Welcome to CaturSaturday, June 28, 2025 and in a week I’ll be flying to Helsinki on the first stage of my Arctic trip. It is of course shabbos for Jewish cats, and National Foodie Day, celebrating all people who like food (see the Wikipedia entry here). I wouldn’t trust someone who didn’t like food! It’s hard to believe, but many people seem to regard food as fuel that propels them through life, and not as one of the wonders of life itself. And imagine how many foods there are that haven’t been invented or that don’t exist! It boggles the mind.

The best literature for foodies includes anything by Calvin Trillen as well as a marvelous but largely unknown book, Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris by A. J. Liebling.

It’s also National Ceviche Day, INTERNATIONAL CAPSLOCK DAY, and Great American Picnic Day.

Posting will be lighter than usual this week as I am preparing for a Big Trip, but bear with me. I do my best.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 28 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The Supreme Court ruled on several cases yesterday in favor of Trump’s position. The one that stunned me was their upholding Trump’s position that children born on U.S. soil, most especially children of immigrants who came here illegally, are not U.S. citizens by virtue of their birth location. From the NYT (archived here):

Here’s the NYT list of Supreme Court rulings on emergency cases. Of fourteen of them, eleven (with yellowish coloration) were in favor of the Administration.  We’re going to have to get used to 6-3 votes. Click to enlarge:

From another NYT article (archived here) on the most important decision, which was part of the “no birthright” decision described above (the first one on the list).

The Supreme Court ruling barring judges from swiftly blocking government actions, even when they may be illegal, is yet another way that checks on executive authority have eroded as President Trump pushes to amass more power.

The decision on Friday, by a vote of 6 to 3, will allow Mr. Trump’s executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship to take effect in some parts of the country — even though every court that has looked at the directive has ruled it unconstitutional. That means some infants born to undocumented immigrants or foreign visitors without green cards can be denied citizenship-affirming documentation like Social Security numbers.

But the diminishing of judicial authority as a potential counterweight to exercises of presidential power carries implications far beyond the issue of citizenship. The Supreme Court is effectively tying the hands of lower-court judges at a time when they are trying to respond to a steady geyser of aggressive executive branch orders and policies.

The ability of district courts to swiftly block Trump administration actions from being enforced in the first place has acted as a rare effective check on his second-term presidency. But generally, the pace of the judicial process is slow and has struggled to keep up. Actions that already took place by the time a court rules them illegal, like shutting down an agency or sending migrants to a foreign prison without due process, can be difficult to unwind.

Here’s the full “birthright” case decision; click to read or get pdf. Justice Barrett delivered the opinion, which is 26 pages long, but there are over 90 pages of concurring or dissenting opinions.

From Sotomayor’s dissent:

Children born in the United States and subject to its laws are United States citizens. That has been the legal rule since the founding, and it was the English rule well before then. This Court once attempted to repudiate it, holding in Dred Scott v. Sandford, 19 How. 393 (1857), that the children of enslaved black Americans were not citizens. To remedy that grievous error, the States passed in 1866 and Congress ratified in 1868 the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause, which enshrined birthright citizenship in the Constitution. There it has remained, accepted and respected by Congress, by the Executive, and by this Court. Until today. It is now the President who attempts, in an Executive Order (Order or Citizenship Order), to repudiate birthright citizenship. Every court to evaluate the Order has deemed it patently unconstitutional and, for that reason, has enjoined the Federal Government from enforcing it. Undeterred, the Government now asks this Court to grant emergency relief, insisting it will suffer irreparable harm unless it can deprive at least some children born in the United States of citizenship. See Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship, Exec. Order No. 14160, 90 Fed. Reg. 8849 (2025).

The rule of law is not a given in this Nation, nor any other. It is a precept of our democracy that will endure only if those brave enough in every branch fight for its survival. Today, the Court abdicates its vital role in that effort. With the stroke of a pen, the President has made a “solemn mockery” of our Constitution. Peters, 5 Cranch, at 136. Rather than stand firm, the Court gives way. Because such complicity should know no place in our system of law, I dissent.

