George Will

Dear Commons Community,

Conservative columnist George Will tore into President Donald Trump’s second inaugural address for The Washington Post — but also had some words of advice for those who saw the end of America as they know it in his words.  Thei recap is courtesy of Raw Story and Reuters.

“Donald Trump does not deal in felicities. His second inaugural will be remembered for being worse than 59 others, including his first (about ‘stealing,’ ‘ravages’ and ‘carnage’). It was memorable for its staggering inappropriateness,” wrote Will. “Inaugurations should be solemn yet celebratory components of America’s civic liturgy. Instead, we heard on Monday that because of ‘corrupt’ and ‘horrible’ ‘betrayals’ by others, ‘the pillars of our society’ are ‘in complete disrepair.’ The challenges will be ‘annihilated,’ not because God blesses America, but because God chose him.”

This kind of spectacle, he wrote, “replicated what have become the tawdriest events on our governmental calendar: State of the Union addresses. Wherein presidents leaven self-praise with wondrous promises, as their partisans repeatedly leap onto their hind legs to bray approval. There was much such leaping in the Capitol Rotunda on Monday.”

However, Will continued, America will ultimately move past Trump’s baser instincts — in part because they are not nearly so unique as either his supporters or detractors presume them to be.

Will quoted Stephen Kotkin of the Hoover Institution, who had this to say on Trump: “This is somebody the American people voted for who reflects something deep and abiding about American culture. Think of all the worlds that he has inhabited and that lifted him up. Pro wrestling. Reality TV. Casinos and gambling, which are no longer just in Las Vegas or Atlantic City, but everywhere, embedded in daily life. Celebrity culture. Social media. All of that looks to me like America. And yes, so does fraud, and brazen lying, and the P.T. Barnum, carnival barker stuff. But there is an audience, and not a small one, for where Trump came from and who he is.”

At the end of the day, Will concluded, however much Americans abhor each others’ politics and attitudes about it, “Most people [realize] that the universe under its current administration produces many disappointments. Then they shrug and get on with their lives. Today, many emotionally dilapidated obsessives experience either despair or euphoria about the inaugurations of presidents, who come and go. Both groups should rethink what they expect from politics, and why they do.”

I tried to watch Trump’s speech but gave up on it after about ten minutes!

Tony

Marjan Fasad / HuffPost

Dear Commons Community,

While many Hispanic people in the United States are of Caribbean, South American or Mexican origin, there are thousands of identities represented within the greater community. The Huffington Post and Capital One celebratedtwo people who have helped build a pan-ethnic mosaico  through new patterns of perspective, fibers of language and layers of legacy. As reported by The Huffington Post.

Dr. Antonio R. Flores: Education For All

When Dr. Antonio Flores arrived in the United States at the age of 25, he didn’t speak much English. In spite of having to learn a second language, Flores completed his master’s degree and a Ph.D. He later became the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU)’s president and CEO.

HACU’s mission is to champion Hispanic success in higher education through its 488 colleges, universities and school districts located in 35 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and 9 countries in Latin America and Europe. The association hopes to foster the next generation of diverse leaders in higher education to ensure all students can find a diverse community on their college campuses.

In 2022, HACU welcomed 39 fellows into its fourth cohort of the Leadership Academy, a program that prepares professionals for leadership roles in the full spectrum of institutions of higher learning with an emphasis on HSIs (Hispanic-Serving Institutions) and Emerging HSIs.

“Most of these young people at Hispanic-Serving Institutions are first-generation college students,” said Flores. “For me, that means they’re already leading the way and setting the tenor for future generations. We have a chance to help them through internships and leadership programs, and that’s what we’re committed to doing so that they can make a difference for many others who may be less fortunate than they are.”

Increasing the representation of diverse teachers and leaders in education can help build cultural understanding in students, thereby boosting academic performance. Flores hopes that, ultimately, college graduation will help to advance earnings and employment for the students.

