Ever Forward

Dear Commons Community,

In 2019, my wife and I visited France and had the privilege of visiting the American D-Day Memorial sites in Normandy – Utah Beach, Point du Hoc, Omaha Beach and the American Memorial Cemetery – where there are more than 9,000 American casualties buried.

Ever Forward is the bronze statue that sits at the entrance to Omaha Beach.  It shows an American soldier helping a wounded comrade.

The Memorial Cemetery is a place of serenity with its thousands of crosses.  At 5:00 pm every evening, taps are played to remember our honored dead (see video below).

Today, I especially remember my two uncles John and Anthony DeMichele, both of whom were in Normandy in World War II.

Tony

Dana Bash and Hakeem Jeffries

Dear Commons Community,

CNN anchor Dana Bash grilled House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) on Sunday while asking him about a recent CNN poll finding only 16% of Americans believe the Democrats “have strong leaders.”

Bash began the conversation by pressing Jeffries on his promise to take decisive action if federal authorities targeted House Democrats, which they have.

“That’s the constitutional blueprint that was given to us by the framers of the United States democracy that we have inherited over the last few centuries. And so we’re going to continue to undertake our congressional responsibility notwithstanding efforts by the Trump administration to try to intimidate Democrats,” he continued, adding:

It’s unfortunate that our Republican colleagues continue to be nothing more than rubber stamps for Trump’s reckless and extreme agenda and the American people I think will ultimately reject that next year when we will take back control of the House of Representatives. In the meantime, in terms of how we will respond to what Trump and the administration has endeavored to do, we will make that decision in a time, place, and manner of our choosing, but the response will be continuous and it will meet the moment that is required.

Bash, clearly unimpressed, pressed for clarification, “What exactly does that mean? Have you not decided how to respond?”

Jeffries replied, “We’ve publicly responded in a variety of different ways. We haven’t let our foot off the gas pedal in terms of additional things that may take place with respect to our congressional oversight authority and capacity. We will respond in a time, place, and manner of our choosing if this continues to happen.”

“You believe, as Jerry Nadler said, that the administration is trying to intimidate Democrats?” Bash followed up.

“I think the administration is clearly trying to intimidate Democrats in the same way that they’re trying to intimidate the country. This whole shock and awe strategy, this flood the zone with outrageous behavior that they’ve tried to unleash on the American people during the first few months of the Trump administration is all designed to create the appearance of inevitability,” he replied, adding:

But Donald Trump has learned an important lesson – the American people are not interested in bending the knee to a wannabe king. So the reason why Donald Trump actually is the most unpopular president at this point of a presidency in American history – the American people will have rejected this approach. And we, as congressional Democrats, will continue to reject this approach.

Bash then pivoted to a recent CNN poll, noting, “Mr. Leader, you brought up polls, so let me tell you about a new one that just came out here at CNN this morning. It shows that only 19% of Americans say that your party can get things done, 36% say the same about Republicans, and just 16% say your party has strong leaders. It’s pretty rough, and you are one of those leaders. How do you turn that around?

“Well, we don’t have the presidency right now, so that’s always going to be challenging a few months after a presidential election. But we have to continue to make the case that Democrats are of course the party that is determined to make life more affordable for everyday Americans, for hard-working American taxpayers, that we believe that we need to lower the high cost of living which for decades has been going up while the size of the middle class has been going down. So understandably, there’s real frustration amongst the American people. They should be frustrated–” Jeffries replied.

“But they are frustrated with you as well! With Democrats as well,” interjected Bash.

“Of course, they’re frustrated with the system. But what is interesting, Dana, I think you’re aware of this, every single public poll that has come out since the Trump presidency has had congressional Democrats winning the generic ballot against congressional Republicans, and in fact, we know this is not simply speculative. In every single high-profile special election – Iowa in January, New York in February, Pennsylvania in March, the Wisconsin State Supreme Court race in April, and most recently in Albuquerque, the mayor’s race in May – Democrats have won. So the American people are actually being very clear and decisive in saying who they trust more to govern,” he concluded.

This interview demonstrates the lack of leadership that exists nationally in the Democratic Party.  Locally and at the state level, there are Democrats who show some leadership but there is no one nationally.

Tony

Sen. Bernie Sanders. Samuel Corum via Getty Images

Dear Commons Community,

Senator Bernie Sanders bluntly told BBC Radio 4 why Democrats can only blame themselves for the results of the 2024 election.