She has a point: the Supreme Court has not only overturned precedent but, by allowing the government to commit patently unconstitutional orders, has itself violated its own brief: to enforce the Constitution. This doesn’t seem a matter of interpretation, for the birthright doctrine is set out in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

*And, in yet another dissing of our northern neighbors, Trump has declared that he’s terminating trade talks with Canada because Canada proposes to tax “digital services,” including firms like Facebook and X (article archived here):

President Trump said he terminated trade talks with Canada over what he called an “egregious” digital-services tax on U.S. tech companies, plunging relations with America’s second-largest trading partner back into turmoil.

“Based on this egregious Tax, we are hereby terminating ALL discussions on Trade with Canada, effective immediately,” Trump wrote Friday on Truth Social.

Hand it to Trump to alienate our long-time ally and friend to the North. And he loves asserting that “we have all the cards,” something that he and Vance said when they were humiliating President Zelensky of Ukraine. My strategy is to think “Well, this will all be over in 2028,” but I may be dead then, or they could elect another Republican President, like Vance.

*What Iran will do about its nuclear program clearly depends on how much damage the U.S. did in its bombing of Forda and other sites, and , but an editorial-board op-ed in the WaPo dilates on this (article archived here):

Destroyed, degraded or undiminished: What word best describes the state of Iran’s nuclear program after the U.S. struck three uranium enrichment facilities? This question, which has roiled Washington over the past week, is not a merely semantic one. The outcome of the conflict with Iran depends on its answer.

If the U.S. strike “totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program, as President Donald Trump insists, the United States will have shown that it can destroy at will the regime’s capability of producing nuclear weapons. Diplomacy would still be needed so the United States could avoid having to regularly bomb Iran to prevent it from reconstituting its nuclear program. But Iran would have to come to the table with concessions, including renouncing its nuclear ambitions.

If the U.S. strike resulted in lessthan total obliteration, though, Iran might sense that it is able to defend its nuclear program against overwhelming American firepower. The amount of damage the United States managed to inflict would determine the degree to which the regime feels capable of resisting American attempts to tame it. Diplomacy could be a necessity, not just a best choice, and negotiations might be more difficult for Trump.

At the moment, the facts aren’t clear. A leaked Defense Intelligence Agency assessment suggests the U.S. strike set back Iran’s nuclear program by only a few months, and some senators who attended a classified briefing on the strike left thinking this was the case. But others who attended the same briefing said they believed the strike had done catastrophic damage.

One question is whether the Iranians managed to move some, or even most, of their highly enriched uranium to other locations out of harm’s way. Before the U.S. strike, Iran was believed to have about 880 pounds of uranium enriched to 60 percent purity — far higher than needed for any civilian purpose and close to the 90 percent typically needed to make a bomb. Satellite images showing trucks lined up outside the fortified underground facility at Fordow — the target of those U.S. “bunker buster” bombs — as well as vehicles moving around the Isfahan facility strongly suggest the stockpile was moved. Containers holding the 880 pounds of enriched uranium could fit into a few car trunks. Common sense suggests the Iranians would not have been foolish enough to leave all of their enriched uranium in one spot after Israel launched its first attack on June 13.

The other big question is whether the U.S. strike destroyed the advanced centrifuges Iran needs to refine the uranium it might still have or acquire in the future — or whether other uranium-enriching centrifuges exist at unknown sites hidden from past inspections. With functional centrifuges, the Islamic republic could race to enrich more nuclear fuel. Without them, the regime would be stuck until it could build new ones.

Either way, the technical know-how Iran accumulated over several decades cannot be bombed away.

Fortunately, Trump appears ready to reengage Iran diplomatically — but, so far, Iran is refusing to negotiate,

My guess is that Iran did indeed remove a substantial amount of enriched uranium (60% enriched?) from the enrichment sites, but of course the U.S. and Israel will be able to find out where it is, and if Iran doesn’t negotiate, I also suspect that those countries will resume bombing. But to suggest that negotiation will solve the problem is ridiculous—a stupid Tom Friedman-ian view.  Iran has never negotiated seriously, because it wants a nuclear missile very badly.

