 meetings, including the names and phone numbers of three U.S. staff members and thirteen U.S. and Russian state leaders.
The pages also contained the information that Trump intended to give Putin an “American Bald Eagle Desk Statue,” and the menu for the cancelled lunch, which specified that the luncheon was “in honor of his excellency, Vladimir Putin, president of the Russian Federation.”
Putin got what he wanted. He didn’t hang around for lunch. He left.
Trump meets today with Ukrainian President Zelensky and European leaders, who are united against Russian aggression.
PBS ran an important segment on Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy’s decision to cancel $500 million in grants to study mNRA vaccine grants. These are the vaccines that broke the COVID pandemic.
PBS interviewed scientists about this surprise decision. If you would like to see the interviews, open the link.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s decision to cancel nearly half a billion dollars in federal funding for mRNA vaccine development has left many public health experts and scientists stunned.
mRNA technology was central in the battle against COVID and can be developed more quickly than traditional vaccines. But anti-vaccine communities and skeptics don’t trust its safety.
Geoff Bennett spoke with Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, about the latest in mRNA vaccine research and the implications of Kennedy’s move.
“I can say unequivocally that this was the most dangerous public health decision I have ever seen made by a government body,” Osterholm said.
U.S. children’s health in decline
As the Trump administration works to reimagine public health through its “Make America Healthy Again” initiative, a new study paints a stark picture of the challenges facing the nation’s kids.
The health of American children has significantly worsened across several key indicators since 2007, according to a recent study published in JAMA.
Nancy Bailey frames her latest post as a program to end truancy. But in fact, she lays out a bullet list of reforms that would make school what it’s supposed to be: a welcoming place to learn, to make friends, to expand your world, to learn how to work with others.
She writes:
School starts for students whose families rely on public education, which the Trump administration is trying to end. For years, however, school reforms have made schools less personable; as a result, school attendance has decreased, especially since the pandemic.
Why do kids reject school? Bullying, harassment, family problems, parental work schedules, mental health, illnesses, transportation, and residual effects of COVID might be issues that school districts must address.
Another reason is disengagement; public education has become impersonal, due to terrible school policies over the years, which may overlook the unique capabilities of individual students. If no welcome mat is rolled out to show children they’re valued, why would they care?
It wouldn’t be hard to fix the issues discouraging students from going to school. Teachers do their best, but poor schools, lacking resources or following poorly devised reforms, face a greater challenge in attracting students.
Here are a few considerations.
Provide safe schools with smaller class sizes.
School officials and communities must ensure student safety. Children and teens should not fear school.
Smaller class sizes (at least one homeroom) allow teachers to know students, enabling friendships, ending bullying, and better welcoming families.
Every school leader, teacher, and staff member should know the warning signs of students. Here’s one checklist. There are more online.
School gatherings like sports, plays, art exhibits, concerts, etc., help bring families and students together and show school pride in students’ achievements. The motto: Know and Care About Every Student!
Teachers and students need support.
Teachers and students also require support, counselors, school psychologists, social workers, and outside specialists to help when a child is facing trauma or a crisis. Resources and placement settings for children must be available.
End poor and over-assessment.
Pushing privatization, high-stakes standardized testing has been a tool used against public schools and teachers. Students aligned to tests focus on the same information, but much is excluded, and individual strengths may be overlooked. Parents have understood thisfor years!
Children judged harshly for poor test performance are left without options and safety nets, made to feel like failures.
Want to excite students about school? End repetitive high-stakes standardized tests!
Focus on child development.
Students are pushed to perform beyond their age and development. Kindergartnersare expected to read earlier. High school studentsare expected to do college work.
Reduce pressure with a focus on what’s appropriate for the age and development of students.
Increase community support.
Community businesses supporting local public schools help students, teachers, and families. Too often, the focus is on the future workforce, getting students to do what companies want.
What’s most important is the student focus, helping young people to know that they belong, businesses are behind them, and that they have the freedom to choose what they do based on their interests and abilities.
Businesses can sponsor concessions at sports events, high school plays, or art shows, or they might work with teachers to tutor students. Acts like this tell students that the community believes in them and their achievements. They are proud of their public schools.
Offer a variety of extracurricular activities.
Extracurricular activities encompass a wide range of topics. (Prep Scholar(scroll) lists activities.)
