Dear Commons Community,

I did not even consider tuning into this event.  Here are five takeaways courtesy of  The Huffington Post.

Tony

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Former President Donald Trump went on a two-hour tear of lies, exaggerations and fearmongering in a conversation yesterday with billionaire Elon Musk on the X social media platform.

The chat between the two men, one the Republican nominee for president and the other the world’s richest man, is Trump’s latest effort to appeal to voters as Vice President Kamala Harris has continued to gain ground in the early days of her Democratic presidential bid. Musk, who has endorsed Trump, said the event was meant to let people “get a feel” for what the former president is like when he’s having a casual conversation.

“It’s hard to catch a vibe when people don’t talk in a normal way,” Musk said.

Here are five notable moments from their conversation.

Trump repeated his lies about a migrant crisis on the southern border.

The former president shared familiar attacks against migrants who cross the U.S. border with Mexico, describing many of them as “rapists,” “murderers” and “criminals” while claiming countries such as Venezuela were emptying their jails to ship people to the United States.

There is no evidence to support those claims. In fact, recent research shows that immigrants are much less likely to be incarcerated than people who were born in the U.S. Other studies show that undocumented migration does not increase violent crime.

Trump also attempted to link the surge in migration to Harris, echoing Republican claims that she was the Biden administration’s “border czar.” She was tasked with investigating the root causes of the immigration wave, but claims about an all-encompassing role are exaggerations.

Trump bragged about his relationships with Kim Jong Un, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.

At one point, Musk congratulated Trump for his “epic tweets” during his administration, including when the former president called North Korean leader Kim Jong Un “rocket man.”

“I know Putin, I know President Xi, I know Kim Jong Un of North Korea. I know every one of them,” Trump said. “I’m not saying anything good or bad. They’re at the top of their game. They’re tough, they’re smart, they’re vicious, and they’re going to protect their country. Whether they love their country, they probably do. It’s just a different form of love, but they’re going to protect their country.”

Trump was the first president to meet with Kim, a decision critics said lended legitimacy to Kim’s authoritarian regime on an international stage.

Musk said critics shouldn’t ‘vilify’ the oil and gas industry.

Musk, whose mammoth fortune is largely tied to his electric vehicle company, said the world should “lean in the direction of sustainability” but not vilify fossil fuels because they’re needed to keep the world moving.

“I’m pro-environment, but I’m not against, I don’t think we should vilify the oil and gas industry,” Musk said.

Trump, for his part, made fun of those concerned about climate change and touted his efforts to open up a critical wildlife refuge in Alaska to oil and gas exploration during his administration. (President Joe Biden rolled back those plans.)

Trump is still obsessed with crowd sizes.

Trump repeatedly mentioned the sizes of his various audiences throughout the conversation. At one point he claimed that “60 million” people were listening to the livestream on Monday night, even though the count on X indicated 1.3 million listeners at its peak.

He also described the July 13 assassination attempt at a rally near Butler, Pennsylvania, saying he had a “massive crowd” there. The size of the event, he said, made him worry how many people could have been killed. A bystander was fatally shot.

Trump sounded odd for a large portion of the call.

The former president sounded like he was slurring his words for a large portion of the conversation, although it’s unclear if the audio was to blame. Video of Trump speaking that was shared by an X employee appeared to show similar issues.

Dear Commons Community,

A judge ruled yesterday that independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. falsely claimed a New York residence on nominating petitions, invalidating the documents he needs to appear on the ballot in the state.

The ruling from Justice Christina Ryba after a short trial in state court is expected to be appealed. If upheld, it could open the door to challenges in other states where Kennedy used the address in New York City’s northern suburbs to gather signatures.

The lawsuit backed by a Democrat-aligned political action committee claims Kennedy’s state nominating petition falsely listed a residence in well-to-do Katonah, while he actually has lived in the Los Angeles area since 2014, when he married “Curb Your Enthusiasm” actor Cheryl Hines.

Kennedy argued during the trial that he has lifelong ties to New York and intends to move back.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Associated Press analyzes the state of American higher education this morning focusing on the dire situation that many colleges are facing in a period of declining enrollment and fiscal austerity. It is a painful story that is playing itself out in one college after another. There is also little sunshine for many small colleges both private and public that are heavily invested in undergraduate programs and are tuition-driven.

Below is the entire article.