Finally, if you’re a dg lover or just an animal lover like me, this will touch you, for Gilbert the Dog lay in state in the Minnesota capitol along with his staff, the two lawmakers who were killed in a brutal attack:

Gilbert the golden retriever was home with Democratic leader and Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband when a gunman fatally shot the couple and mortally wounded their beloved dog. And he was with them again Friday when the Hortmans lay in state at the Capitol in St. Paul.

He is all but certainly the first dog to receive the honor, having been put down after being badly injured in the attack. There is no record of any other nonhuman ever lying in state, and Melissa Hortman, a former state House speaker still leading the chamber’s Democrats, is the first woman. The state previously granted the honor to 19 men, including a vice president, a U.S. secretary of state, U.S. senators, governors and a Civil War veteran, according to the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library.

Hundreds of people waited outside the Capitol before they were allowed into the rotunda at noon to pay their respects. Two pedestals sat between the Hortmans’ caskets, one for an arrangement of flowers and the other, for the gold-colored urn holding Gilbert’s remains.

A memorial outside the House chamber for the Hortmans included a box of Milk-Bone dog biscuits with a sticky note saying, “For the best boy, Gilbert.”

“We’ve all had family, pets, and it’s tragic to have the whole family lost in in a moment like that,” said Kacy Deschene, who came to the Capitol from the Minneapolis suburb of Champlin.

Gilbert has received a flood of tributes like Hortman and her husband, Mark, ever since news spread online that he had been shot, too, in the attack early on the morning of June 14 by a man posing as a police officer. The accused assassin, Vance Boelter, is also charged with shooting a prominent Democratic state senator and his wife, and authorities say Boelter visited two other Democratic lawmakers’ homes without encountering them.

Here’s a news video showing the caskets and Gilbert’s urn and photo:

It’s bad enough to kill two humans for political reasons, but shooting their dog, too? What is the reason for that? I doubt that it was because it alerted its staff by barking, so it was likely a case of complete sociopathy.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili appears to be looking for the Philosopher’s Stone:

Hili: There was a philosophical pebble somewhere here.

Andrzej: He could have fallen in a well.

In Polish:

*******************

From Things with Faces, a sea lion yam!!!!

From Jesus of the Day:

From Now That’s Wild; use the Oxford Comma:

Ayatollah Khamenei in Iran doesn’t like Masih’s metaphors:

Iran’s Berlin Wall moment!

Leader Islamic Republic @khamenei_ir responded to my statement that hijab is like the “Berlin Wall” & if we tear down this wall, the Islamic Republic will fall.

He asked his army to take action against me!@Twitter! Ban him.
pic.twitter.com/9yEYImMpVP

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) October 10, 2022

Reposted by J. K. Rowling:

Next time you think about marching through London with a placard declaring the Iranian theocracy to be on “the right side of history”, just bear in mind this is a regime that takes out women’s eyes for protesting against their horrible misogyny. How progressive. pic.twitter.com/Z8SIKnopNQ

— Nick Tyrone (@NicholasTyrone) June 23, 2025

From Malcolm; the best beatboxer in the world (or so it says). It’s pretty amazing:

Best beatboxer in the world right now

[📹 Wing / wing7ackpot]pic.twitter.com/kY5IAQfy1E

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) June 19, 2025

From Luana.  This is about a month old, but it’s still telling:

🧵CRITICAL GAZA UPDATE: Hamas released a new fatality list on May 11 with 53,000 deaths. It reveals:
✅Combat-age deaths are 72% male → 16,000 excess
✅Teens (13–17): 65% male; confirms child combatants
✅Data contradicts claims of indiscriminate attacks pic.twitter.com/vOCQm5ghFj

— Aizenberg (@Aizenberg55) May 28, 2025

Two from my feed. First, a heartwarming post:

Chimp’s reaction to seeing a careraker, one who rescued and cared for him years ago.. 🥺 pic.twitter.com/x3GMQnFrmY

— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) June 27, 2025

A great idea!

