Dear Commons Community,

The above was sent to me by my colleague, Patsy Moskal. 

We don’t have Dwight D. Eisenhowers in our government anymore!

Tony

Geoffrey Hinton. © Geoff Robins/AFP via Getty Images

Dear Commons Community,

The long-term impact of artificial intelligence is one of the most hotly debated topics in Silicon Valley. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang predicts that every job will be transformed—and likely lead to a 4-day workweek. Other tech titans go even further: Bill Gates says humans may soon not be needed “for most things,” and Elon Musk believes most humans won’t have to work at all in “less than 20 years.”  As reported by Fortune.

While those predictions might sound extreme, they’re not just plausible, they’re likely, said Geoffrey Hinton—Nobel Laureate and computer scientist widely known as the “Godfather of AI.” The transition, he warned, could trigger a sweeping economic reshuffling that leaves millions of workers behind.

“It seems very likely to a large number of people that we will get massive unemployment caused by AI,” Hinton said in a recent discussion with Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) at Georgetown University.

“And if you ask where are these guys going to get the roughly trillion dollars they’re investing in data centers and chips… one of the main sources of money is going to be by selling people AI that will do the work of workers much cheaper. And so these guys are really betting on AI replacing a lot of workers.”

Hinton has grown increasingly vocal about what he sees as Big Tech’s misplaced priorities. The industry, he recently told Fortune, is driven less by scientific progress than by short-term profits—fueling a push to replace human workers with cheaper AI systems.

Musk foresees a future where work isn’t mandatory by 2045

His warnings come as the economics of AI face new scrutiny. OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, isn’t expected to turn a profit until at least 2030 and may need more than $207 billion to support its growth, according to HSBC estimations.

The future of AI is behind a fog of war

Hinton’s journey from AI insider to outspoken critic underscores the high stakes of the technology he helped create. After quitting his Google job in 2023 to speak more freely about AI’s risks, he has become one of the most prominent skeptics. Last year, his pioneering work in machine learning earned him the Nobel Prize.

He also acknowledged that AI will create new jobs, as many tech leaders predict. But he added that he does not expect the number of new roles to come close to the number eliminated. Even so, he cautioned that all predictions—including his own—should be treated with heavy skepticism. 

“Trying to predict the future of it is going to be very difficult,” he told Sanders. “It’s a bit like when you drive in fog. You can see clearly for 100 yards and at 200 yards you can see nothing. Well, we can see clearly for a year or two, but 10 years out, we have no idea what’s going to happen.”

What is clear, however, is that AI isn’t going away, and experts say workers who adapt—and use the technology to amplify their skills—will stand the best chance of navigating the coming upheaval.

Heed Hinton’s words!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Darío Gil and Kathryn A. Moler have an editorial essay in today’s edition of Science entitled, “Accelerating Science with AI.”  Darío Gil is the undersecretary for Science, US Department of Energy, Washington, DC, and director of the Genesis Mission.  Kathryn A. Moler is the Marvin Chodorow Professor in the Departments of Applied Physics, Physics, and Energy Science and Engineering, Stanford University. Here is the entire essay.

By successfully integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into research workflows, researchers could substantially increase scientific productivity. Last week’s announcement from the White House of the US Genesis Mission sparks a critical conversation about how to realize this potential. That discussion should center on two parallel efforts—creating the integrated infrastructure, from data and algorithms to hardware and agentic control, needed to apply AI to speed up research; and determining the policies and resources that empower scientists to fuel the feedback loop of scientific advancement and AI innovation.

Success begins with asking the right scientific questions—identifying problems that may offer transformative breakthroughs and drive advances in AI methods and human-AI teaming, thereby inspiring broader acceleration of science. For example, in fusion energy, this means using AI to contain plasma that is hotter than the Sun by predicting plasma instabilities for real-time control. In molecules and materials, it means developing predictive models of dynamics and functionality for new discoveries. And on the quantum frontier, it means accelerating algorithm development to simulate nature and solve currently intractable problems. 

Success will also depend on the data that fuel AI models. Consider the Protein Data Bank, which provided the dataset for protein structure prediction. That success was the culmination of decades of work and investment in the experimental tools, like advanced light sources, needed to generate data, and the open-access repository required to share the information. Major instruments like the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, the Advanced Photon Source, and the Large Hadron Collider provide a strong foundation with abundant, relatively structured data. The challenge is far more difficult for the vast, messy world of heterogeneous data across the research and development (R&D) enterprise, where varying standards and incomplete metadata create barriers to discovery. Transforming isolated datasets into a unified engine for discovery calls for a concerted effort by scientists, federal agencies, and other stakeholders to prepare existing data for AI use and establish standards so that future data are born accessible and AI ready.