Tony

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The Associated Press

“US colleges are cutting majors and slashing programs after years of putting it off”

By  Heather Hollingsworth

Updated 12:01 AM EDT, August 11, 2024

Christina Westman dreamed of working with Parkinson’s disease and stroke patients as a music therapist when she started studying at St. Cloud State University.

But her schooling was upended in May when administrators at the Minnesota college announced a plan to eliminate its music department as it slashes 42 degree programs and 50 minors.

It’s part of a wave of program cuts in recent months, as U.S. colleges large and small try to make ends meet. Among their budget challenges: Federal COVID relief money is now gone, operational costs are rising and fewer high school graduates are going straight to college.

The cuts mean more than just savings, or even job losses. Often, they create turmoil for students who chose a campus because of certain degree programs and then wrote checks or signed up for student loans.

“For me, it’s really been anxiety-ridden,” said Westman, 23, as she began the effort that ultimately led her to transfer to Augsburg University in Minneapolis. “It’s just the fear of the unknown.”

At St. Cloud State, most students will be able to finish their degrees before cuts kick in, but Westman’s music therapy major was a new one that hadn’t officially started. She has spent the past three months in a mad dash to find work in a new city and sublet her apartment in St. Cloud after she had already signed a lease. She was moving into her new apartment Friday.

For years, many colleges held off making cuts, said Larry Lee, who was acting president of St. Cloud State but left last month to lead Blackburn College in Illinois.

College enrollment declined during the pandemic, but officials hoped the figures would recover to pre-COVID levels and had used federal relief money to prop up their budgets in the meantime, he said.

“They were holding on, holding on,” Lee said, noting colleges must now face their new reality.

Higher education made up some ground last fall and in the spring semester, largely as community college enrollment began to rebound, National Student Clearinghouse Research Center data showed.

But the trend for four-year colleges remains worrisome. Even without growing concerns about the cost of college and the long-term burden of student debt, the pool of young adults is shrinking.

Birth rates fell during the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009 and never recovered. Now those smaller classes are preparing to graduate and head off to college.

“It’s very difficult math to overcome,” said Patrick Lane, vice president at the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, a leading authority on student demographics.

Complicating the situation: the federal government’s chaotic overhaul of its financial aid application. Millions of students entered summer break still wondering where they were going to college this fall and how they would pay for it. With jobs still plentiful, although not as much as last year, some experts fear students won’t bother to enroll at all.

“This year going into next fall, it’s going to be bad,” said Katharine Meyer, a fellow in the Governance Studies program for the Brown Center on Education Policy at the nonprofit Brookings Institution. “I think a lot of colleges are really concerned they’re not going to make their enrollment targets.”

Many colleges like St. Cloud State already had started plowing through their budget reserves. The university’s enrollment rose to around 18,300 students in fall 2020 before steadily falling to about 10,000 students in fall 2023.

St. Cloud State’s student population has now stabilized, Lee said, but spending was far too high for the reduced number of students. The college’s budget shortfall totaled $32 million over the past two years, forcing the sweeping cuts.

Some colleges have taken more extreme steps, closing their doors. That happened at the 1,000-student Birmingham-Southern College in Alabama, the 900-student Fontbonne University in Missouri, the 350-student Wells College in New York and the 220-student Goddard College in Vermont.

Cuts, however, appear to be more commonplace. Two of North Carolina’s public universities got the green light last month to eliminate more than a dozen degree programs ranging from ancient Mediterranean studies to physics.

Arkansas State University announced last fall it was phasing out nine programs. Three of the 64 colleges in the State University of New York system have cut programs amid low enrollment and budget woes.

Other schools slashing and phasing out programs include West Virginia University, Drake University in Iowa, the University of Nebraska campus in Kearney, North Dakota State University and, on the other side of the state, Dickinson State University.

Experts say it’s just the beginning. Even schools that aren’t immediately making cuts are reviewing their degree offerings. At Pennsylvania State University, officials are looking for duplicative and under-enrolled academic programs as the number of students shrinks at its branch campuses.

Particularly affected are students in smaller programs and those in the humanities, which now graduate a smaller share of students than 15 years ago.

“It’s a humanitarian disaster for all of the faculty and staff involved, not to mention the students who want to pursue this stuff,” said Bryan Alexander, a Georgetown University senior scholar who has written on higher education. “It’s an open question to what extent colleges and universities can cut their way to sustainability.”