During his “Fighting Oligarchy” tour, Sanders said it was wrong to pin Kamala Harris’ defeat on then-President Joe Biden’s late retreat from the race.

“It was the fault of Kamala Harris and her consultants,” he said plainly, before laying out how Democrats failed to “run a campaign designed to speak to the American working class.”

Sanders told the station that while President Donald Trump may be “reasonably popular,” Democrats could have beaten him if they addressed the struggles everyday Americans face during the campaign.

“I ran all over the country trying to elect Kamala Harris and begged them: Talk to the needs of the working class. Talk about raising the minimum wage to a living wage,” he continued. “Talk about real health care reform. Talk about building the kinds of massive amounts of housing that we need, and putting checks on landlords’ greed on housing.”

But instead of listening to Sanders, the Harris campaign decided to rely on “billionaire friends” and anti-Trump Republicans like former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.).

“Kamala spent more time with Liz Cheney almost than with anybody else. What is that message out to working-class people?” he asked.

Sanders added that using billionaire “Shark Tank” star Mark Cuban as a surrogate was also a major misstep for Democrats.

“To my mind that was a campaign that absolutely should have been winnable,” but consultants and the 1% led them astray, he said.

“The bottom line here is the Democrats have to answer a very simple question: Which side are you on?”

Talking about the party’s current strategy in an interview with The Washington Post published last week, the senator had a similar message.

“Do Democrats do enough?” he asked himself. “No.”

.“The difference that I have with the Democratic leadership is not in the need to vigorously oppose Trump,” he explained. “It’s to bring forth an agenda that resonates with working-class families. And I think there are a number of Trump people who will support that agenda.”

Even before ballots were cast, observers were wary about Democrats’ decision to bank on big-name supporters like Oprah Winfrey, Beyoncé, George Clooney, Jennifer Lopez and more, wondering whether it would pay off.

And in the fallout from the 2024 election, politics insiders were even more critical.

“Celebrity endorsements say a lot: they say you’re a liberal, an elitist, and a cultural progressive. An Oprah or Clooney endorsement is the kiss of death in large swaths of the country now,” Republican strategist William F.B. O’Reilly told The New York Times in a postmortem election analysis.

I don’t think celebrity endorsements are the kiss of death but if that is all you are offering, you lose!

Tony

Credit…Sam Whitney/The New York Times

Dear Commons Community,

Karen Hao, author of Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI, had an opinion essay yesterday entitled, “Silicon Valley Is at an Inflection Point”, that originally was entitled, “Silicon Valley has imperial ambitions”

She comments that:

“The leading A.I. giants are no longer merely multinational corporations; they are growing into modern-day empires. With the full support of the federal government, soon they will be able to reshape most spheres of society as they please, from the political to the economic to the production of science.”…

“These companies are at an inflection point. With Mr. Trump’s election, Silicon Valley’s power will reach new heights. The president named David Sacks, a billionaire venture capitalist and A.I. investor, as his A.I. czar and …..brought a cadre of tech executives with him on his recent trip to Saudi Arabia. If Senate Republicans now vote to prohibit states from regulating A.I. for 10 years, Silicon Valley’s impunity will be enshrined in law, cementing these companies’ empire status.

Their influence now extends well beyond the realm of business. We are now closer than ever to a world in which tech companies can seize land, operate their own currencies, reorder the economy and remake our politics with little consequence. That comes at a cost — when companies rule supreme, people lose their ability to assert their voice in the political process and democracy cannot hold.”

So true!

Below is the entire essay.

Tony

——————————————————————

The New York Times

Silicon Valley Is at an Inflection Point

May 30, 2025

By Karen Hao

On his second day in office this year, President Trump underscored his unequivocal support for the tech industry. Standing at a lectern next to tech leaders, he announced the Stargate Project, a plan to pump $500 billion in private investment over four years into artificial intelligence infrastructure. For comparison: The Apollo mission, which sent the first men to the moon, spent around $300 billion in today’s dollars over 13 years. Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, played down the investment. “It sounds crazy big now,” he said. “I bet it won’t sound that big in a few years.”

In the decade that I have observed Silicon Valley — first as an engineer, then as a journalist — I’ve watched the industry shift to a new paradigm. Tech companies have long reaped the benefits of a friendly U.S. government, but the Trump administration has made clear that it will now grant new firepower to the industry’s ambitions. The Stargate announcement was just one signal. Another was the Republican tax bill that the House passed last week, which would prohibit states from regulating A.I. for the next 10 years.