Next level birdwatching. pic.twitter.com/9KIVvnYZDv

— Fascinating (@fasc1nate) June 27, 2025

One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

This French Jewish girl was gassed to death immediately after arriving at Auschwitz. She was two years old and would be 85 today if the Nazis hadn't murdered her.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-06-28T09:50:00.408Z

Two posts from Dr. Cobb.  First, another wonder of natural selection:

In what may be one of Earth’s craziest forms of mimicry, researchers in 2023 reported a species of rove beetle that grows a termite puppet on its back to fool real termites into feeding it.Learn more during #InsectWeek: scim.ag/4nmJLMv

— EwA (Earthwise Aware) (@earthwiseaware.bsky.social) 2025-06-27T09:17:42.803Z

The unique human chin remains a mystery, though it may simply be a byproduct of evolutionary changes in the rest of the skull. This was Stephen Jay Gould’s contention.

Why evolution can explain human testicle size but not our unique chinstheconversation.com/why-evolutio…

— Max Telford (@maxjtelford.bsky.social) 2025-06-26T15:53:35.205Z

I’ve been meaning to post this for some time; it’s a letter from a petulant Wall Street Journal reader who’s respondong to my op-ed about the KerFFRFle: my clash with the Freedom from Religion Foundation about whether, as one of its fellows wrote, “A woman is whoever she says she is.” The reader thinks that this self-identification is a perfectly good definition of “woman” as opposed to the gamete-based definition that most biologists hold.

The psychologically-based definition implies that the objective reality of who you are is exactly who you think you are.  I won’t go over that well-trodden ground except to say again that there are lots of people who claim to be things or people that are not objectively true, like all the religious people who claim to be prophets.  But just check the Oxford English definition for “woman,” and you won’t find anything based on self-conception. Instead, you find this:

I guess the OED hasn’t caught up to progressive wordsmithing!

At any rate, David Opderbeck, a professor of law at Seton Hall University, had a rather confused response in the WSJ, which I’ve put below. I’ll have a few words about it after you read it:

What is the sweating professor trying to say? First, Dr. Opoderbeck doesn’t seem to realize that the conflict is about the biological definition of “woman”, and so he claims that there can be many definitions of woman, presumably including men who say they are women.

Now this part I don’t understand at all:

. . . . . when they otherwise vigorously deny that there is any objective reality to traditional ontological categories. A “human,” for dogmatic materialists such as Mr. Coyne, after all, is nothing but a random configuration of matter, without substance, intentionality, teleology, mind or being beyond the entirely contingent fact that matter happens to have configured itself in a certain way in this moment of evolutionary time.

How do we chop through this thicket of verbal weeds? Of course I accept that there is an objective reality to an individual human, and of course a human can be defined as a member of a group, Homo sapiens, having certain biological traits (note the similarity to “woman”).  As for the claim that reality has to involve teleology about material objects that “happen to have configured themselves in a certain way at this moment of evolutionary time,” it’s opaque if not ludicrous.  There is no teleology in evolution, and matter does not “configure itself.” If that were true, I’d configure myself into the young Robert Redford. But all this confusing verbiage, I detect a whiff of religion, And that supposition is supported by the observation that Opderbeck got his master’s degree at Fuller Theological Seminary, and has written some books with a theological bent:

His first two books, Law and Theology: Classic Questions and Contemporary Perspectives (Fortress Press 2019) and The End of the Law? Law, Theology, and Neuroscience (Wipf & Stock / Cascade 2021) received broad acclaim. His third book, Faithful Exchange: The Economy as It’s Meant to Be, a theological assessment of economic paradigms informed by rule of law principles, will be released by Fortress Press in 2025. In addition to his appointment at the Law School, he is Affiliated Faculty in Seton Hall’s Department of Religion.

Theology is, as Dan Barker observed, a subject without an object, and “theological assessments of economic paradigms” seems a very weird thing to do.

Welcome to the Cruelest Day: Tuesday, in this case June 3, 2025. It’s also Chimborazo Day, celebrating the Ecuadorian mountain that has this distinction.