In the Abbott Elementary episode “Wishlist,” the teacher Jacob tries to find what interests a student who seems disengaged. Most teachers work to unearth what students care about. This student eventually shares his interest in golf.
Extracurricular activities can bridge the gap between academic pursuits and leisure.
Insist that students have qualified teachers and staff.
Well-prepared teachers, counselors, paraprofessionals, psychologists, nurses, librarians, media specialists (including educational technologists), and administrators, fairly paid, comprise a school well-equipped to teach subjects and provide the support students need to learn effectively. These professionals should understand how to engage students in learning.
When school districts show disdain for teachers, water down credentials, or teachers face cuts or staff shortages, children don’t get the assistance they need. Students may learn incorrect information, or critical subjects essential for their future success may be omitted.
Establish school libraries with real librarians in everyschool.
Research indicates that children who attend public schools with school libraries tend to perform better academically. Sadly, many poor school districts have closed their school libraries.
How do children learn to read if a school doesn’t provide them access to books and enjoyable reading material?
Offer students socialization opportunities.
Understanding how to care for others essentially begins in school with integration, during school recess, where kids learn through free, supervised play and opportunities to interact with those who may look different and hold different beliefs.
We want students not to fear their fellow students, but to like them, not merely to tolerate them.
Develop innovative, nonstigmatizing special education programs.
Since 1975, public school teachers have worked to address the needs of students with disabilities. Ensuring that children have access to quality programs and well-qualified teachers who communicate effectively with parents is key.
Welcoming children with differences and embracing diversity is a strength of America’s public school system.
Reduce technology.
Over the years, a significant portion of school funding has been allocated to technology, yet we’re told that learning outcomes have not improved. Now, serious questions surround the implementation of AIin public schools.
Most parents want their children to rely less on screens and more on beneficial human connections, whether it be with their families or friends. It seems prudent to proceed slowly with AI and any technology. Help students work on human relationships.
Run a vibrant arts program.
Since NCLB, and even before, school districts cut art programs; yet, music, acting, dance, drawing, painting, and chorus give children a creative outlet to explore their interests. These classes are both fun and critical for learning, and they shouldn’t be made tougher or used for assessment. Nor should they be eliminated. The arts can lead to careers for many.
Children with mental health difficulties and the poor may thrive with the arts, and the arts can keep children in school.
Welcome students with lovely school facilities.
Studies have shown that clean, efficiently run school buildingswith a positive school climate can make a significant difference in student progress. Students don’t want to attend buildings that resemble prisons. The school should be clean, safe, and welcoming.
Schools should also ensure that there are few interruptions and that classrooms are conducive to learning with comfortable temperatures and quietness.
Ensure that students have a whole curriculum.
Public schools should offer a variety of instructional options starting at a young age to pique a child’s curiosity. Reading and math are important, but so are geography, science, history, civics, life skills, and the arts, all of which should have a place in public education.
Public schools have never been perfect, but they have educated the masses, and it’s reckless and irresponsible to dismantle them without proof that whatever replaces them will be better. If you want students to come to school, end harsh school reforms, and make public schools a personable, exciting place to be.
Jennifer Frey served as Dean of the University of Tulsa’s Honors College. It required students to read deeply in classic tests and to converse vigorously with each other.
More than a quarter of the student body signed up for this rigorous class.
Yet two years after the Honor College opened, it was closed. Its leadrs said that students didn’t want this kind of education, the heavy focus on the liberal arts and the Great Cobversation about the meaning of truth goodness, and beauty. Dean Frey thinks the administrators were wrong.
University students, we’re told, are in crisis. Even at our most elite institutions, they have emaciated attention spans. They can’t — or just won’t — read books. They use artificial intelligence to write their essays. They lack resilience and are beset by mentalhealthcrises. They complain that they can’t speak their minds, hobbled by an oppressive ideological monoculture and censorship regimes. As a philosopher, I am most distressed by reports that students have no appetite to study the traditional liberal arts; they understand their coursework only as a step toward specific careers.