The next generation of scientists will need computing infrastructure that unites exascale high-performance computing, specialized AI, quantum supercomputers, secure networks, on-demand cloud computing power, and storage for massive data sets. Connections to devices, such as sensors and controllers, and specialized AI algorithms on such devices will enable real-time data acquisition and control of live experiments.

The value of accelerating science with AI could extend to the entire economy.

Going beyond general-purpose, language-based AI, specialized models will combine the learning capabilities of AI with the physical predictive capabilities of traditional simulations, grounded in the natural laws of physics and chemistry. Crucially, these models will augment, not replace, trusted scientific models, including checkpoints to validate or correct AI-generated results against known physical models and real-world data. Coupling hybrid models with scientific agents—AI systems that autonomously coordinate some steps of research, but under human direction—promises to compress discovery timelines, as data from each AI analysis feed a self-reinforcing cycle of improvement.

For AI to be a true partner in science, scientists must use it to produce verifiable results, with data, methodologies, code, and outputs available for public scrutiny. This requires researchers, institutions, academic journals, and funding agencies to foster open-source models, standardized tools, and ready-to-use data.

Accelerating science with AI will depend on both public and private funding. The total annual investment in US R&D is a trillion dollars, an amount that is often underappreciated. Although the federal government plays an indispensable role in catalyzing fundamental research, supporting research-based education, and enabling long-term, high-risk projects, more than 70% of this collective support comes from the private sector. Strategic public-private partnerships can amplify the value of the government’s foundational role with the private sector’s resources and capacity for innovation. Now is the time to pilot new forms of partnerships, such as joint investments in computing infrastructure, frameworks for data sharing, and collaborations focused on problems that develop new methods of AI-enabled discovery.

The value of accelerating science with AI could extend to the entire economy. R&D, currently at 3.5% of the US gross domestic product, is a powerful economic engine, generating returns far exceeding its cost. By empowering researchers across all disciplines and institutions to accelerate science and engineering, AI could increase the productivity and impact of research, boost innovation, fuel economic growth, and improve people’s lives. That is the ultimate promise of this new era of discovery.

Excellent commentary.

Tony

Faculty, staff, students, and alumni rally at the University of Virginia to oppose President Trump’s proposed “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.” Courtesy of Walter Heinecke.

Dear Commons Community,

“Nope. Nothing. Nada.” “Not at all.” “NO”. “NO.” “NO!”

Those are just some of the more than 2,000 responses the University of Virginia received in October to a survey question asking community members whether there were parts of the Trump administration’s “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” that they supported.

Those curt replies were broadly representative of the responses as a whole. Faculty, staff, and students who answered the survey expressed overwhelming opposition to the compact, which would require UVa to make substantial changes in enrollment, hiring, grading, and more in exchange for preferential access to federal funding. UVa was one of the initial nine universities presented with a draft of the compact. No college has officially signed on.

The feedback, obtained by The Chronicle of Higher Education via a public-records request, illuminates the extent to which large swaths of the campus community balked at the idea of their university signing not just the controversial compact — but any agreement with the federal government. UVa eventually rejected the compact, but days later, it struck a deal with the Department of Justice to pause remaining investigations into its compliance with civil-rights law as long as it pledged to follow the government’s understanding of those laws. Many faculty members and several lawmakers have expressed concerns with that decision.

“It felt like a big win that the university took these comments into consideration as they made their decision about the draft compact,” said Jeri K. Seidman, an associate professor in the school of commerce and chair of the faculty senate. “But then it’s not clear that they actually did, because the same concerns would apply to the voluntary resolution agreement as well.”

In a statement to The Chronicle, Brian Coy, a spokesman for UVa, said the compact and the DOJ agreement were very different situations.

“While the compact was an offer institutions could either accept or reject, a government investigation is an accusation of possible wrongdoing, and it is not an option to simply refuse to resolve the matter somehow,” Coy wrote.

The survey also asked respondents to name provisions of the compact they opposed, and responses reveal how developments at the flagship, a central target in the Trump administration’s crusade against elite higher education, have weighed on its students, faculty, and staff.