Marla Bilonick: An Entrepreneurial Mindset

Marla Bilonick, President and CEO of the National Association for Latino Community Asset Builders (NALCAB), is another example of a leader supporting her community. She’s always been intrigued by the entrepreneurial spirit and how different environments and support systems can help people succeed or fail. During the recovery period following the Sept. 11 attacks, she developed this understanding by working with small businesses and discovering that even the best of them can’t survive without the proper resources. This fueled her passion for community economic development and eventually led her to oversee NALCAB.

NALCAB, a national network of nearly 200 mission-driven organizations spread out across 45 states, Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico. Its mission: to address affordable housing, invest in Latino-owned small businesses and neighborhoods, provide financial coaching, champion policy reforms to advance racial and economic justice, support affordable housing and provide financial counseling for credit-building and homeownership.

“Having intentionality when we serve Latino communities and community members where NALCAB network nonprofits are located is very important to me,” said Bilonick. “The Latino economic engine is very powerful. If you want to stimulate the U.S. economy, this is the community you have to invest in.”

As NALCAB’s president and CEO, Bilonick heads up support for member organizations to gain access to funding, nonprofit resources and professional development to build thriving communities. But she is constantly “ears to the ground,” listening to her member organizations discuss the local needs of low- to moderate-income families and individuals they serve.

“These days, I like to get as much input from other people as I can since I find that great ideas exist outside of me,” said Bilonick. “Coming together as a group to unify organizations and listen to their concerns allows NALCAB to influence programming from the government and chambers of commerce.”

We are fortunate to have people like Dr. Flores and Ms. Bilonick.  We need more of them.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

New York Times columnist, Maureen Dowd, had a piece yesterday entitled, “Trump Brings a Chill to Washington.”  While she paints a bleak picture of Trump returning to the White House, she also reminds her readers that Joe Biden is partly responsible for  “resurrecting Trump.”

It is a well-worth quick read.  The entire column is below.

Tony

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The New York Times

“Trump Brings a Chill to Washington.”

By Maureen Dowd

January 19, 2025

For many moons over the Potomac, the protocol for inaugurations has been as immutable and dignified as the words of presidents engraved on their monuments.

Leaders and luminaries would put aside their grudges and come together to celebrate democracy. This day marks the deepest conviction of the American experiment – that power must pass peacefully from one commander in chief to the next.

But what if you are coming to honor a man who tried to overthrow the government and steal an election? A man who riled up his followers to sack the Capitol and then lumbered out of town, a sore loser in a vile humour, skipping the inauguration of his successor?

Does he merit the usual privileges? Should everyone honor him in his moment at the center of the sacred traditions he desecrated?

When Michelle Obama and Nancy Pelosi blow off Donald Trump on his triumphant day, are they being rude and unpatriotic? Or are they justified, given his incendiary words, misogyny and racism, his defilement of this tradition at the heart of America?

The weather will not be the only bitter chill in town. Besides Michelle’s and Nancy’s cold shoulders, Barack Obama and the Clintons are skipping the inaugural lunch.

Trump is returning as a colossus. He has brought Washington – Democrats and Republicans – to heel, teamed up with Elon Musk and slapped a gold “Trump” sign on Silicon Valley. The lords of the cloud helped fund the coronation, and they are making a pilgrimage here to bow to their new overlord. (This includes the CEO of TikTok, who is surely hoping that his company’s sponsoring of an inauguration party and his online flattery about Trump’s 60 billion TikTok views will lead the new president to save the social media platform.)

But not everyone is looking forward to what’s in store.

It will be hard to forget Trump’s day of infamy, January 6th, as he gets sworn in at the Capitol, which was smeared with blood and faeces by rioters recast by Trump and his acolytes as “hostages”, “patriots”, “tourists” and “grandmothers”.