Over the past two years as the inaugural dean of the University of Tulsa’s Honors College, focused on studying the classic texts of the Western tradition, I’ve seen little evidence of these trends. The curriculum I helped build and teach required students to read thousands of pages of difficult material every semester, decipher historical texts across disciplines and genres and debate ideas vigorously and civilly in small, Socratic seminars. It was tremendously popular among students, who not only do the reading but also engage in rigorous and lively conversations across deep differences in seminars, hallways and dorms. For the past two years, we attracted over a quarter of each freshman class to this reading-heavy, humanities-focused curriculum.
Our success in Tulsa derives from our old-fashioned approach to liberal learning, which does not attempt to prepare students for any career but equips them to fashion meaningful and deeply fulfilling lives. This classical model of education, found in the work of both Plato and Aristotle, asks students to seek to discover what is true, good and beautiful, and to understand why. It is a truly liberating education because it requires deep and sustained reflection about the ultimate questions of human life. The goal is to achieve a modicum of self-knowledge and wisdom about our own humanity. It certainly captured the hearts and minds of our students.
Sadly, this education has fared less well with my university’s new administration. After the former president and provost departed this year, the newly installed provost informed me that the Honors College must “go in a different direction.” That meant eliminating the entire dean’s office and associated staff positions as well as many of our distinctive programs and — through increased class sizes — effectively ending our small seminars. (A representative of the university told The Times that while it had “restructured” the Honors College, the university believes that academics and student experiences will “remain the same.”)
The stated reason for these cuts was to save money — the same reason the University of Tulsa gave in 2019 when it targeted many of the same traditional forms of liberal learning for elimination. Back then, the administration attempted to turn the university into a vocational school. Those efforts largely failed, in part because of lack of student support for the new model.
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An unpleasant truth has emerged in Tulsa over the years. It’s not that traditional liberal learning is out of step with student demand. Instead, it’s out of step with the priorities, values and desires of a powerful board of trustees with no apparent commitment to liberal education, and an administrative class that won’t fight for the liberal arts even when it attracts both students and major financial gifts. The tragedy of the contemporary academy is that even when traditional liberal learning clearly wins with students and donors, it loses with those in power.
For those who do care to see liberal learning thrive on our campuses, the work my colleagues and I did at Tulsa should be a model. How did we do it? We created an intentional community where our students lived in the same dorm and studied the same texts. We shared wisdom, virtue and friendship as our goals. When a university education is truly rooted in the liberal arts, it can cultivate the interior habits of freedom that young people need to live well. Material success alone cannot help a person who lacks the ability to form a clear, informed vision of what is true, good and beautiful. But this vision is something our students both want and need.
At Tulsa, we invited our students to enter “the great conversation” with some of the most influential thinkers of our inherited intellectual tradition. For their first two years they encountered a set curriculum of texts from Homer to Hannah Arendt. These texts were carefully chosen by an interdisciplinary faculty because they transcend their time and place in two senses: They influenced a broader tradition, and they had the potential to help our students reflect in a sustained way on what it means to be a good human being and citizen. Our seminars were led by faculty members who did not lecture or use secondary sources. Rather, the role of the faculty members was to foster and guide conversations among our students that allowed them to think through these questions for and among themselves.
That our students threw themselves into the task of reading and discussing the great works with one another should not shock. When we — students and teachers alike — share wisdom as a common goal, we will want to do the reading, to dispute one another, to exchange ideas and arguments, to propose amendments and to offer our personal insights. Liberal learning occurs in dialogue with those who object to us, who offer a different perspective or experience — who read the same book as we do in a completely different light.
At the Honors College, we taught our students that wisdom is a distant goal, and that we need to work on ourselves as we try to approach it. We need to cultivate what our college called “the virtues of liberal learning.” For example, we need to cultivate the humility to recognize that we have much to learn from the past and from one another. We need to cultivate a love of truth for its own sake and the courage to speak our minds and to follow the truth wherever it may lead us — even when it leads us into difficult waters where our disagreements are deep and unsettling.
When students realize their own humanity is at stake in their education, they are deeply invested in it. The problem with liberal education in today’s academy does not lie with our students. The real threat to liberal learning is from an administrative class that is content to offer students far less than their own humanity calls for — and deserves.
Dan Rather is a veteran of CBS News. He was understandably upset by the CBS payoff of $16 million to Trump in exchange for getting him to drop his $20 billion lawsuit against the network and “60 Minutes” for editing a tape of Kamala Harris during the 2024 campaign. It was a frivolous lawsuit, which Trump was likely to lose, but CBS chose to placate him because it needed FCC approval of a sale to Paramount for $8 billion. The Federal Conmunications Commission is headed by Trump ally, Brendan Carr, and is completely politicized, at the service of The Donald.