Dozens of comments make reference to the June resignation of former university president James E. Ryan amid a DOJ probe of the university’s diversity, equity, and inclusion practices. Ryan, the board chair, and DOJ lawyers have offered conflicting accounts of what happened over the summer and who was primarily responsible, with Ryan suggesting the exit was engineered by rogue board members. But at the time of the compact survey, that complex portrait had not yet emerged, and many community members saw his departure as entirely the result of federal interference.

“Do not ruin the University of Virginia more than you already have,” one person wrote. “The BOV allowing the Trump Administration to run Jim Ryan off Grounds was an absolute embarrassment. Stop caving in to this bully — show some backbone and do the right thing this time.”

Many commenters took issue with the “principle” of the compact, saying that it essentially amounted to a loyalty oath, and didn’t go into detail evaluating its contents. Others took apart the compact point-by-point in hundreds of words, expressing fears for academic freedom, free speech, and inclusion. Some wrote that while they supported aspects of the compact — such as tuition freezes and financial transparency — they didn’t like the idea of handing over the university’s autonomy.

Wholehearted embraces of the draft compact were uncommon.

Bonnie Gordon, a professor in the music department, told The Chronicle that while one may argue people are more likely to respond to something they don’t like, a “pretty overwhelming no” emerges from the data.

“What people do not want is federal overreach,” Gordon added.

Some responses were personal. A respondent who said they were a first-year student said that if UVa signed “any variation” of the compact they would strongly consider transferring.

“This compact would make UVa a different university then the one I committed to attending last April and I believe among many things the quality of education I would receive here would not be as strong if UVa is to sign this compact,” they wrote.

The F-word is used nine times, including in a comment by someone who said they would transfer and would tell everyone they know to transfer if UVa signs the agreement. “I will harbor nothing but ill will for this Board and this school,” they wrote.

There were nearly 200 references to UVa’s founder, Thomas Jefferson, almost all of which were in service of the argument that the compact went against his vision of the university.

“Stand your ground,” one wrote. “You know it’s what Thomas Jefferson would have wanted.”

YES!

Tony

Trump Fights Sleep During Cabinet Meeting on Monday – The New York Times

Dear Commons Community,

George Will, The Washington Post columnist, had a piece on Tuesday entitled, “Trump, Hegseth and a sickening moral slum of an administration.”  Here are excerpts and commentary as reported by Charlie Sykes.

There is a temptation to describe what happened yesterday as somehow a “new low.” Our somnolent, gibbering, incoherent, deeply corrupt President, surrounded by his fawning toadies, unleashed a torrent of dehumanizing racist bile, disinformation, and threats.

But it’s not a new low. It’s the same old low. A scene we’ve seen repeated so often there is a kind of numbness to it. Outrage did not ensue. Sykes wrote earlier this week that all the canaries in the coal mine are dead, departed, and bleeding demised.

During an open cabinet meeting yesterday, Trump called Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., “garbage” and said Somalis should “go back to where they came from.

“I don’t want them in our country. I’ll be honest with you, OK. Somebody will say, ‘Oh, that’s not politically correct.’ I don’t care. I don’t want them in our country. Their country is no good for a reason.”

If we define “news” only as what is novel rather than what is right in front of our eyes, this is not particularly newsworthy. Trump has been attacking racial and ethnic groups for his entire political career: Mexicans, Muslims, Haitians, Afghans, Africans in general, along with migrants from what he memorably called “shithole” countries.

That was not, of course all Trump said. He dismissed concerns about affordability as something that “doesn’t mean anything to anybody”; seemed to double down on his willingness to commit war crimes as part of his fake war on drugs; lied once again about the 2020 election, and blithered on about, well, God knows what.

I mean, really, WTAF (What the Actual F***) was this apparent reference to former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg?

“Under Boot Edge Edge — another grossly incompetent. Get on his bicycle, ride to work. He was just terrible. What they do is they take the fiber optics and they take fiber, try to hook it into copper. And fiber and copper don’t mix. You can’t do it. But people knew that for the last 30 years since they started doing the fiber. And uhhh, they spent billions of dollars and it didn’t work. And you saw that by the helicopter crash. You saw that into the plane. You saw that by a lot of things.”

Meanwhile, he posted a demand that a military tribunal to try Barack Obama for TREASON.

George Will has been the dean of conservative letters, so attention ought to be paid to his latest column on “Trump, Hegseth and a sickening moral slum of an administration” 

Writes Will: “Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth seems to be a war criminal. Without a war. An interesting achievement.”

Indeed, despite the attempts to shift blame, what happened is not a mystery.