The wintry cold is ordinarily part of the inaugural tradition. William Henry Harrison got pneumonia and died a month after his 8,445-word speech in March 1841. John F Kennedy did his speech without an overcoat in a –14 degree wind chill. Ronald Reagan came in from the cold for his second inaugural. Trump posted on Friday that the “Arctic blast” would force the shindig inside, to the Capitol Rotunda. But given Trump’s obsession with crowd size, many wondered if he was just shivering at the thought that the weather would keep spectators away.

An X account belonging to a beloved DC dive bar, Dan’s Cafe, drily posted about the shift to the rotunda: “Good thing his supporters already know how to get inside.”

Trump’s last inauguration was marred by his meltdown over crowd size; he called the National Park Service director the next day to press him to produce additional photographs of the crowds on the Mall after the agency shared photographs showing that Obama had a much larger crowd at his inaugural than Trump did. The one-day-old president also sent out his White House spokesman, Sean Spicer, to bluster falsely about how Trump’s crowd was the largest ever to witness an inauguration.

That set the tone for the highchair king’s first term: Reality must take a back seat to ego stroking – or else.

The mood in Washington is very different this time around. Instead of a rowdy resistance and a women’s march that drew nearly 500,000 here and some five million across the globe – an international swath of pink hats – we have Republicans who have got even more sheeplike and Democrats who still seem deflated and flummoxed, with no compelling ideas or pols to lead them out of the wilderness.

And this as Trump is surrounded not by advisers, generals and a daughter trying (and failing) to temper him but by fervent loyalists who will help him toss out executive orders the same way he tossed out paper towels in Puerto Rico, with no worries about who might be hit.

When she was trying to lure Joe Biden out of the race last summer, Pelosi said he had been such a consequential president, he belonged on Mount Rushmore. And Biden has made several speeches this week trying to buff his accomplishments.

But he will be merely a footnote in the vertiginous saga of how Trump won the White House again, despite a hail of impeachments, lawsuits, insults and lies and an attempted coup that put his vice-president, lawmakers and police in danger.

The chip on Biden’s shoulder devoured his judgment about what was good for him, for his party and for the country. His narcissism trumped his patriotism.

A new New York Times article, “How Biden’s Inner Circle Protected a Faltering President,” reveals that Biden was encased in the same sort of delusional bubble as Trump. Mimicking Trump’s self-serving sycophants, Biden’s staff ginned up positive comments from allies to show the boss and protected him from negative stories.

Many noticed that Biden was in a fog, or “dans les vapes”, as an aide to President Emmanuel Macron of France called it. But challenges to the Panglossian narrative about the president’s stamina and mental fitness were met with hostility. Jill Biden and advisers spun a Trump-like web of deceit around the White House.

Even Biden himself now admits that he isn’t certain he could have made it through four more years. “Who knows what I’m going to be when I’m 86 years old?” he recently told USA Today’s Susan Page.

But he persisted with his fiction that he was hale and hearty long enough to ensure that Democrats had no time to choose a ticket with a real shot at stopping Trump.

As Biden, baked in Washington tradition, dutifully follows the script on Monday, he should ponder what his legacy will truly be: resurrecting Trump.

Dear Commons Community,

Bowing to national security concerns raised by members of the U.S. Congress, the University of Michigan (UM) last week announced it will terminate an institute run with an elite Chinese university that has funded joint biomedical and energy research and trained science and engineering students.

UM’s 20-year partnership with Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) is the latest academic casualty of rising geopolitical tensions between the United States and China. In September 2024, the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) pulled out of a joint institute it operated for 10 years with Tianjin University. And the University of California (UC), Berkeley is relinquishing ownership in a research hub it launched with Tsinghua University, known as China’s Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in 2014.  As reported by Science.

The developments reflect “the really deep and steep downturn” in relations between the U.S. and Chinese scientific communities, says Tony Chan, a mathematician at UC Los Angeles and former president of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. “The message is very clear to universities,” he says. “Don’t have anything to do with China.”