The leading A.I. giants are no longer merely multinational corporations; they are growing into modern-day empires. With the full support of the federal government, soon they will be able to reshape most spheres of society as they please, from the political to the economic to the production of science.

When I took my first job in Silicon Valley 10 years ago, the industry’s wealth and influence were already expanding. The tech giants had grandiose missions — take Google’s, to “organize the world’s information” — which they used to attract young workers and capital investment. But with the promise of developing artificial general intelligence, or A.G.I., those grandiose missions have turned into civilizing ones. Companies claim they will bring humanity into a new, enlightened age — that they alone have the scientific and moral clarity to control a technology that, in their telling, will usher us to hell if China develops it first. “A.I. companies in the U.S. and other democracies must have better models than those in China if we want to prevail,” said Dario Amodei, chief executive of Anthropic, an A.I. start-up.

This language is as far-fetched as it sounds, and Silicon Valley has a long history of making promises that never materialize. Yet the narrative that A.G.I. is just around the corner and will usher in “massive prosperity,” as Mr. Altman has written, is already leading companies to accrue large amounts of capital, lay claim to data and electricity and build enormous data centers that are accelerating the climate crisis. These gains will fortify tech companies’ power and erode human rights long after the shine of the industry’s promises wears off.

The quest for A.G.I. is giving companies cover to vacuum up more data than ever before, with profound implications for people’s privacy and intellectual property rights. Before investing heavily in generative A.I., Meta had amassed data from nearly four billion accounts, but it no longer considers that enough. To train its generative A.I. models, the company has scraped the web with little regard for copyright and even considered buying up Simon & Schuster to meet the new data imperative.

These developments are also persuading companies to escalate their consumption of natural resources. Early drafts of the Stargate Project estimated that its A.I. supercomputer could need about as much power as three million homes. And McKinsey & Company now projects that by 2030, the global grid will need to add around two to six times the energy capacity it took to power California in 2022 to sustain the current rate of Silicon Valley’s expansion. “In any scenario, these are staggering investment numbers,” McKinsey wrote. One OpenAI employee told me that the company is running out of land and electricity.

Meanwhile, there are fewer independent A.I. experts to hold Silicon Valley to account. In 2004, only 21 percent of people graduating from Ph.D. programs in artificial intelligence joined the private sector. In 2020, nearly 70 percent did, one study found. They’ve been won over by the promise of compensation packages that can easily rise above $1 million. This means that companies like OpenAI can lock down the researchers who might otherwise be asking tough questions about their products and publishing their findings publicly for all to read. Based on my conversations with professors and scientists, ChatGPT’s release has exacerbated that trend — with even more researchers joining companies like OpenAI.

This talent monopoly has reoriented the kind of research that’s done in this field. Imagine what would happen if most climate science were done by researchers who worked in fossil fuel companies. That’s what’s happening with artificial intelligence. Already, A.I. companies could be censoring critical research into the flaws and risks of their tools. Four years ago, the leaders of Google’s Ethical A.I. team said they were ousted after they wrote a paper raising questions about the industry’s growing focus on large language models, the technology that underpins ChatGPT and other generative A.I. products.

These companies are at an inflection point. With Mr. Trump’s election, Silicon Valley’s power will reach new heights. The president named David Sacks, a billionaire venture capitalist and A.I. investor, as his A.I. czar and empowered another tech billionaire, Elon Musk, to slash through the government. Mr. Trump brought a cadre of tech executives with him on his recent trip to Saudi Arabia. If Senate Republicans now vote to prohibit states from regulating A.I. for 10 years, Silicon Valley’s impunity will be enshrined in law, cementing these companies’ empire status.

Their influence now extends well beyond the realm of business. We are now closer than ever to a world in which tech companies can seize land, operate their own currencies, reorder the economy and remake our politics with little consequence. That comes at a cost — when companies rule supreme, people lose their ability to assert their voice in the political process and democracy cannot hold.

Technological progress does not require businesses to operate like empires. Some of the most impactful A.I. advancements came not from tech behemoths racing to recreate human levels of intelligence, but from the development of relatively inexpensive, energy-efficient models to tackle specific tasks such as weather forecasting. DeepMind’s AlphaFold built a nongenerative A.I. model that predicts protein structures from their sequences — a function critical to drug discovery and understanding disease. Its creators were awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

A.I. tools that help everyone cannot arise from a vision of development that demands the capitulation of a majority to the self-serving agenda of the few. Transitioning to a more equitable and sustainable A.I. future won’t be easy: It will require everyone — journalists, civil society, researchers, policymakers, citizens — to push back against the tech giants, produce thoughtful government regulation wherever possible and invest more in smaller-scale A.I. technologies. When people rise, empires fall.