Chimborazo Day celebrates the spot on the Earth that is closest to the moon and farthest from the center of the Earth. Chimborazo is an inactive volcano that is in the Cordillera Occidental range of the Andes Mountains in central Ecuador, and has an elevation of 20,565 feet. Although Chimborazo has a lower elevation than Mt. Everest, because of its spot near the Equator it is the farthest from the Earth’s center and closest to the moon. The Earth is not a perfect sphere, but rather it is an oblate spheroid. The Equatorial diameter is larger than the Polar diameter, and Chimborazo lies close to the former. Being that it lies on this Equatorial bulge, it sticks about a mile and a half farther into space than Mt. Everest.

Here’s the mountain as seen from Riobamba in Ecuador (I’ve also seen it):

It’s also National Egg Day, World Cider Day, and National Chocolate Macaroon Day (the good kind, not the overpriced macaron).

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 3 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*People in Boulder, Colorado, demonstrating peacefully for the Israeli hostages in Gaza, became the victims of a terrorist attack—a man with a flamethrower and Molotov cocktails.

A weekly demonstration in support of Israeli hostages erupted into chaos in Boulder, Colo., when a man using what was described as a “makeshift flamethrower” by officials attacked a group quietly marching down a pedestrian mall.

The group, a familiar one in Boulder, has walked through downtown regularly since late 2023, to remind the community of the hostages taken by Hamas in the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in Israel. They often wear red, speak the names of the hostages, and sometimes sing. And they agree to return the next Sunday, same time, same place.

That ritual was shattered when the man, later identified as Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45, yelled “Free Palestine” and threw an incendiary device into the crowd, according to Mark Michalek, the F.B.I. special agent in charge. Within moments, smoke and screams filled the air. Victims fell to the ground. Others tried to put out flames with discarded clothes.

The incident intensified fears as the latest attack on the Jewish community in the United States, coming after two Israeli embassy employees were shot and killed last month outside an event at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., and the residence of Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania was burned by an arsonist. . . .

• A peaceful gathering: The victims were participating in Run for Their Lives, a weekly event that has brought attention to the Israeli hostages being held in Gaza since the Thanksgiving after the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks in Israel. “Our walk has been nothing ever but peaceful, and this was a blatant act of antisemitism on the streets of Boulder,” said Rachel Amaru, a leader of the group.

Here’s a news video showing the perp, who faces multiple charges, including murder. Apparently he expected to die in the attack, but did not.

*Breaking (as of yesterday afternoon): The suspect, who has been charged with attempted murder, was in the U.S. illegally:

The suspect in the Boulder, Colo., attack on supporters of Israeli hostages in Gaza is an Egyptian citizen whose American tourist visa had expired, the Department of Homeland Security said on Monday. Investigators were delving into the background and motive of the suspect, who left eight people hospitalized with burns and other injuries.

The Boulder Police Department said that none of the victims had died in the attack.

The suspect, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, entered the United States from Egypt in August 2022 and stayed illegally after the visa expired in February 2023, said Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security.

“The Colorado Terrorist attack suspect, Mohamed Soliman, is illegally in our country,” Ms. McLaughlin said in a post on social media. She added that he had filed for asylum in September 2022, but gave no additional details.

The attack, which the authorities said they were investigating as an act of terrorism, occurred on Sunday when a man used a “makeshift flamethrower” to attack people who were marching peacefully in support of Israeli hostages being held in Gaza, officials said. Mr. Soliman, 45, was taken into custody after witnesses identified him as the assailant, and was booked on multiple felony charges in the Boulder County Jail. He was due in court Monday at 1:30 p.m. local time.

Two of those injured were in serious condition on Sunday, officials said.

You can be sure that Kristi Noem will make a television commercial touting the illegal dalliance in the U.S., but as we know from the D.C. shooting, whether or not someone is here illegally isn’t the main factor in these antisemitic crimes.

*Iran, bent on having nuclear weapons, has said it’s rejecting the U.S. proposal to loosen sanctions in return for Iran not making bombs.