Precipitating the UM-SJTU breakup was a blistering September 2024 report from Republican members of the bipartisan U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). It argued that hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. research funding over the past decade have helped China “achieve advancements in dual use, critical, and emerging technologies” such as hypersonic weapons, artificial intelligence, and advanced semiconductors. The report focused much of its ire on the joint ventures involving Georgia Tech and UC Berkeley.

UM came in the crosshairs in a 31 October 2024 letter from the chair of the select committee, Representative John Moolenaar (R–MI). He called on UM President Santa Ono to sever the university’s ties with SJTU because they “appear to create the same risks as those partnerships” targeted in his panel’s report. Moolenaar asserted that a number of the joint institute’s projects had advanced China’s defense and intelligence capabilities, including those focusing on rocket fuel research, anticorrosion technology for military aircraft, and 6G wireless networks.

SJTU was a pioneer in forging academic links with the U.S.: It was the first Chinese university to visit the U.S. after the two nations began to normalize relations in 1978. These days, Moolenaar asserted, SJTU “plays a critical role” in the CCP’s “military-civil fusion strategy.” And he noted that, in October 2024, federal prosecutors charged five Chinese students formerly with the UM-SJTU institute with covering up a midnight visit in 2023 to Camp Grayling, a remote military base in Michigan. The students took and then tried to delete photos of military vehicles, prosecutors allege.

UM is terminating the joint institute in light of the “significant concerns regarding national security and the integrity of [UM’s] academic research enterprise,” Ono wrote in a 10 January letter to Moolenaar. Ono stated that all UM-SJTU research projects had been wound up and that UM would “improve the vetting of visa requests for international students.”

“It’s a shame” the partnership had to end, says environmental health scientist Edward Zellers, a UM emeritus professor who collaborated a decade ago with SJTU physicist Hou Zhongyu on an instrument for analyzing breath biomarkers. Zellers says UM seemed attuned to national security concerns: It “scrutinized our work very carefully.” But he’s “not surprised” UM is shuttering the institute: “Maybe there was nefarious activity,” he says.

SJTU had not issued a statement on UM’s decision before Science went to press. At a higher education forum at Westlake University in China in October 2024, SJTU President Ding Kuiling said deteriorating China-U.S. relations had made it challenging to renew the agreement governing the joint institute before the universities signed a 10-year extension in 2023. The institute’s thousands of alumni had “played a very important role” in demonstrating the value of the partnership, he said.

Hoping to avert a total breakdown in scientific and academic ties, the U.S. and Chinese governments last month signed an extension of their 45-year-old Science and Technology Agreement. The pact lays out conditions for R&D collaborations between government entities in areas such as disease surveillance and clean energy, and serves as a template for university partnerships. Still, China’s top universities are increasingly forging alliances elsewhere. Fudan University, for example, in recent years launched the BRICS Universities League and the Fudan-Latin America University Consortium to promote ties outside the U.S. and Western Europe. “We’re reshaping our global cooperation framework,” Fudan President Jin Li told attendees at the Westlake forum.

Chan, who after leaving Hong Kong was president of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, warns that a “decoupling” of the Chinese and U.S. academic communities is bound to hurt both countries. “It’s not good for science,” he says. “And it doesn’t look like things are going to get better anytime soon.”

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, I was a member of a higher education group that started exchanges with China on matters relating to education and technology.  I made two extended visits to Shanxi Province and colleagues from Shanxi subsequently visited CUNY here in New York.  It was by far among the most important exchanges of my professional career.  I came to understand the Chinese education system and vice versa. However, the goodwill and comradery between participants was the highlight.  On September 11, 2001, when the World Trade Center was attacked, the first email I received asking about my safety was from one of my Chinese colleagues, Li Sidian.

Sad that exchanges and joint efforts between our countries are ending!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

After more than a year of devastating war, the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas began today, pausing the 15-month conflict between Israel and the Palestinian militant group in the Gaza Strip.