Credit…Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

Dear Commons Community,

Maureen Dowd had column yesterday entitled, Tech Bro Had to Go, commenting on the split up of the Trump and Elon Musk “partnership” in shrinking the federal government. Here is her introduction.

“Elon Musk came to Washington with a chain saw and left with a black eye.

Shrinking government is hard, particularly when you do it callously and carelessly — and apparently on hallucinogens.

As with President Trump’s tariffs, DOGE has created more volatility than value.

A guy who went bankrupt six times doesn’t really care about spending. And Trump certainly didn’t want to see the headline, “Trump Cuts Social Security.”

He just wanted to get revenge on “the bureaucracy” by deputizing Musk to force out a lot of federal employees and give the impression they were cutting all the waste.”

Dowd concludes:

“Trump gave Musk a golden ceremonial White House key, the kind of thing small-town mayors give out, and proclaimed: “Elon’s really not leaving. He’s going to be back and forth, I think.” Trump said that the father of (at least) 14 would never desert DOGE completely because “It’s his baby.”

Musk brought the Silicon Valley mantra “Move fast and break things” to D.C. But the main thing he broke was his own reputation.”

The entire column is below.

Tony

—————————————————

The New York Times

Tech Bro Had to Go

May 31, 2025

By Maureen Dowd

Opinion Columnist, reporting from Washington

Elon Musk came to Washington with a chain saw and left with a black eye.

Shrinking government is hard, particularly when you do it callously and carelessly — and apparently on hallucinogens.

As with President Trump’s tariffs, DOGE has created more volatility than value.

A guy who went bankrupt six times doesn’t really care about spending. And Trump certainly didn’t want to see the headline, “Trump Cuts Social Security.”

He just wanted to get revenge on “the bureaucracy” by deputizing Musk to force out a lot of federal employees and give the impression they were cutting all the waste.

As always with Trump, the former reality star, the impression matters more than the reality, especially the reality of his own sins. This past week, Trump tried to recast the very nature of crime.

As The Times’s Glenn Thrush wrote: “President Trump is employing the vast power of his office to redefine criminality to suit his needs — using pardons to inoculate criminals he happens to like, downplaying corruption and fraud as crimes, and seeking to stigmatize political opponents by labeling them criminals.”

It is sickening that the Justice Department is considering settling a wrongful-death lawsuit by giving $5 million to the family of Ashli Babbitt — who was shot on Jan. 6, 2021, by a Capitol police officer when she ignored his warnings and tried to climb through a smashed window into the Speaker’s Lobby in the Capitol.

If Babbitt was trying to help Trump claw back a “stolen” election by breaking into the Capitol, then breaking into the Capitol must be a good thing to do, and any police officer who tried to stop her and protect lawmakers cowering under desks must be in the wrong.

To abet Trump’s fake reality, the craven House Republicans refused to put up a plaque honoring the police officers and others who defended the Capitol that awful day.

I take it personally because my dad spent 20 years as the D.C. police inspector in charge of Senate security. He would run to the House whenever there was trouble. So if on Jan. 6 Mike Dowd had been preventing insurrectionists from assaulting lawmakers, he would now be, in Trump’s eyes, not a hero deserving of a plaque, but a blackguard who was thwarting “patriots,” as Trump calls the rioters he pardoned.

It is a disturbing bizarro world.

Trump was rewriting reality again on Friday afternoon as one of the most flamboyant, destructive bromances in government history petered out in the Oval Office.

It had peaked last winter when Musk posted on X, “I love @realDonaldTrump as much as a straight man can love another man,” and again when Trump tried to reciprocate by hawking Teslas in the White House driveway.

But on Friday, even these grand master salesmen couldn’t sell the spin that Elon had “delivered a colossal change.”

Musk has acknowledged recently that his dream of cutting $1 trillion had been a fantasy. He said changing D.C. was “an uphill battle” and complained that Trump’s “big, beautiful” budget bill, which could add over $3 trillion in debt, undercut his DOGE attempts to save money.