For Terry Vermillion, who just retired after 34 years as a music professor at St. Cloud State, the cuts are hard to watch. The nation’s music programs took a hit during the pandemic, he said, with Zoom band nothing short of “disastrous” for many public school programs.

“We were just unable to really effectively teach music online, so there’s a gap,” he said. “And, you know, we’re just starting to come out of that gap and we’re just starting to rebound a little bit. And then the cuts are coming.”

For St. Cloud State music majors such as Lilly Rhodes, the biggest fear is what will happen as the program is phased out. New students won’t be admitted to the department and her professors will look for new jobs.

“When you suspend the whole music department, it’s awfully difficult to keep ensembles alive,” she said. “There’s no musicians coming in, so when our seniors graduate, they go on, and our ensembles just keep getting smaller and smaller.

“It’s a little difficult to keep going if it’s like this,” she said.

Leah Abucayan/CNN

Dear Commons Community,

Maureen Dowd had a column yesterday entitled, “Trump, by the Numbers,” in which she reviews Trump’s obsession with winning, crowds, and numbers.  She also segues into his problems dealing with Kamala Harris as an opponent in the presidential race and comments:

“He is clearly befuddled by someone with brown skin who has come not to hurt Americans, but to save them from Donald Trump; someone who is not scary, as he is, but joyful, not threatening but thrilling.

And, in Trump’s worst nightmare, this dark-skinned someone is attracting huge adoring, dancing, laughing crowds.”

YES!

Her entire column is below.

Tony

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The New York Times

“Trump, by the Numbers”

By Maureen Dowd

Aug. 10, 2024

Dear Commons Community,

Former President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign said yesterday that it has been hacked and suggested Iranian actors were involved in stealing and distributing sensitive internal documents.

The campaign provided no specific evidence of Iran’s involvement, but the claim comes a day after Microsoft issued a report detailing foreign agents’ attempts to interfere in the U.S. campaign in 2024.  As reported by The Associated Press.

It cited an instance of an Iranian military intelligence unit in June sending “a spear-phishing email to a high-ranking official of a presidential campaign from a compromised email account of a former senior advisor.”

Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung blamed the hack on “foreign sources hostile to the United States.” A spokesperson for the National Security Council said in a statement that it takes any report of improper foreign interference “extremely seriously” and condemns any government or entity that attempts to undermine confidence in U.S. democratic institutions, but said it deferred to the Justice Department on this matter.

Iran’s mission to the United Nations, when asked about the claim of the Trump campaign, denied being involved. “We do not accord any credence to such reports,” the mission told The Associated Press. “The Iranian government neither possesses nor harbors any intent or motive to interfere in the United States presidential election.”

However, Iran long has been suspected of running hacking campaigns targeting its enemies in the Middle East and beyond. Tehran also long has threatened to retaliate against Trump over the 2020 drone strike he ordered that killed prominent Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani.

The U.S. Justice Department this past week unsealed criminal charges against a Pakistani national with ties to Iran alleged to have plotted assassination attempts against political figures in the United States, including potentially Trump, and to have sought to hire purported hitmen who were actually undercover law enforcement officials. Court documents in that case pointedly noted a desire by Iran to conduct operations against perceived enemies of the regime and to avenge the killing of Soleimani.

Politico first reported Saturday on the hack. The outlet reported that it began receiving emails on July 22 from an anonymous account. The source — an AOL email account identified only as “Robert” — passed along what appeared to be a research dossier the campaign had apparently done on the Republican vice presidential nominee, Ohio Sen. JD Vance. The document was dated Feb. 23, almost five months before Trump selected Vance as his running mate.

“These documents were obtained illegally” and “intended to interfere with the 2024 election and sow chaos throughout our Democratic process,” Cheung said.

He pointed to the Microsoft report issued Friday and its conclusions that “Iranian hackers broke into the account of a ‘high ranking official’ on the U.S. presidential campaign in June 2024, which coincides with the close timing of President Trump’s selection of a vice presidential nominee.”

“The Iranians know that President Trump will stop their reign of terror just like he did in his first four years in the White House,” Cheung said, adding a warning that “any media or news outlet reprinting documents or internal communications are doing the bidding of America’s enemies and doing exactly what they want.”