No operational necessity justified Hegseth’s de facto order to kill two survivors clinging to the wreckage of one of the supposed drug boats obliterated by U.S. forces near Venezuela. His order was reported by The Post from two sources (“The order was to kill everybody,” one said) and has not been explicitly denied by Hegseth. President Donald Trump says Hegseth told him that he (Hegseth) “said he did not say that.” If Trump is telling the truth about Hegseth, and Hegseth is telling the truth to Trump, it is strange that (per the Post report) the commander of the boat-destroying operation said he ordered the attack on the survivors to comply with Hegseth’s order.

Forty-four days after the survivors were killed, the four-star admiral who headed the U.S. Southern Command announced he would be leaving that position just a year into what is usually a three-year stint. He did not say why. Inferences are, however, permitted.

The killing of the survivors by this moral slum of an administration should nauseate Americans. A nation incapable of shame is dangerous, not least to itself. As the recent “peace plan” for Ukraine demonstrated.

Moral slum indeed!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Online programs in the North Dakota University (UND) System and the nonresident students enrolled in them are key to sustaining the 11-institution system, said the University of North Dakota’s vice provost for strategic programming, analytics and effectiveness.

Jeff Holm said North Dakota has the largest number of public institutions per capita, but the number of people in North Dakota doesn’t make the system sustainable without out-of-state students.  As reported by Government Technology.

“If every student who ever went to a North Dakota high school, whether they graduated or not, enrolled in a North Dakota school, it is not enough to sustain that system,” he said. “So the system has to have some out-of-state students.”

At UND, online students are especially important.

UND reached a record-breaking enrollment of 15,844 this fall semester, though that number fluctuates even after UND releases its census. As of Monday, Nov. 17, UND had 16,155 students, Holm said. Of the official enrollment numbers, 31 percent are taking only face-to-face on-campus courses, 35 percent are taking both face-to-face and online courses and 34 percent are taking only online courses.

The number of students taking online courses has increased since COVID. Comparing the fall semester before COVID to this fall semester, there has been a 60 percent increase in students taking only online courses and an increase of 98 percent in students taking both online and face-to-face courses, Holm said.

This year’s number of on-campus students has been estimated to be a little more than 10,500, UND reported earlier this fall.

State lawmakers have recently started conversations about the importance of online programs. Earlier this month, legislators dug into the amount of subsidizing the state does for online courses, according to a report by the North Dakota Monitor. A presentation by the University System said the state is spending approximately $22 million on online courses for out-of-state students — not including those from Minnesota, Montana or South Dakota — for the most recent two-year budget cycle.

Holm said an interim committee of the Legislature is looking at if the state is providing funding in a way that is maximizing return on investment. The question, he said, is how to bring those students to North Dakota’s workforce.

“What does North Dakota do to let them know, ‘hey, there are opportunities here?'” he said.

Holm raised the idea of partnering with companies. The companies could support online programs, such as an engineering firm supporting the online engineering program, and UND could display some information about the firm in Blackboard, the system UND uses for courses.

Even while living out of state, the tuition online students pay is also important, Holm said. For instance, UND brings in about $16 million a year from out-of-state tuition. For every $1 UND gets from the state, it gets $2 from online, out-of-state tuition. Some online courses also require students to come to campus for a short time, meaning they are staying and spending money in North Dakota. Out-of-state students also add brand awareness, representing UND wherever they live through wearing UND gear, displaying their diploma or talking about the school.

The biggest online program at UND is engineering. It was the first accredited online engineering program in the world, Holm said, and continues to be well known. Other popular online programs include psychology, social work, grad level education programs such as special ed and counseling, as well as master’s level courses in nursing, space studies, social work, business and more.

UND does make an effort to help online students feel like part of the university community, Holm said. Some programs have students on campus for a few weeks as part of their education. There are also online resources for students, such as an online platform for them to work together, talk and ask each other questions.

“We call it a peer-led learning platform,” Holm said. “That, I think, is an important thing to help students feel a part (of campus) and connected.”

UND also tries to stream as many on-campus events as possible for online students to watch. The Office of Student Affairs also holds trivia nights online students can take part in and send out t-shirts to students. Some alumni events held in different cities try to reach out to active online students and welcome them to attend.

UND is a model for public higher education especially those colleges with low in-state student populations.

Tony

Courtesy of Bloomberg.