As Trump said, Musk got a lot of “the slings and the arrows.” His approval rating cratered and violence has been directed toward Tesla, a brand once loved by liberals and in China, which is now tarnished.

Musk cut off a reporter who tried to ask about a New York Times article asserting that he was a habitual user of ketamine and a dabbler in Ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms even after Trump had given him enormous control over the government.

That could explain the chain saw-wielding, the jumping up and down onstage, the manic baby-making and crusading for more spreading of sperm by smart people, and the ominous Nazi-style salutes.

When a reporter asked Musk why he had a black eye, he joked about the viral video of Brigitte Macron shoving her husband’s face. Then he explained that while “horsing around” with his 5-year-old, X, he suggested the child punch him in the face, “and he did.”

The president and the Tony Stark prototype tried to convey the idea that they would remain tight, even though Musk would no longer be getting into angry altercations with Scott Bessent outside the Oval, sleeping on the floor of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building and hanging around Mar-a-Lago. (Trump wants the $100 million Musk has pledged for his political operation.)

Musk, wearing a black “DOGE” cap and black “Dogefather” T-shirt, looked around the Oval, which Trump has tarted up to look like a Vegas gift shop, and gushed that it “finally has the majesty that it deserves, thanks to the president.”

Trump gave Musk a golden ceremonial White House key, the kind of thing small-town mayors give out, and proclaimed: “Elon’s really not leaving. He’s going to be back and forth, I think.” Trump said that the father of (at least) 14 would never desert DOGE completely because “It’s his baby.”

Musk brought the Silicon Valley mantra “Move fast and break things” to D.C. But the main thing he broke was his own reputation.

Getty Images—Anchiy

We’re five years past the start of the pandemic, which fundamentally changed how and where we work. While many companies still offer remote or hybrid work, there’s also been a major push from employers to get workers back in the office full time.

In the LinkedIn survey of more than 4,000 U.S.-based workers, nearly 40% of Gen Z and millennial workers said they would take a pay cut in exchange for more flexibility about where they work. Across all generations, the share was 32%.

Other reasons Gen Z and millennial workers would take a pay cut is for a job with better upward mobility, a more reasonable workload, and a better relationship with their boss, according to the survey.

Laura Roman, a senior talent acquisition manager with London-based marketing firm Up World, wrote in an April LinkedIn post one of her candidates took a £7,000 pay cut—about $9,300—for a fully remote job. ,,“The founder was hesitant at first. She couldn’t wrap her head around it. Why would anyone willingly take less money?” Roman wrote. “But then it clicked. They were offering something just as valuable as a bigger salary (for that candidate): flexibility.”

“Not everyone can afford to trade money for flexibility, but for those who can, it’s becoming a no-brainer,” she added.

Another early 2025 study by Robert Half showed when the gap between a candidate’s salary expectation and an offer is too great, many employers are negotiating remote and hybrid work to get candidates to sign on the dotted line.

Theresa L. Fesinstine, founder of human resources advisory peoplepower.ai, previously told Fortune she’s seen some candidates accept 5% to 15% less pay in exchange for remote work.

“There’s this unspoken exchange rate between flexibility and comp, and for some candidates, it’s worth a significant tradeoff,” Fesinstine said. This is especially true “for those who value work-life balance or are saving on commute costs.”

Gen Z and millennials still want some in-office experience

Although Gen Z and millennial workers report they’d prefer flexibility, that doesn’t mean they don’t want to come into the office at all. In fact, many Gen Z workers have led the charge back to in-office work. They see the value in forming in-real-life connections with coworkers and think being in the office gives them a better chance at getting promoted.

Still, Gen Z and millennial workers tend to prefer a hybrid schedule that allows them to work from home sometimes. In fact, a late March report by property group JLL shared with Fortune shows workers under 24 years old are more likely to be in office than other generations and come in an average of 3 days a week.

“While many actively seek roles offering face-to-face engagement, they reject rigid office mandates, prioritizing flexibility in when and how they work,” Lauren Winans, CEO and principal HR consultant at HR consulting firm Next Level Benefits, told Fortune. Gen Z “blends digital fluency with an appreciation for traditional office benefits.”

For Spencer McLean, a Gen Z public relations manager, hybrid work has been the best of both worlds. She’s enjoyed forming friendships in the office, asking coworkers questions, and learning on the job, she told Fortune. But she doesn’t love going into the office every day.