Cheung did not immediately respond to questions about the campaign’s interactions with Microsoft on the matter. Microsoft said Saturday it had no comment beyond its blog post and Friday report.

In that report, Microsoft stated that “foreign malign influence concerning the 2024 US election started off slowly but has steadily picked up pace over the last six months due initially to Russian operations, but more recently from Iranian activity.”

The analysis continued: “Iranian cyber-enabled influence operations have been a consistent feature of at least the last three U.S. election cycles. Iran’s operations have been notable and distinguishable from Russian campaigns for appearing later in the election season and employing cyberattacks more geared toward election conduct than swaying voters.”

“Recent activity suggests the Iranian regime — along with the Kremlin — may be equally engaged in election 2024,” Microsoft concluded.

Specifically, the report detailed that in June 2024, an Iranian military intelligence unit, Mint Sandstorm, sent a phishing email to an American presidential campaign via the compromised account of a former adviser.

“The phishing email contained a fake forward with a hyperlink that directs traffic through an actor-controlled domain before redirecting to the listed domain,” the report states.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

David Dempsey, a Donald Trump supporter who stood in front of a gallows and spoke of his desire to hang Democratic politicians before he assaulted numerous police officers during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison on Friday.

It’s the second-longest sentence handed out in a Jan. 6 case to date.

Prosecutors had sought more than 21 years (262 months) for David Dempsey, saying he “viciously” assaulted law enforcement officers at the lower west tunnel of the Capitol, where some of the worst violence took place that day.

According to prosecutors, Dempsey climbed over fellow rioters “like human scaffolding” and used “his hands, feet, flag poles, crutches, pepper spray, broken pieces of furniture, and anything else he could get his hands on” as weapons against police officers. As reported by NBC News.

“Dempsey was one of the most violent rioters, during one of the most violent stretches of time, at the scene of the most violent confrontations at the Capitol on January 6, 2021,” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memo.

The 20-year sentence was imposed by Senior U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, a Ronald Reagan appointee who has spoken out about the “preposterous” rhetoric some Republicans have used as they attempt to “rewrite history” about the Jan. 6 attack. Lamberth has warned that “such meritless justifications of criminal activity” from politicians “could presage further danger to our country.”

Echoing his language about the “distortions and outright falsehoods” that Republican politicians have promoted about Jan. 6, Lamberth said he was concerned that Dempsey had “minimized” his conduct that day and tried to come up with non-factual justifications for his behavior. Lamberth called Dempsey’s behavior “exceptionally egregious” and said Dempsey was “dressed for battle” when he joined the mob trying to stop the peaceful transfer of power after President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.

“You failed, fortunately, for our country,” Lamberth said.

He added that Jan. 6 could have been even worse — “a bloodbath” — had rioters succeeded in their goal of getting to members of Congress who were certifying the presidential election results.

Witnesses in court said that Dempsey, while being led out of court, appeared to flash an “okay” gesture with his fingers that has in recent years become a symbol of white supremacy and far-right causes.

Dempsey assaulted numerous officers on Jan. 6 but pleaded guilty specifically in connection with attacks on Washington Police Detective Phuson Nguyen, whom he hit with “a torrent of pepper spray” just after another rioter compromised Nguyen’s mask, and Washington Police Sgt. Jason Mastony, who was hit so hard with a metal crutch that he collapsed in a daze and was left with a gash in his head, prosecutors wrote.

“Though Dempsey has pled guilty only for his assaults on Detective Nguyen and Sergeant Mastony, his violent assault on other officers defending the Capitol was relentless: swinging pole-like weapons more than 20 times, spraying chemical agents at least three times, hurling objects at officers at least ten times, stomping on the heads of police officers as he perched above them five times, attempting to steal a riot shield and baton, and incessantly hurling threats and insults at police while rallying other rioters to join his onslaught,” prosecutors wrote.

Before he assaulted officers, Dempsey stood in front of a gallows that had been set up near the Capitol, which included a sign that said, “this is art.” Dempsey, known to online sleuths as #FlagGaiterCopHater because of his American flag face covering and his assaults on officers, indicated he thought the gallows should be used to hang politicians he dubbed “worthless cretins” in video cited by prosecutors.

“String all these f—in’ worthless bastards up from the top of those,” he said in the video, pointing to the gallows, “these treelines, the rafters, the rooftops, the statues, I don’t care where they go. String ’em up and string ’em up high. And let everybody know this is what happens when you are a treasonous piece of s— who doesn’t belong in this f—in’ country and has this f—in’ country’s worst objective at heart.”