Dan Rather takes strong exception to CBS’s agreement to accept a “bias monitor” who reports to Trump. Be it noted that Columbia University also agreed to a “bias monitor” along with its $200 million payoff. Brown University agreed to accept Trump’s definition of gender, which means transgender does not exist at Brown.
Rather wrote:
As bad as it is that CBS’s parent company was extorted by Donald Trump for $16 million, that wasn’t the worst of it.
In the final merger deal, New Paramount has agreed to appoint a “bias monitor” who will report directly to Donald Trump, says the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). This person will work with the company’s new president to review “any complaints of bias or other concerns.” In other words, Paramount is installing a censor at CBS News with a direct line to the president.
One would think that if a bias monitor is called for, there has been evidence of blatant bias. By definition, bias is unfair prejudice in favoring one side over the other. The far-right defines it as any story they don’t like.
Let’s be clear: By any sane or objective measure, CBS News is not a biased organization, no matter what the president and his FCC chair would have you think.
In addition to hiring a bias monitor, Paramount has promised that “news and entertainment programming embodies a diversity of viewpoints across the political and ideological spectrum,” while also eliminating all diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. Hard to do both, unless what you really mean is embodying only “conservative” (read: Trump’s) viewpoints.
CBS has a history of mega-wealthy owners, but no one as rich as Oracle founder Larry Ellison and his son David, whose estimated net worth is $300 billion. Both Ellisons are tight with Trump.
One wonders how deep will this go? Does “60 Minutes” now submit scripts for approval by a Trump toady? What about “The CBS Evening News?” Will its reporters have to give equal time to disinformation? And what will be the effect on other news outlets? The intended outcome is to foster fear.
Insiders at CBS already have a term for the censor: “hall monitor.” The credibility of the news organization that was my home for more than 40 years is suddenly threatened because of a bogus lawsuit and an FCC that is supposed to be independent but clearly is not. Donald Trump might as well be CEO of CBS.
We are now on the slipperiest of slopes. Who will be next? Trump could certainly make similar demands of other news organizations. The White House communications team is doing its damnedest to curve coverage to embellish their boss through lies, intimidation, and extortion.
Despite the questionable characterizations from the White House, not every story is left versus right. Most actually deal with the truth, or as near as journalists can get to the truth, versus what Trump & Co. want you to believe is the truth. They have a 10-year history of bald-faced lying.
According to The Washington Post, which tracked Trump’s (lack of) truthfulness during his first term, he lied an average of 21 times a day for four years, totalling 30,573 false or misleading claims. Respected historian David Brinkley called him a “serial liar.”
The argument that CBS and other legacy media outlets have a left-leaning bias and therefore need monitoring falls apart quickly when you realize the far-right doesn’t want unbiased reporting. They want Trump’s version of the story and his version of the truth. To them, it simply can’t be negative and true. If it goes against their agenda, it’s biased.
After all, it was Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway who coined the term “alternate facts.” That is just doublespeak for lies. The network of “alternative facts,” Fox “News,” was formed to combat perceived bias. We all know Fox “News” hits it right down the middle.
Trump supporters point to Americans’ declining trust in the news media as a reason for the need for his administration’s “monitoring” of the mass media. Clearly what they intend is not monitoring but censorship, led by a man who eschews the truth and whose constant spewing of propaganda has been a factor in the loss of trust in the media.
They are led by the most transparently thin-skinned person imaginable. In the space of a week, the prickly president has officially lashed out at several entertainment programs that have had the temerity to make fun of him.
When Joy Behar of the morning talk show “The View” joked that Trump was jealous of President Obama’s swagger, a White House spokesperson told Entertainment Weekly, “Joy Behar is an irrelevant loser suffering from a severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome” who “should self-reflect on her own jealousy of President Trump’s historic popularity before her show is the next to be pulled off air.”
After the animated series “South Park” aired an episode that depicted a naked Trump hanging out with the devil, the White House said “no fourth-rate show can derail President Trump’s hot streak.” Meanwhile the creators of the cartoon just inked a $1.5 billion, five-year deal with Paramount. Yes, that Paramount. One wonders if the bias monitor will be script doctoring new “South Park” shows.