The deal is the most significant breakthrough in the war, but its implementation is complex and fragile. It requires cooperation between Palestinian militant groups, the International Red Cross, the Israeli military, mediators from multiple countries and an Israeli government whose coalition is starting to fray as hard-line ministers express their disapproval.

The pause has lifted spirits in Gaza, where 90% of the population has been displaced by Israel’s punishing ground and air bombardments, and vast swaths of the territory reduced to rubble.

In Israel, families are desperate to embrace relatives Hamas took captive in the Oct. 7, 2023 cross-border attack that triggered the war. Israel says 98 hostages are still being held in Gaza, but little is known about their conditions, including if they are even still alive.  As reported by The Associated Press.

What will happen Today?

The ceasefire goes into effect at 8:30 a.m. local time (0630 GMT). According to the plan, three living female hostages are to be released after 4 p.m. (1400 GMT). Soon afterward, Israel will release around 95 Palestinian prisoners, who are mostly minors or female.

Hamas was supposed to provide Israel with the names of the three hostages on Saturday afternoon, but as of late Saturday night, Israel still had not received the names. The names are to be made public only after the hostages are returned and officially identified.

In southern Israel, schools will begin only at 10 a.m. in anticipation that Hamas could launch rockets toward Israel just before the ceasefire begins.

Israeli troops inside Gaza will be deployed mostly among the territory’s borders with Israel and Egypt, and maintain a presence on a road that divides northern and southern Gaza, according to a map released by the Israeli military.

Meanwhile, hundreds of trucks carrying desperately needed humanitarian supplies are expected to pour into Gaza.

What will happen in the first week?

If the ceasefire holds, the next exchange is set for the seventh day of the ceasefire, or Jan. 25. Hamas is supposed to release four living female hostages. In exchange, Israel will release between 30-50 Palestinian detainees for each hostage.

Also on the seventh day, Israel’s ground troops begin withdrawing from the central road that bisects the territory, known as the Netzarim corridor. This will enable Palestinians displaced from northern Gaza to begin to return to what is left of their homes.

Security arrangements, including the inspections of Palestinians heading north, are still being hammered out, according to an Israeli military official who spoke on condition of anonymity under military guidelines.

In each exchange, prisoners will be released only after the hostages have arrived safely in Israel. All Palestinian prisoners who were convicted in deadly attacks will be exiled, either to Gaza or abroad. Some will be exiled for three years, others permanently.

The Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt is expected to start operating “soon,” according to Egyptian officials, as they prepare for a surge of humanitarian aid into Gaza. The crossing, Gaza’s main gateway to the outside world, has been closed since the Israeli army took over the area last May.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty said on Saturday that Egypt hopes to facilitate more than 600 trucks of aid per day going into Gaza, almost three times the amount of peak levels during the war. “The most important thing now, in addition to the sustainability of the ceasefire, is to fix the disastrous humanitarian situation inside the Gaza Strip,” he said.

What is the first phase?

The first phase will last six weeks, or 42 days. In total, Hamas is to release 33 hostages in exchange for almost 2,000 Palestinians held by Israel. There is no information about how many hostages in the first group of 33 are alive. The hostages most likely to be on the list include women, children, elderly and sick hostages.

The prisoners and detainees that Israel will release include over 700 Palestinian prisoners from the Israel-occupied West Bank and Jerusalem whom Israel accuses of being involved in militant activity, as well as almost 1,200 Palestinians from Gaza who are held in Israeli detention.

As the ceasefire progresses, three hostages will be freed each week in exchange for prisoners and detainees.

By the end of the sixth week, all the remaining hostages on the initial list of 33 hostages will be released.

What happens after?

During the third week of the ceasefire, the sides are to open negotiations on “Phase 2″ that aims to end the war altogether.

But there are scant details on what happens after the first six weeks. To help convince both sides to sign on to the ceasefire, foreign mediators left the second phase particularly ambiguous.