Dear Commons Community,

Mass layoff notices are climbing to unsettling levels, a new study by Goldman Sachs has found, indicating that the labor market may be shifting away from the “low hire, low fire” phase described by Fed Chair Jerome Powell and toward an all-around weaker employment landscape.

According to a recent analysis by Goldman Sachs study, Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) alerts, which employers must issue before conducting mass layoffs, have been ticking up in recent weeks. Outside of the initial spike which occurred during the pandemic, the bank said these are now at their highest level since 2016. As reported by Newsweek and Bloomberg.

Why It Matters

The labor market has been largely frozen in 2025, with low levels of both hiring and layoffs leading to Powell’s “low hire, low fire” diagnosis in September. This equilibrium has given economists tepid confidence about the country’s prospects given the potential impacts of a surge in job cuts—Mark Zandi of Moody’s previously describing low layoffs as the “firewall” against a full-blown recession.

However, several studies are now showing an acceleration in layoffs, which Goldman views as especially concerning given the currently weak pace of hiring in the U.S

What To Know

In addition to WARN alerts, Goldman’s economists analyzed earnings calls from Russell 3000 firms, finding that “the share of companies mentioning layoffs has increased recently.” In conversations about staffing levels, artificial intelligence has also emerged as a major theme, with “about half of layoff-focused discussions in the last two reporting quarters in the tech sector” including references to the technology.

In reaching its conclusion that there are “growing signs of weakness in the U.S. job market,” Goldman cited the recent report from outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas which revealed that American employers announced 153,074 job cuts in October, up 175 percent from a year prior and a 183 percent increase from September’s figure                                                                               

“This comes as AI adoption, softening consumer and corporate spending, and rising costs drive belt-tightening and hiring freezes,” wrote workplace expert Andy Challenger.

Through October, employers announced 1.1 million cuts, which the firm found, up 65 percent from 664,839 in the first ten months of 2024 and already 44 percent higher than last year’s total of 761,358.

“Year-to-date job cuts are at the highest level since 2020 when 2,304,755 cuts were announced through October,” the report continued.

What People Are Saying

Goldman Sachs economists Manuel Abecasis and Pierfrancesco Mei wrote in the report: “A sustained increase in layoffs would be particularly concerning because the hiring rate for workers is low and it is harder than usual for the unemployed to find jobs.”

Economist Justin Wolfers posted to X this week: “Unemployment has been rising ‘a tenth of a point here, a tenth of a point there.’ That feels small month to month, but as it has added up month over month, we’ve silently shifted from a very tight market toward a noticeably weaker one.”

What Happens Next

Goldman pointed out that actual layoff figures still remain low. According to the most recent report from the Labor Department, 216,000 Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week, down from 222,000 a week prior and below forecasts of 224,000 jobless claims.

However, WARN notices are typically issued 60 days in advance of actual layoffs, and Goldman said that the announcements cited by Challenger, Gray & Christmas are also likely to precede the corresponding cuts by around two months.

This is not good news!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, had an opinion piece yesterday in The Chronicle of Higher Education, entitled, “The Dishonesty of the Northwestern Deal.”  He reviews the deal between Northwestern University and the Trump administration to restore $800 million in research funding by agreeing to pay $75 million to settle an investigation and to revoke a pact it made with pro-Palestinian protesters. He compares the agreement to a robber putting a gun to your head and demanding your wallet.

His conclusion was:

“To escape the Trump administration’s crosshairs, Northwestern sacrificed its freedom to deliberate and determine these matters on its own. I just wish it was honest enough to say so.”

Below is Zimmerman’s  essay.

Tony

—————————————————————————

Let’s suppose a robber puts a gun to your head and demands your wallet. You don’t want to give it to him, but you also don’t have a choice. So you cough up the wallet.

I get that. But don’t tell me that everything is fine now because you’re free to go about your life. We both know that’s not true. And lying about it won’t make it any better.

That’s what Northwestern did last Friday, when it announced a deal with the Trump administration. To restore nearly $800 million in research funding that the White House had frozen, the university revoked a pact it had made with pro-Palestinian protesters in 2024. It also agreed to pay the Trump administration $75 million to settle a federal investigation into the treatment of Jewish students on campus.

Northwestern pledged to abide by speech rules it promulgated after the protests. It promised to survey students about antisemitism on campus and to conduct required antisemitism trainings. And it said its Feinberg School of Medicine would not provide hormonal or surgical interventions to transgender minors.