This comes after the questionably timed cancellation of “The Late Show,” whose host, Stephen Colbert, is an ardent critic of the president and the most popular host on late-night television.
Everyone interprets the world through their own prism. People are influenced by where they grew up, what their parents taught them, where they went to school, and the beliefs of the people they respect. Journalists included.
Journalists sometimes make mistakes. But the media is not a monolith driven by a collective desire to elect Democrats. The vast majority of people I worked with throughout my career were dedicated journalists, rock-solid reporters. They believed in objectivity and curiosity and in questioning authority and standing up to power, regardless of whom they voted for.
As details of the new deal at CBS News remind us, the need for independent journalism has never been greater — journalism that doesn’t need sign-off from a censor.
The good people and proven professionals of CBS News will do their best under their new circumstances. But they, and the rest of us, are left to ponder where this all leads.
Trump signed an executive order requiring colleges to prove that they are not continuing to practice affirmative action on behalf of racial minorities. He seems obsessed with the idea that Black students are gaining entrance to college without the right test scores. He wants to call a halt to it.
Conservatives believe that admission should be based solely on grades and test scores. They ignore the fact that colleges have other goals they want to meet: students who can play on sports’ teams; who can play in the band or orchestra; who want to study subjects with low enrollments, like advanced physics or Latin. There are also legacy students whose parents went to the college. And students whose parents are big donors, as Jared Kushner’s father Charles was when he pledged $2.5 million to Harvard the year that Jared applied, a story told by Daniel Golden in his book The Price of Admission. RFK Jr. was admitted to Harvard by signing a form with only his name.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order requiring colleges to submit data to prove they do not consider race in admissions.
In 2023, the Supreme Court ruled against the use of affirmative action in admissions but said colleges may still consider how race has shaped students’ lives if applicants share that information in their admissions essays.
Trump’s Republican administration is accusing colleges of using personal statements and other proxies to consider race, which conservatives view as illegal discrimination.
The role of race in admissions has featured in the administration’s battle against some of the nation’s most elite colleges — viewed by Republicans as liberal hotbeds. For example, the executive order is similar to parts of recent settlement agreements the government negotiated with Brown University and Columbia University, restoring their federal research money. The universities agreed to give the government data on the race, grade point average and standardized test scores of applicants, admitted students and enrolled students. The schools also agreed to an audit by the government and to release admissions statistics to the public.
Conservatives have argued that despite the Supreme Court ruling, colleges have continued to consider race through proxy measures.
The executive order makes the same argument. “The lack of available admissions data from universities — paired with the rampant use of ‘diversity statements’ and other overt and hidden racial proxies — continues to raise concerns about whether race is actually used in admissions decisions in practice,” said a fact sheet shared by the White House ahead of the Thursday signing.
The first year of admissions data after the Supreme Court ruling showed no clear pattern in how colleges’ diversity changed. Results varied dramatically from one campus to the next.
Some schools, such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Amherst College, saw steep drops in the percentage of Black students in their incoming classes. But at other elite, selective schools such as Yale, Princeton and the University of Virginia, the changes were less than a percentage point year to year.
Some colleges have added more essays or personal statements to their admissions process to get a better picture of an applicant’s background, a strategy the Supreme Court invited in its ruling.
“Nothing prohibits universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected the applicant’s life, so long as that discussion is concretely tied to a quality of character or unique ability that the particular applicant can contribute to the university,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in 2023 for the court’s conservative majority.
It is unclear what practical impact the executive order will have on colleges, which are prohibited by law from collecting information on race as part of admissions, says Jon Fansmith, senior vice president of government relations at the American Council on Education, an association of college presidents.
“Ultimately, will it mean anything? Probably not,” Fansmith said. “But it does continue this rhetoric from the administration that some students are being preferenced in the admission process at the expense of other students.”
Because of the Supreme Court ruling, schools are not allowed to ask the race of students who are applying. Once students enroll, the schools can ask about race, but students must be told they have a right not to answer. In this political climate, many students won’t report their race, Fansmith said. So when schools release data on student demographics, the figures often give only a partial picture of the campus makeup.
Diane Ravitch's blog 