“Hybrid work gives you a brain break where you don’t have to have conversations constantly and can sit down and focus—and it gives your skin a break from makeup,” McLean said. “I love the flexibility I have now and I believe it’s made a huge difference in my mental health.”

Flexibility and quality of life are key factors.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times reported  on Friday that Elon Musk has been taking large quantities of drugs for quite some time. As per the Times, Musk takes ketamine, ecstasy, psychedelic mushrooms, Ambien, Adderall, and other drugs, and traveled with a daily medication box that held about 20 pills.  Furthermore, his drug use reportedly intensified as he donated $275m to Trump’s presidential campaign and later wielded significant power through his role spearheading the “department of government efficiency”, or Doge.  As reported.

The CEO of SpaceX and Tesla reportedly took so much Ketamine, a dissociative anesthetic known to induce schizophrenia-like symptoms, that it affected his bladder function.

The report is bolstered by a January 2024 Wall Street Journal investigation in which sources close to Musk said they’d witnessed or had direct knowledge of him using LSD, cocaine, ecstasy, mushrooms and ketamine.

Musk’s attorney Alex Spiro told the Journal at the time that his client is “regularly and randomly drug tested at SpaceX” and has “never failed a test.”

It’s unclear how, or whether, Musk’s consumption habits changed once he became a federal bureaucrat with an office in the White House complex. He didn’t address the claims directly at a Friday afternoon press conference in the Oval Office, instead attacking the credibility of The New York Times itself.

But he’s continued drawing attention for unusual antics, including a chainsaw–wielding appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference and a Nazi-like hand gesture at Trump’s inaugural rally.

In April, Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.) introduced a bill that would require Musk and his hires at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency to undergo regular drug testing, though the bill has gone nowhere in the Republican-majority house.

“Donald Trump has given billionaire Elon Musk the keys to our government, and with it, access to highly sensitive information — from Treasury and Social Security data to even our most guarded military plans,” Sherrill wrote in a press release. “Those with access to sensitive information must be thoroughly vetted, clear-eyed, and exercise good judgment.”

Asked Friday if he was concerned about drug use by Musk, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller was dismissive ― but notably didn’t rule it out.

“The drugs that we’re concerned about are the drugs running across the southern border,” he told reporters.

The eccentric billionaire has openly discussed his ketamine use in the past. In a 2024 interview with Don Lemon, he said he took “a small amount” every other week ― but got miffed when Lemon pushed him on it.

“If you’ve used too much ketamine, you can’t really get work done, and I have a lot of work,” he told the journalist at the time.

An Atlantic article describing the drug’s effects on the body found people build tolerance to it very quickly, requiring ever larger doses to achieve the same high and leading to long-term impaired cognition, including “delusional thinking, superstitious beliefs, and a sense of specialness and importance.”

Those would seem to strike a chord with Sam Harris, a public intellectual and former friend of Musk, who publicly broke with the world’s richest man in a post earlier this year.

“Any dispassionate observer of Elon’s behavior on Twitter/X can see that there is something seriously wrong with his moral compass, if not his perception of reality,” he wrote.

Musk should get help!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Chronicle of Higher Education reported on Thursday that The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill hasn’t tenured a single professor in fields outside the health sciences since January — an unusual period of inaction that has spurred confusion and alarm among faculty.

At its normal meeting last week, the university’s Board of Trustees deferred a vote on pending tenure cases outside of the health-affairs schools. At its March meeting, the board didn’t act on any tenure cases, and in January, it only approved two tenure bids outside the health sciences: one professor at the civic-life school and another at the School of Social Work.

No professors in the College of Arts and Sciences, the university’s primary academic unit, have received tenure this year.

The university’s interim provost, James W. Dean Jr., acknowledged last week’s deferral in a message to deans. “I understand the stress this ongoing uncertainty places on affected faculty members and the schools and departments that support them,” he wrote, adding that he was “confident that these votes will be taken at the next Board of Trustees’ meeting.”

A university spokesperson did not offer a specific reason for the board’s inaction. “The exact timing of tenure awards is subject to a number of variables that our Board of Trustees and administration may consider with any recommended appointments,” the university said in a statement to The Chronicle. The university has not changed its tenure policies and tenure-track faculty across the university, including those in the College of Arts and Sciences, are eligible for tenure, the spokesperson wrote.