Dempsey was arrested in connection with the Capitol attack in August 2021 and had previously been charged in 2019 with dousing demonstrators in California with bear spray while he wore a “Make America Great Again” hat; he pleaded no contest in that case. He pleaded guilty in his Capitol attack case on Jan. 4.

Dempsey, who prosecutors say is a former construction worker and fast-food employee with a “very significant history of arrests and convictions,” was identified with the help of online sleuths who have aided the FBI in hundreds of cases against Jan. 6 rioters. Federal prosecutors say that in addition to assaulting anti-Trump protesters with bear spray in 2019, resulting in a two-year suspended sentence, he previously assaulted a counterprotester with a skateboard in a separate incident in 2019, used the same skateboard to assault another person at a political protest in 2020 and hit a person with a metal bat during another 2020 protest.

More than 1,400 people have been arrested in connection with the Jan. 6 attack, and prosecutors have secured more than 1,000 convictions. Hundreds of defendants have received probationary sentences, but more than 560 defendants have been sentenced to periods of incarceration ranging from a few days behind bars to 22 years in federal prison.

Justice served!

Tony

Photo:  Brendan Smialowski – Getty Images.

Dear Commons Community,

President Joe Biden, who has long said he ran for the White House in 2020 due to his alarm about former President Donald Trump, decided to exit the 2024 presidential race last month. He says his decision, in part, was driven by his belief that he needed to keep the nation’s focus on Trump and unite the Democratic Party ahead of the November election.

In an interview with “CBS News Sunday Morning,” airing tomorrow, Mr. Biden told CBS News chief election and campaign correspondent Robert Costa more about his historic decision not to seek reelection, echoing his previous statement that he would serve as a transitional figure in American presidential politics.

“When I ran the first time, I thought of myself as being a transition president,” Mr. Biden, 81, told Costa. “I can’t even say how old I am – it’s hard for me to get it out of my mouth.”

Biden expressed support for Vice President Kamala Harris, who is set to be nominated as the Democrats’ standard-bearer at the party’s national convention in Chicago this month.

“We must, we must, we must defeat Trump,” Biden said in the interview, which took place in the Treaty Room in the White House residence.

“Although it’s a great honor to be a president, I think I have an obligation to the country to do what I– most important thing you can do. And that is — we must, we must, we must defeat Trump,” he said.

Mr. Biden announced he was exiting the 2024 race and endorsed Harris as the Democratic Party’s nominee on Sunday, July 21 — nearly a month after his debate against Trump, which concerned some of his Democratic colleagues and prompted dozens to call for him to withdraw.

In an Oval Office address on July 24, Mr. Biden said “nothing, nothing, can come in the way of saving our democracy,” including his ambition for a second term.

A CBS News poll released on Aug. 4 showed Harris gaining momentum with a 1-point edge nationally and a tie across the battleground states. Mr. Biden was down by 5 points when he left the race.

Harris is hoping Tim Walz, the upbeat two-term governor of Minnesota, will give her Democratic ticket another boost and help her win over pivotal battleground states.

America thanks you, President Biden, for putting the country ahead of ambition!

Tony

Tim Walz Teaching Geography.  Courtesy of Fox 32.

Dear Commons Community,

Politico had an article yesterday entitled, “Tim Walz Was My Teacher 20 Years Ago. Here’s What I Learned,” based on an interview with one of his former students.  It is an insightful look at Walz in his earlier career.  Below is the entire article.

Tony

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Politico

Tim Walz Was My Teacher 20 Years Ago. Here’s What I Learned

By Catherine Kim

08/08/2024 12:00 PM EDT

Democratic vice presidential candidate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz speaks at a campaign rally on Aug. 7, in Romulus, Michigan, before Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris. | Julia Nikhinson/AP

Most of the nation might have just learned of the existence of Tim Walz, but Sam Hurd has known the vice presidential candidate for nearly two decades — since Walz was Hurd’s junior year geography teacher at Mankato West High School from 2005-2006.

Walz has made his life as a teacher a selling point in his political career, including in the jockeying ahead of being picked to be Kamala Harris’ running mate. To get a sense of what he was really like as a teacher, POLITICO Magazine reached out to Hurd, now 35, and himself a middle school teacher.