Iran is poised to reject a U.S. proposal to end a decades-old nuclear dispute, an Iranian diplomat said on Monday, dismissing it as a “non-starter” that fails to address Tehran’s interests or soften Washington’s stance on uranium enrichment.

“Iran is drafting a negative response to the U.S. proposal, which could be interpreted as a rejection of the U.S. offer,” the senior diplomat, who is close to Iran’s negotiating team, told Reuters.

The U.S. proposal for a new nuclear deal was presented to Iran on Saturday by Omani Foreign Minister Sayyid Badr Albusaidi, who was on a short visit to Tehran and has been mediating talks between Tehran and Washington.

After five rounds of discussions between Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi and President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, several obstacles remain.

Among them are Iran’s rejection of a U.S. demand that it commit to scrapping uranium enrichment and its refusal to ship abroad its entire existing stockpile of highly enriched uranium – possible raw material for nuclear bombs.

Tehran says it wants to master nuclear technology for peaceful purposes and has long denied accusations by Western powers that it is seeking to develop nuclear weapons.

“In this proposal, the U.S. stance on enrichment on Iranian soil remains unchanged, and there is no clear explanation regarding the lifting of sanctions,” said the diplomat, who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter.

Araqchi said Tehran would formally respond to the proposal soon. The U.S. State Department declined to comment.

Tehran demands the immediate removal of all U.S.-imposed curbs that impair its oil-based economy. But the U.S. says nuclear-related sanctions should be removed in phases.

Dozens of institutions vital to Iran’s economy, including its central bank and national oil company, have been blacklisted since 2018 for, according to Washington, “supporting terrorism or weapons proliferation”.

Now why on earth would Iran want to keep enriching uranium beyond that needed for “peaceful purposes”? More important, why does anybody believe what this terrorist nation of Islamist lying autocrats say?  Well, if they reject the U.S. proposal, I’d say that the chance are better than even that Israel would be given the go-ahead by the U.S. to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, perhaps even in consort with the U.S., which has bombs big enough to do serious damage.  Why does Iran want a bomb so badly? Guess!!

*Greg Lukianoff’s new article in The Atlantic (archived) is called “Trump attacks threaten much more than Harvard“; the subtitle is “If the government succeeds in bullying the riches university into submission, what institutions will be safe?”

On May 22, the Department of Homeland Security stripped Harvard University of its Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification, instantly jeopardizing the visas of nearly 6,800 international students—27 percent of the student body.

But the Trump administration’s attack didn’t end there. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s letter announcing this move also doubled as a request for documents, instructing Harvard to deliver five years of video or audio of “any protest activity involving a non-immigrant student,” plus disciplinary files, before the ban will be reconsidered.

The administration justified its actions by invoking Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, the federal law that prohibits colleges and universities from discriminating on the basis of race, color, or national origin. However, the proper enforcement of Title VI requires an investigation, an attempt to negotiate a resolution, a formal hearing, and 30 days’ notice to Congress before a single dollar is yanked.

The Trump administration took none of those steps before announcing the intended outcome.

This is one among many reasons these moves are so egregious and unconstitutional. The government’s demand that Harvard turn over five years of footage of protests—a time frame that, tellingly, is not limited to the Gaza protests since October 7 that got out of control or involved illegal behavior—is one of the more chilling things I’ve seen in my almost-25-year career defending free expression on college campuses. These actions threaten not just Harvard, but every institution of higher education on American soil. That’s true regardless of your criticisms of Harvard, and I have plenty of those.

Lukianoff has criticized Harvard strongly, as he does here, saying that it’s an “intellectual monoculture” (true). Nevertheless. . .

However, it would be dishonest to pretend that the federal government just woke up one day and decided to target this university out of nowhere. That needs to be acknowledged, even if the Trump administration’s actions are still egregiously unconstitutional and present a real threat to academic freedom on all campuses.

The administration’s attack on academic freedom will not end with Harvard. Noem has already said that this should “serve as a warning to all universities and academic institutions.”