But here’s the kicker: Northwestern insisted that it has also safeguarded the rights of teachers and students to say and write what they wish. “Preserving Northwestern’s academic freedom and autonomy were hard red lines for the university,” its Office of the President declared, announcing the deal with the Trump administration. “This agreement protects the ability of our faculty and students to study, research, and teach freely and to continue to push the boundaries of discovery.”

Please. In striking a deal with the White House, Northwestern forsook its academic freedom and autonomy. Anyone with two eyes can see that.

Suppose you’re a professor at the medical school who studies gender dysphoria in young people. You’ve found some new evidence suggesting that hormonal or surgical interventions might lower the rate of suicide among this population. Do we think Northwestern will allow you to “push the boundaries of discovery” in your research?

Or let’s imagine you’re a student who takes issue with the university’s new speech code, which restricts protests to designated areas. The university leadership considers your critique and decides to allow peaceful demonstrations anywhere on campus. Under the pact with the Trump administration, however, the speech rules can’t be changed without White House approval. Does that sound like “autonomy” to you?

The pact also says that the university will revise its mandatory antisemitism training “as appropriate.” What happens if the campus survey about antisemitism — which is also required under the agreement — reveals that discrimination against Jews isn’t a widespread problem?

I don’t know. But I do know that the Trump administration has insisted that the nation’s colleges are deeply steeped in antisemitism, which the administration has used to justify investigations of dozens of institutions. It’s hard to imagine it agreeing to any revision of that narrative, no matter what the facts show.

Then there’s the deal that Northwestern had struck with pro-Palestinian demonstrators, who agreed to end their encampment in the spring of 2024 in exchange for the university providing transparency about its investments in Israel and elsewhere. Northwestern also agreed to create two faculty slots and five student scholarships for Palestinians facing hardship because of the war in Gaza. And it pledged to provide more support to Middle Eastern, North African, and Muslim students, including establishing temporary spaces for their respective cultural associations.

Jewish leaders condemned the arrangement, which they said rewarded groups that had created a hostile environment on campus. But if that was the reason to revoke the deal with the protesters, the university would have done so a long time ago. It made this call to protect its bottom line.

“If our frozen federal research funding had continued, it threatens to gut our labs, drive away faculty and set back entire fields of discovery,” Henry Bienen, Northwestern’s interim president, said in a video message on Friday. The alternative to settling with the Trump administration was to sue it. But the “cost of a legal fight was too high and the risks too grave.”

Yet there’s a cost to caving to the White House, too: You have to relinquish your full autonomy and freedom. Northwestern officials proudly noted that their pact with the White House explicitly declares that the agreement doesn’t allow the government to dictate “the content of academic speech and research” at the university. But the pact itself restricts speech and research at the university. Saying otherwise won’t change that.

Reasonable people can disagree about transgender medicine, antisemitism on campus, and everything else in the agreement. But it’s going to be harder for them to do that at Northwestern now. To escape the Trump administration’s crosshairs, the university sacrificed its freedom to deliberate and determine these matters on its own. I just wish it was honest enough to say so.

Immigration activists interact with NYPD as they block a garage used by ICE vans during a protest against a purported ICE raid on Canal Street on November 29, 2025 in New York City. Activists assembled outside of a garage used by ICE and later they tried to block ICE vehicles as they traveled from the garage down Canal Street to the Holland Tunnel to exit Manhattan. Credit – Stephanie Keith—2025 Getty Images

Dear Commons Community,

For the second time in just over a month, a large-scale raid by dozens of immigration agents in New York City was met with a similarly large-scale counter-protest. This time, however, the protesters thwarted the authorities’ plans before they began.  As reported by TIME.

Multiple arrests were made on Saturday during scuffles on the edge of Chinatown, during which hundreds of protesters faced off with federal agents, eventually supported by the New York Police Department (NYPD), as they prepared to launch a raid in the area.

It comes just a month after a raid by 50 federal agents using military-style vehicles stormed nearby Canal Street in Lower Manhattan, and was met with a protest of hundreds in response.

The confrontation also comes amid a reported surge in activity by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in the city in recent weeks, despite a friendly encounter between the Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani and President Donald Trump earlier this month that appeared to avert a showdown over the issue.

But the mass counter-protest of some 200 people demonstrates the challenges federal authorities will face in enforcing President Trump’s hardline immigration agenda in a city that is rooted in its immigrant identity.

Immigration crackdowns in other cities like Chicago and Portland have been met with similar responses from locals opposed to the Trump Administration’s immigration crackdown, but New York could prove to be the toughest challenge yet.