In an interview, Hurd recalled that Walz didn’t overload students with homework, but challenged them in other ways — forcing them to wrestle with issues like the Cambodian genocide and how the French government treated its Muslim citizens.

And Walz was never sitting, always circling the room.

“Wearing a tie and sweating profusely and just working his ass off as a teacher,” is how Hurd remembered him.

Walz left such an impression on Hurd that the former student, who now lives in Baltimore, made the drive up to Philadelphia on Tuesday to see the very first Harris-Walz rally.

He never made it inside the packed venue, but as he waited in line, word spread that he was a former Walz student, and he was challenged by Pennsylvanians who had been rooting for Gov. Josh Shapiro to be Harris’ vice president choice instead. All he had to do, Hurd said, was point to Walz’s charisma: “As a teacher 20 years ago, that’s who he was.”

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

What’s the first word that comes to mind when you look back on Tim Walz as a teacher?

Passionate and service-oriented. I think those are the two things that pop for me.

Was he known as a tough grader? Was he a strict teacher, or someone you knew would give an extension?

I only had him for a year, and it was actually his last year before running for Congress. And the thing that I would always hear about Walz was that he’s not really a homework guy, so long as you could reasonably show up, participate in discussions and just have thoughts that you could articulate. He wasn’t really a lecturer. He valued the thoughts and experiences of kids. He was known for treating kids quite a bit like adults in that way.

On Fridays, we would focus on current events and he would have this rotating group of students do a little bit of their own research and bring in about two or three minutes of context. And then he would open the floor and the rest of class would be an active discussion. I remember him grading us quite a bit on our ability to look something up, give a little bit of context about it, and try to come up with questions that would get our classmates to talk and think and care about it.

Do you remember any of the current events that sparked deep conversations or debates?

There was one that stood out, now that I look back on it in 20 years. We were reading about France’s attempts to come up with social policies around Muslim women covering themselves in certain public places, and whether or not we believe that to be a Western ideal or an example of this demand for democracy gone a little bit too far, that’s maybe not as respectful as we want it to be of cultural differences and identity.

I was doing a lot of listening that day. Walz did a really good job of making kids feel that cognitive dissonance of what it’s like to grow up in the most powerful country in the world, but also these things that you would never consider as a white middle-class kid in southern Minnesota.

Did Walz participate in the debates or just moderate?

He was mostly a moderator. He could flavor things with his own experience and people that he talked to, but he was infinitely more interested in getting kids to talk to each other.

Walz and Vance trade jabs on the trail in Philadelphia

Do you remember what his classroom looked like? Any notable items on his desk or walls?

His room featured lots of flags and photos. He was one of many teachers in my school who felt compelled to show kids that there’s a really big world out there. He had a few hand-carved or hand-painted gifts that he’d received in the past. He spent considerable time around China, so I think he had some pottery and some paintings.

Somewhere toward the whiteboard, at eye level, he had a giant photograph of Angkor Wat in Cambodia. When I later went to Cambodia, I thought of him, and remembered seeing this incredibly exotic, beautiful place. [As a student,] I was like, “There’s no way I’m going to get there. I’m just a kid in high school from Minnesota.” That was just another one of those subtle things that if you were in a Walz classroom, you kind of felt like you could do those things. He made students feel like that was within their reach no matter who they were.

There wasn’t anything special as to how his room was organized. But we would sit and face each other in a circle when it came to discussions, and that was cool. That was something that I didn’t have a lot of practice within my other classes.

Tim Walz seems to have an endless stockpile of dad jokes. Do you remember any jokes he’d tell to the class?

He clearly loves working with kids, and has this relentless energy.

There’s something humorous about him showing up every day wearing a tie and sweating profusely and just working his ass off as a teacher. I don’t think he ever once sat behind his desk and did anything. He was always circling the room. He was always sitting on a desk and talking to you. There was no “Now it’s time for work. It must be quiet. I’m going to sit behind my desk now, and you guys are just going to be working away at things.”

I don’t think he was as funny as he was irreverent in weird teacher ways, and yet we all knew this resume that he had, and we’re like, “Wow, he’s a football coach. Wow, he’s a vet.”

There’s not really anything that seemed to faze him. That was sort of a disarming thing about him — his life experience made you feel more comfortable. He gives you a sense of security because you can just tell that he’s encountered a lot of different people in his life. He’s a pretty calm, collected dude. I think we all probably treated him in a slightly different way than all of our other teachers because of it.