The broad outline says all remaining hostages in Gaza, both alive and dead, are to be released in return for a complete Israeli withdrawal from the strip and a “sustainable calm.”

Israel says it won’t agree to a complete withdrawal until Hamas’ military and political capabilities are eliminated, ensuring it can no longer rule. Hamas refuses to hand over the last Israeli hostages until Israel ends the war and removes all its troops.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, hoping to persuade his far-right allies to remain in his wobbly governing coalition despite their opposition to a ceasefire, has offered the public no guarantees that Israel will make it to Phase 2. That leaves many families of hostages afraid that loved ones still in Gaza will be left behind.

“We must protect our ability to return to fighting if we need,” Netanyahu said late Saturday.

A step forward to peace but not a guarantee!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled to uphold a law that forces TikTok to divest its Chinese ownership to avert a nationwide ban set to take effect on Sunday, in an opinion issued yesterday.

“There is no doubt that, for more than 170 million Americans, TikTok offers a distinctive and expansive outlet for expression, means of engagement, and source of community,” the opinion reads.

“But Congress has determined that divestiture is necessary to address its well-supported national security concerns regarding TikTok’s data collection practices and relationship with a foreign adversary. For the foregoing reasons, we conclude that the challenged provisions do not violate petitioners’ First Amendment rights,” it continues. 

All nine justices had appeared skeptical of TikTok’s argument that the law violates the First Amendment rights of the platform and its user base of over 170 million Americans during the hearing last week.  As reported by the Huffington Post.

“Are we supposed to ignore the fact that the ultimate parent is, in fact, subject to doing intelligence work for the Chinese government?” Chief Justice John Roberts asked.

TikTok has faced scrutiny for years over its ties to China despite its efforts to dampen concerns.

President Joe Biden in April signed the law that required ByteDance to sell the U.S. assets of TikTok or see the platform be removed from app stores in the U.S. on Jan. 19, a day ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s Inauguration. However, Biden this week signaled he will not enforce the ban, handing over the issue to Trump.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre appeared to confirm Biden’s position.

“Given the sheer fact of timing, this Administration recognizes that actions to implement the law simply must fall to the next Administration, which takes office on Monday,” she said in a statement.

In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump conceded “the decision was expected, and everyone must respect it.”

“My decision on TikTok will be made in the not too distant future, but I must have time to review the situation,” he said. “Stay tuned!”

Trump did not share any further details on his plan for the platform’s future in the U.S.

The president-elect has reportedly already been exploring possible ways to undo the legislation, including via an executive order, according to The Washington Post. The move, though, would stand on shaky legal ground, the outlet explained.

Trump, who tried to ban TikTok during his first term in office, has since had a change of heart and recently called on the Supreme Court to stay implementation of a potential ban to allow him to pursue a “political resolution” to the issue at hand.

But TikTok’s prospects in the U.S. have looked dim for some time now.

TikTok sued the U.S. federal government shortly after Biden signed the legislation into law, describing it as unconstitutional.

A federal appeals court last month ruled against TikTok, and later also denied the company’s request to delay enforcement of the legislation, before the Supreme Court announced it would review the case.

The Supreme Court’s opinion upheld that federal appeals court decision by rejecting arguments made by TikTok and content creators on the platform that the law violated their First Amendment right to free speech.

Much of the ruling centered on whether the law forcing a TikTok sale from ByteDance directly impinged on the free speech rights of the company and users. The high court determined that, while the law did prompt free speech concerns, it ultimately could stand because it targeted speech in a “content-neutral” manner and provided non-content-based rationales.

“It is not clear that the Act itself directly regulates protected expressive activity, or conduct with an expressive component,” the court said. “Indeed, the Act does not regulate the creator petitioners at all. And it directly regulates ByteDance Ltd. and TikTok Inc. only through the divestiture requirement.”

Crucially, legislators backing the law cited data protection and national security as their chief rationales for supporting it.