Jennifer Lloyd, a trustee and former professor of the practice in UNC’s economics department, told The Chronicle in an email that she was the only trustee to vote against a motion to defer consideration on tenure decisions at the March meeting. “I … always seek to be a fair and honest advocate on issues impacting faculty,” she wrote. A spokesperson said the university could not comment on this vote since it was taken during a closed session. John P. Preyer, the board’s chair, did not respond to a message seeking comment.

Beth Moracco, chair of the university’s Faculty Council, said she’s never seen this happen since she joined the faculty in 2008. “Typically, the personnel actions are reviewed and acted upon during the meeting that they are submitted,” she said. “The only personnel actions that were acted on were from schools within health affairs. It was a selective inaction, which was also extraordinary.”

Moracco said faculty are frustrated and confused, especially by a lack of communication from the university and uncertainty over when their cases might be considered. Many of them found out about the deferred vote through rumors from colleagues, she added. Moracco discovered that the board had not voted on some tenure cases by checking the board’s website.

The board’s delay hinders a faculty member’s career planning and hampers recruitment, Moracco said. “To go through that amount of work for a career milestone, and then to have it be deferred with a question mark of what’s going to happen next is extremely deflating,” she said. It’s especially demoralizing when higher education is facing funding cuts and attacks on academic freedom, she added.

The board’s inaction also comes at a time when state legislatures nationwide have aimed to weaken tenure or add stipulations to it. A wave of bills propose post-tenure reviews or productivity requirements, and lawmakers in Texas and Nebraska have even introduced legislation to outright ban tenure.

Delaying tenure bids has unique resonance in Chapel Hill. In 2021, the university was embroiled in controversy after it removed tenure from a job offer to Nikole Hannah-Jones, the investigative journalist behind The New York Times’ 1619 Project. That decision came after a trustee raised questions about her qualifications. Following a nationwide uproar, the board voted to offer Hannah-Jones tenure, but she declined to accept the UNC professorship.

While the Hannah-Jones case was specific to one faculty member, Moracco said that the controversy and the board’s recent lack of action on tenure cases are both examples of overreach: “The principle that’s being violated here is the allowing of the rigorous processes that are in place to go forward.”

The board’s next full meeting is scheduled for July 31.

This meeting will be watched closely by the higher education community.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Jimmy Kimmel mocked  Trump for changing  his tariff policy so often that the process has been given a new nickname: TACO. 

That’s short for “Trump Always Chickens Out.”

“You’re not gonna believe this,” Kimmel said. “He doesn’t like the nickname at all.” 

TACO refers to how Trump frequently announces a new tariff, causing markets to crash, then backs off, causing them to rise again. Some investors have used it to make cash in a time of economic uncertainty.  

Kimmel said Trump flipped out at a reporter who asked him about the name, calling it “a nasty question.” 

“But it seems to be catching on,” Kimmel said, then showed off some of his favorite TACO Trump chicken memes. 

“How does it feel to be on the other end of the nickname game?” Kimmel asked. “Not great, does it?” 

Kimmel said there’s only one way to make this even worse for Trump: “If somebody changed the lyrics to a song by his beloved Village People to drive it home.” 

Kimmel played a parody (see below) of “Macho Man” ― a song Trump has frequently used at campaign events ― called “Taco Man,” complete with a video to match.

In the meantime, Trump is taking it out on his staff for not alerting him and heading off all the memes going around the Internet.

Tony

TACO Man Starts at about the 1:40 mark.

Dear Commons Community,

President Trump, it would seem, is not one for a “TACO.” The taco in question is not a dish made with tortillas, but rather a reference to how markets are responding to his tariff policies.

The TACO name, short for “Trump Always Chickens Out”, is a tongue-in-cheek term coined by the Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong. It has been adopted by some analysts and commentators to describe the potentially lucrative pattern in which markets tumble after Mr. Trump makes tariff threats, only to rebound sharply when he relents and allows countries more time to negotiate deals.

The president has spent years cultivating a reputation for political muscle. So when he was asked by a reporter in the Oval Office on Wednesday whether the term might be a valid description of his approach to tariffs, Mr. Trump reacted with ire.

“I chicken out? I’ve never heard that,” he said. “Don’t ever say what you said,” he told the reporter. “That’s a nasty question. To me, that’s the nastiest question.”

But gyrations driven by the president’s on-again, off-again tariffs are by now taken for granted on Wall Street. Stock markets jumped on Tuesday, for example, after Mr. Trump delayed a proposed 50 percent tariff on the European Union that he had threatened only a few days earlier.

TACO, TACO, TACO!

Tony