Walz leans into folksy ‘dad’ image on the campaign trail

He was the picture of humble, masculine service energy in our school. There was a student who, I want to say in 2002 or 2003, came out to Walz, and that was really the only adult or maybe teacher that they had come out to before as gay. And Walz was pretty determined to, if that student was up for it, start a Gay-Straight Alliance at our school. Walz, I think it wasn’t lost on him — the idea of him being a football coach and military guy. To him, that’s just what you do for kids.

You mentioned that you were a student volunteer for Walz when he was running for Congress. What was that like?

There were probably — in terms of student volunteers — about a dozen of us or maybe a couple dozen of us across different grades that were pretty hardcore in terms of going to parades, phone banking, doing all the grassroots kind of stuff.

I remember Election Day in 2006, I was excused for the day to go canvass around town and drive people to the polls. It was the first time, and really the only time that I’ve ever done something like that.

What was it like to celebrate Walz’s victory with him?

On Election Night, the party for Democrats was at this big hotel downtown in our hometown, and it all happened pretty late. It was a Tuesday night — a school night — but my dad was there so it was all good. Me and my friends and Walz’s circle of student volunteers all got to be backstage a little bit. It was probably only 10 p.m. but it felt like midnight to me.

When he won, Walz was like, “Guys, we’re going to run out there together and come up on the stage.” When he ran up to the podium, he asked us to come up. And he just circled everybody up and jumped up and down for a little bit. I remember him just saying, “We did it. We did it.” It was just hugs and jumping and screaming long before there was any kind of ladies and gentlemen acceptance speech.

Tim Walz is swarmed by his high school students, who worked on his campaign, when they learned Walz won Minnesota’s First District for the U.S. Congress in November 2006, in Mankato, Minn. | Christina Paolucci/Rochester Post Bulletin

Some of Walz’s past assignments have gone viral — such as when his class basically predicted the Rwandan genocide a year before it occurred. Do you remember any unorthodox projects or lessons in his classroom?

I remember him being one of the few adults who would pretty openly talk about genocide. He spoke a lot about genocide in Cambodia. Some of these terms that he would throw out, like “killing fields” — I remember on a trip to Cambodia, I got to go to Phnom Penh and see the prisons and killing fields. And I thought, “Oh my God, that’s what Walz was talking about.”

I remember starting that discussion by getting inside the heads of lawmakers and politicians and dictators. I think we did a little bit of reading on Pol Pot himself, because to us that was such a faraway place as a 15- or 16-year-old. I think the hook was just trying to get inside the heads of dictators and leaders who overstepped their boundaries.

You are now a teacher yourself. Is that at all because of Walz? Has he shaped your teaching style?

He’s certainly one part of it. When I think about the things in my current teaching that are all kind of credited to Walz — a lot of the warm-up games and activities in my classroom are definitely geared toward the world a little bit. When we have free time, I try to encourage kids to think about what’s going on in the world, and think about just how big the world is.

Dear Commons Community,

Former President Donald Trump spoke for an hour in a rambling press conference yesterday, making dozens of false and outrageous claims in an effort to wrest the spotlight away from Vice President Kamala Harris’ surging 2024 presidential campaign.

Addressing reporters at Mar-a-Lago, the GOP presidential nominee insisted his campaign was drawing large, enthusiastic crowds on the campaign trail (Harris’ rallies have been attracting tens of thousands this week) and claimed that the vice president wasn’t “smart enough” to take questions from the media as he was doing.  Here is an excerpt courtesy of The Huffington Post.

“She’s not smart enough to do a news conference,” Trump said.

Trump also claimed he was willing to do three debates with Harris: Sept. 4 with Fox News, Sept. 10 with ABC News, and Sept. 25 with NBC News (the announcement required a clarification from Trump’s campaign regarding the host networks). Both campaigns had agreed to the Sept. 10 debate when President Joe Biden was still the presumptive nominee

“The honeymoon period is gonna end,” Trump said of Harris’ standing in the race. “She’s got a little period, the convention is coming up […] Everything she’s touched has turned bad.”

It was the first time Trump took questions from reporters since Harris announced Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate on Tuesday. Trump called both Harris and Walz too liberal and dangerous to run the country.