“Data collection and analysis is a common practice in this digital age,” the high court said. “But TikTok’s scale and susceptibility to foreign adversary control, together with the vast swaths of sensitive data the platform collects, justify differential treatment to address the Government’s national security concerns.”

The U.S. government argued that the Chinese government has a long history of obtaining extensive information on U.S. citizens through illegal means ― including hacks of the Office of Personnel Management and the credit-scoring company Equifax ― and that TikTok’s data collection practices presented China with another opportunity to build detailed profiles of U.S. citizens that could be used for espionage, blackmail or recruitment in the future.

The court did not consider the potential threat of content manipulation on TikTok that the U.S. government provided as another justification for the law alongside its concerns about data protection. In a concurrence, Justice Neil Gorsuch noted that “One man’s ‘covert content manipulation’ is another’s ‘editorial discretion.’”

He added, “It makes no difference that Americans (like TikTok Inc. and many of its users) may wish to make decisions about what they say in concert with a foreign adversary.”

ByteDance has long said it has no plans to sell the U.S. assets of its platform despite the fact that at least one U.S. buyer has formally declared interest.

Project Liberty, an organization founded by billionaire Frank McCourt, the former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, and its partners, including “Shark Tank” investor Kevin O’Leary, have made a formal bid to acquire the U.S. assets of the platform.

In a message posted to the platform following the decision, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew praised Trump “for his commitment to work with us to find a solution that keeps TikTok available in the United States.” Chew’s statement indicated that the company does not plan to shut down the platform on Jan. 19 as previously promised.

We do not get many unanimous U.S. Supreme Court decisions!.

Tony

A rescued moose emerges from icy waters with the aid of forest rangers and police officers on Lake Abanakee in Indian Lake, New York. (New York State’s Department of Environmental Conservation photo via AP).

Dear Commons Community,

A bull moose that fell through lake ice in the Adirondack Mountains was saved by New York conservation officials in a laborious cold-water rescue.

The moose fell through the ice around 11 a.m. Thursday, about 200 feet (60 meters) from shore on Lake Abanakee, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation announced in a statement yesterday. That lake is near the town of Indian Lake, about 60 miles south of Lake Placid and west of the Vermont border.  As reported by The Associated Press.

“There’s not training manual for getting moose out of the ice,” said Environmental Conservation Police officer, Lt. Robert Higgins, in a video statement recounting the event.

Higgins was dispatched to the lake thanks to a passerby who saw the moose break through the ice and called it in. Higgins asked for backup, and was quickly joined by a pair of forest rangers.

In New York, moose are sometimes poached by humans, and a handful die every year due to being hit by cars, according to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. Across the U.S., these giant deer cousins face challenges from human-caused habitat loss and human-caused climate change that has led to warm summers and oppressive tick infestations, which can cause them to lose their fur.

For this moose, the humans came to help. Moose can die from hypothermia, and they can’t easily climb onto ice once they have fallen through into water. Ice rescues are dangerous because the rescuers can also fall through.

“We were able use our ice rescue training to safely get out there,” said Forest Ranger Evan Nahor, in the video statement.

First they put on dry suits, so they would float and stay warm if they ended up in the water. Then they used a long metal “spud bar” to test the thickness of the ice, which varied from about one to four inches (2.5 to 10 centimeters). They brought safety ropes so that if one fell in, the others could pull them out.

They navigated a path across the lake, following the thickest path to the moose without breaking through, and knelt on sleds to distribute their weight.

The forest rangers used a chainsaw to cut away sections of ice connecting the area where the moose broke through to a thicker section of ice, while Higgins pushed the ice blocks underneath the channel, to get them out of the way.

The hope was for the moose to swim down the channel and climb out. A bull moose can weigh around 1,000 pounds (455 kilograms), so there wasn’t much chance of them being able to pull it out safely.

The moose didn’t swim toward the thick ice, so they tried to herd it down the channel they had cut. The bull moose wasn’t intimidated by the officials or their big metal sticks.