Saturday’s incident demonstrated how the city’s physical infrastructure —its narrow streets and densely populated areas, built mostly by immigrant labor over the last two centuries—can impede ICE’s so-called “enforcement surges,” which involve large numbers of federal agents conducting sweeping raids, often moving quickly in and out of an area.

Not only are large-scale ICE raids being met by hundreds of protesters, but in two months, New York will be led by an immigrant mayor for the first time in 50 years. Mamdani, who moved to the United States when he was seven years old, campaigned on protecting New York’s immigrant community from these very same raids. He received a boost early in his campaign from a viral moment in which he screamed at Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, accusing him of abandoning the First Amendment.

A spokesperson from Mamdani’s transition team told TIME on Sunday in response to the clashes in Manhattan that the Mayor-elect “has made it clear — including to the President — that these raids are cruel and inhumane, and fail to advance genuine public safety.”

“New York City’s more than three million immigrants are central to our city’s strength, vitality, and success, and the Mayor-elect remains steadfast in his commitment to protecting the rights and dignity of every single New Yorker, upholding our sanctuary laws, and deescalation rather than use of unnecessary force,” Monica Klein, a transition spokesperson, added.

‘Agitators’ in ‘goggles’

The confrontation began on Saturday, when agents from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) gathered in a parking garage in a federal building on the edge of Chinatown in preparation for a raid.

Videos of the incident show protesters blocking the agents as they try to leave the garage in their cars. The crowd then swells to the hundreds, as more NYPD officers arrive.

Later, according to reports, federal agents emerged from the garage and assisted the NYPD in detaining protesters.

The DHS blamed “agitators” for blocking the federal agents in a statement to TIME.

“Following social media posts calling agitators to ICE’s location in New York City, individuals dressed in black clothing with backpacks, face masks, and goggles showed up and began to obstruct federal law enforcement officers including by blocking the parking garage,” the statement said. “NYPD was called and responded to hundreds of violent rioters, which resulted in the arrest of multiple agitators.”

Murad Awawdeh, President of the immigrant advocacy group the New York Immigration Coalition and a member of Mamdani’s transition team, said the protests this weekend were a sign that the city would put up fierce resistance to federal immigration operations.

“New York City is unlike any other place in this country or even the world, and what you have seen yesterday and time and again is that New Yorkers of all stripes, across all creeds, are not going to allow a rogue, lawless, violent and horrific agency to continue to mess with their neighbors,” he told TIME.

“I think the message here is that we’re all walking each other home together,” he added.

The attempted raid in Lower Manhattan comes amid an increase in ICE activity in New York City over the past few weeks. On Oct. 21, in a separate raid on Canal Street, nine people from Africa were taken into custody by ICE agents during what DHS called a “targeted, intelligence-driven enforcement operation…focused on criminal activity relating to selling counterfeit goods.” The raid, which involved more than 50 federal agents, also led to the arrest of five protestors after people reportedly attempted to chase federal agents away. The DHS claimed protestors were blocking vehicles and obstructing law enforcement duties.

In recent weeks, ICE agents have been spotted with greater frequency in immigrant neighborhoods of Corona in Queens, Washington Heights in Manhattan, and Sunset Park in Brooklyn.

Activists in those neighborhoods have responded to the increased ICE activity by organizing community alert systems, such as handing out whistles to be used when agents are seen in the area. The strategies resemble ICE Watch in other cities hit especially hard by Trump’s immigration crackdown, such as Chicago, where groups like Protect Rogers Park enlist community members to follow and report on ICE activity in the area.

‘This is an immigrant city’

Saturday’s incident is likely to renew tensions between Mamdani and the Trump Administration over immigration before the Mayor-elect has even taken up his post at City Hall.

Mamdani staked out a firm position on how the city would respond to raids after Tom Homan warned that ICE agents would soon “flood the zone” in New York earlier this month. He also signaled a change in how he wanted the NYPD to deal with federal immigration agents operating in the city after reports that Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, whom Mamdani has announced will keep her position in his administration, was tipped off about the Oct. 21 raid.

“What we will ensure is the NYPD will be delivering public safety, not assisting ICE in their attempts to fulfill the administration’s goal of creating the single largest deportation force in American history,” Mamdani said in an interview posted on Nov. 19.

“This city is also an immigrant city. It’s a city that is proud of its immigrant heritage,” he said. “And we will protect those New Yorkers.”