“She picked a radical left man,” Trump said. “He’s got things done that he’s … he has positions that are just not, it’s not even possible to believe that they exist. He’s going for things that nobody’s ever even heard of, heavy into the transgender world, heavy into lots of different worlds having to do with safety. He doesn’t want to have borders. He doesn’t want to have walls. He doesn’t want to have any form of safety for our country.”

Trump said he wouldn’t change anything about his campaign or attacks now that he’s running against Harris. “I haven’t recalibrated strategy at all. It’s the same policies — open borders and crime. I think she’s worse than Biden,” he said.

During his press conference, which ran just short of 90 minutes, Trump compared the crowd size at the White House on Jan. 6, 2021, to the audience for Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 “I Have A Dream” speech on the National Mall, where about 260,000 people showed up.

“Nobody’s spoken to crowds bigger than me,” he said. “If you look at Martin Luther King, when he did his great speech, and you look at ours, same real estate, same everything, same number of people, if not, we had more. And they said he had a million people, but I had 25,000 people.”

Trump also falsely claimed that “nobody died” during the attack on the Capitol by hundreds of his supporters seeking to overturn the 2020 election he had lost. At least seven people died in connection to the riot, including several Trump supporters.

Asked why Harris was doing well in the polls, Trump said it is because “she’s a woman” who represents “certain groups of people.” He predicted her support would drop after “people find out about her.”

Trump also complained about having to face Harris in the 2024 race instead of Biden, who dropped out last month after his poor debate performance against the former president. Harris, Trump baselessly alleged, “was working with the people that wanted him out.”

Dozens of Democrats publicly called for Biden to pass the torch to a younger candidate, but there’s no evidence Harris was working behind the scenes to push out her boss.

I watched most of Trump’s press conference.  I found it a sad display for a presidential candidate – full of lies, fear mongering, and negativity.  Also, the conference was poorly planned since viewers could not hear any of the questions.

Tony

Click on to enlarge.   M. Hersher/Science.

Dear Commons Community,

This week’s Science has an essay that revisits the legacy of Western science and research and its colonial influences. Those of us in academia who engage in research need to be reminded of the theme of this essay. Here is an excerpt.  

“Science—meaning the Western tradition of testing hypotheses and writing research papers—has its roots in the Enlightenment of 17th and 18th century Europe. When this new way to understand the natural world emerged, colonialism was already well established, with a handful of nations in Western Europe exerting political and economic control over distant lands and peoples. Eventually, just eight nations (the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, and Italy)  claimed more than half the globe.

The colonizers enslaved millions and wrung precious metals, spices, and other wealth from colonies. They also extracted specimens that form the foundation of much of modern biology. The rich natural history collections in London and Paris were born of empire. Charles Darwin’s revolutionary ideas about evolution sprang from travel aboard the HMS Beagle, a voyage intended to survey South America’s coast to further British interests.

The scientific enterprise both fueled, and was fueled by, the colonial one. For example, 19th century European scientists isolated the antimalarial compound quinine from the bark of the cinchona tree, building on what local people in Peru already knew about its medicinal properties. Europeans then used quinine to boost the health of colonial troops.

Today, the smudged fingerprints of colonization still linger on the scientific enterprise. The lingua franca of research is English. Top scientists—those with the most cited papers—disproportionately work in former colonizing nations or in a few former colonies including the United States. For decades, researchers have benefited from dropping in on former colonies to study their flora, fauna, and sometimes people, often with little involvement by local scientists and little credit to their work or intellectual property. Such “parachute science” is still with us: In 2019, for example, a study found that fewer than half of papers on infectious diseases in Africa had an African first author. Many paleontology papers from the past 34 years have no authors at all from the nations where fossils were unearthed. The nomenclature is rife with names from a racist colonial past, and even recently bestowed names disproportionately honor people from the Global North.

Scientists around the world are slowly beginning to recognize— and rectify—this colonial legacy. They are repatriating specimens, building equitable partnerships, and expanding access to the latest technologies. Researchers in once-colonized nations are taking control, using local funding and talent to explore questions they care about. Indigenous scientists are demanding respect for their traditional knowledge.”

The article concludes:

“Colonialism was an active force for 500 years, and shifting the axis of scientific influence won’t happen overnight. It will require scientists in the Global North to commit to decolonizing their work and for those in the Global South to claim their rightful places in research.”

Tony