It was intimidated by their sleds.

“For whatever reason it was scared of those. So once we got behind it, we were able to direct it,” said Matt Savarie, the other forest ranger.

The giant moose quickly crawled onto the ice, but the cold and constant treading water — the ordeal lasted around 2 hours — had taken its toll.

“It was really tired. It was shivering. It didn’t have much energy left,” Higgins said. “We didn’t know if it was going to be able to stand up or not.”

After 15 minutes, it found its footing and got up.

“It was just an amazing sight to see that huge moose stand up right in front of us,” he said.

Then it walked off into the woods.

You don’t see this everyday and glad the moose is okay! 

And God bless our first responders!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

James Davis, President of the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), announced earlier this week that PSC members overwhelmingly approved a new contract with the City University of New York.

Below is his statement and summary of key provisions. 

Congratulations to the PSC leadership!

Tony

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PSC Members,

I’m proud to announce that the 30,000 faculty and professional staff represented by PSC will receive long-overdue raises, along with other contractual gains, because an overwhelming 90 percent majority of PSC members voted to ratify the new PSC-CUNY contract.

The agreement between the PSC and CUNY management includes 13.4 percent minimum raises, a $3,000 ratification bonus (prorated for part-time faculty and staff), and additional equity increases in salary for our colleagues in CUNY’s lowest-paid titles, including teaching adjuncts. The raises are retroactive to March 1, 2023.

The timing of payment of the bonus and back pay, and the dates on which our increased rates will appear in paychecks, are still being determined. We believe the payments will be made as soon as practicable in Spring 2025 and will inform members as soon as dates are known, with as much advance notice as possible. The timing is affected by CUNY’s payroll processing and by processing at the City (for Community Colleges) and State (for Senior Colleges) Comptroller’s offices.

After more than 40 bargaining sessions and two years of organizing, members got to decide and 66% percent of eligible voters participated in the three-week ratification, of whom 90% voted yes. The bargaining sessions, open to union members, were observed by more than 900 faculty and staff. Thousands more participated in union-wide meetings, marches, pickets, press events, and protests of the CUNY Board of Trustees. Thirty PSC members were arrested demanding a good contract at an October Trustees hearing. Every significant gain in this contract is the result of PSC members’ solidarity and action. Thank you to all who participated in the campaign and to all who voted.

Other enhancements in the contract include, but are not limited to, investments in the PSC-CUNY Welfare Fund that provides supplemental health benefits, expansion of Paid Parental Leave from 8 to 12 weeks, protections against outsourcing of teaching to AI, new paths to promotion, a major step toward adjunct pay parity, improvements to reclassification and comp time for HEOs, assurance of a raise with promotion or reclassification, and additional support for research and professional development.

Job security for adjunct faculty was a site of significant struggle throughout the negotiations, after management refused to renew the multi-year appointment pilot agreement established in an earlier round of bargaining. But this new contract rebuilds a multi-year appointment pilot agreement for teaching adjuncts that provides two-year appointments with a discretionary third year. We did not win a contractual provision on remote work, but the current Remote Work Agreement remains in effect.

• Click here for a summary of contract highlights, title-specific graphics, frequently asked questions, the full Memorandum of Agreement, and more.

The union’s work is not done! The City and State Budget sessions will soon be underway. Our spring membership campaign is essentially the first phase of the next contract struggle. The gains we did not achieve in this round will become more possible as we increase membership rates and strengthen our union. And finally, we’re excited to begin the work of contract implementation: educating members about improvements to our terms and conditions, ensuring that every new or expanded benefit and every opportunity for professional advancement is fully realized for every member who is eligible, and pushing management to get you the money you are owed as soon as possible.

It has been my great honor to lead the PSC bargaining team in the negotiations. I thank them for their extraordinary service and commend every member who contributed to the success of our contract campaign.

In solidarity,
James Davis, PSC President