Mamdani and Trump appeared to avoid major disagreements on the issue during their notoriously friendly Oval Office meeting a few days later.

In that meeting, Mamandi said he and the President spoke about immigration enforcement in New York City.

“We discussed ICE and New York City, and I spoke about how the laws that we have in New York City allow for New York City government to speak to the federal administration for about 170 serious crimes,” Mamdani said, standing alongside Trump.

“The concerns that many New Yorkers have are around the enforcement of immigration laws on New Yorkers across the five boroughs, and most recently, we’re talking about a mother and her two children, how this has very little to do with what that is,” he added.

Bravo for these New Yorkers!

Tony

Credit…Amir B Jahanbin

Dear Commons Community,

Oxford University Press has chosen “rage bait” — defined as “online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative or offensive” — as its 2025 Word of the Year.  As reported by The New York Times.

“Rage bait,” which triumphed over the more upbeat “biohack” and “aura farming,” goes back at least to 2002, when it appeared in a post on a Usenet discussion group to describe a particular kind of driver reaction to being flashed by another driver seeking to pass. Since then, it has become an increasingly common slang term for an attention-seeking form of online behavior.

Over the past year, according to Oxford’s data, frequency of use spiked by a factor of three. The two-syllable open-compound word lands with blunt force. It also sparks an immediate “aha.”

“Even if people have never heard it before, they instantly know what it means,” Casper Grathwohl, the president of Oxford Languages, said in an interview. “And they want to talk about it.”

Oxford’s Word of the Year, which began in 2004, is based on usage evidence drawn from its continually updated corpus of some 30 billion words, which is compiled from news sources across the English-speaking world. The idea is to identify new or emerging words with social and cultural significance, backed by data.

As in the past few years, Oxford’s experts chose a short list, and then invited the public to weigh in. This year, there was a new twist: The entries were turned into personified candidates, who sold themselves in on-trend vertical videos by the creative studio Uncommon. (Sample pitch: “What rage bait lacks in empathy, nuance or class they make up for in absolutely nothing.”)

The winner was chosen by Oxford’s committee, based on the vote (more than 30,000 people weighed in), public conversation and data analysis.

“The point of the Word of the Year is to encourage people to reflect on where we are as a culture, who we are at the moment, through the lens of words we use,” Grathwohl said. “The whole point is to create conversation.”

Over the years, winners have included “selfie” (2013), “post-truth” (2016), “toxic” (2018) and “vax” (2021). In the past few years, they have tended to have a distinctly Gen Z, very-online cast.

Some winners, like 2023’s “rizz” (short for “charisma”) give a zingy new name to a familiar thing. “It’s sometimes about the intangible pleasure of saying and speaking a word,” Grathwohl said.

Others, like the 2024 winner, “brain rot” (the supposed deterioration of mental capacity brought on by overconsumption of trivial online content), describe a new experience that many are feeling without knowing what to call it. And whether or not “brain rot” is real, the word is still going strong, with usage continuing to surge.

This year’s finalists, Grathwohl said, reflect the ways that 2025 has been defined by “questions about who we really are, both online and offline,” and the ways the internet both manipulates us emotionally, and allows us to manipulate others.

“Aura farming,” defined as the careful “cultivation of an impressive, attractive or charismatic persona or personality,” arose around 2023, according to Oxford’s research. Usage nearly doubled over the past year, spiking in July in connection with a viral video of a young boy in Indonesia doing a motivational dance on the prow of a racing boat.

Linguistically, it merges a somewhat mystical Latin borrowing, aura, with a 15th-century word relating to the cultivation of crops. “What I love is the banal and the sublime put together,” Grathwohl said.

“Biohack,” a verb describing attempts to “improve or optimize one’s physical or mental performance, health, longevity or well-being,” was first recorded around 2011. Its usage also doubled in the past year, aided by growing conversation among “broligarchs,” as Grathwohl put it, and other powerful people. (He noted an incident in September, when Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping were caught on a hot mic talking about organ transplants and the possibility of living to 150.)

“Rage bait” appeared in the headlines in early November after Jennifer Lawrence confessed to creating an anonymous TikTok handle so she could fight with movie fans online. And it’s something even lexicographers have been accused of peddling.

In 2015, when Oxford chose the tears-of-joy emoji, some old-school wordniks were … not happy.

“People feel so passionately, there’s no way to avoid rage-baiting a portion of the word-loving public,” Grathwohl said. “No matter what we choose, a bunch of people are going to flame out online.”

Grrr!

Tony