Fans of the Trump administration’s actions shrug at the stakes here. But they should remember that rights are indivisible: If the government can coerce the richest school in America without due process, it can crush a community college—or a civil-liberties nonprofit—without batting an eyelid.

This is the primary reason, if Harvard loses, the precedent that loss will set won’t stay in Cambridge. Republicans who cheer today should take a moment’s pause from their schadenfreude and recognize that they might lament tomorrow, when a different president decides that, say, Hillsdale College or a Southern Baptist seminary is “too extremist” to keep its tax-exempt status.

More than two decades of protecting free speech on college campuses has taught me many things, and one of them is that the sword is always double-edged. That’s why we need to fight its improper use, no matter which way it’s slicing.

Lukianoff is right, even though he fully realizes Harvard’s problems.  The University must not cave in to the government—as Columbia did.

*This is old-ish news but still ironic.  In an unprecedented move, Harvard revoked the tenure of a full professor of business, whose research—get this—was about people cheat and lie.  It was discovered that she manipulated data in her own papers, and that’s all she wrote. Literally.

Harvard Business School has revoked the tenure of Francesca Gino, once a star faculty member, after a lengthy university investigation that concluded she engaged in multiple instances of research misconduct. 

The penalty, confirmed by Harvard spokeswoman Sarah Kennedy-O’Reilly, is a rare termination in academia and ends Gino’s relationship with the school.

Tenure can be terminated only for cause or under extraordinary circumstances, according to the American Association of University Professors, an organization founded in 1915 that develops standards for higher education. Gino, who didn’t respond to requests for comment, is no longer listed on the Harvard Business School website.

Gino’s behavioral science studies examined topics like why people lie and cheat, and what factors, such as guilt, can influence behavior. She received tenure in 2014.

Harvard began to look into her work in 2021, after the trio of behavioral scientists behind the blog named Data Colada—Leif Nelson, Uri Simonsohn and Joe Simmons—scrutinized some of Gino’s work and flagged what they called irregularities in the data.

In June 2023, after completing its own probe and concluding that four papers Gino co-authored contained manipulated data, the university placed her on administrative leave and later began a review of her tenure. The probe had recommended she be fired.

Around the same time, the Data Colada bloggers published their criticisms of the four papers in a series of posts.

Three papers have since been retracted. The fourth had been retracted at the time it was reviewed by the Harvard investigation committee.

Gino sued the university and the bloggers in August 2023. She said Harvard’s investigation—led by three professors tapped by the school dean—was flawed as well as biased against her because of her gender, and that the Data Colada blog posts falsely accused her of fraud.

Gino’s defamation claims were dismissed in court, but her lawsuit against Harvard is still going on. Data Colada is a good organization.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is patrolling her beat:

Hili: Who has knocked over the bench?

A: Probably the wind.

Hili: Naughty wind.

Hili: Kto tę ławkę przewrócił?

Ja: Pewnie wiatr.

Hili: Niegrzeczny wiatr.

*******************

From Barry:

From Meanwhile in Canada:

From Things with Faces, a cat with a demon on its coat (maybe it’s an AI image?):

From Malcolm: a chill cat:

I aspire to be at his level of unbothered. pic.twitter.com/saXODDAL1M

— Why you should have a cat (@ShouldHaveCat) May 19, 2025

From Luana; Khelif is discovered to be a biological male, as suspected. Will they take away his Olympic gold medal in women’s boxing?

Imane Khelif’s sex test results are published for the first time, with medical report appearing to indicate the boxer is biologically male.

Credit to @alanabrahamson. Puts significant pressure on IOC to explain why it regards the tests as ‘not legitimate’ https://t.co/65GHMsvO01

— Oliver Brown (@oliverbrown_tel) June 1, 2025

And Human Rights Watch is apparently not for women’s rights:

To paraphrase Marie Shear: feminism is the radical notion that women, too, are humans with rights. pic.twitter.com/3pdBsHTkCe

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 2, 2025

From my feed; a jerk interrupting people at their meals:

Imagine going out to a nice dinner with your family only to be rudely accosted and interrupted by this self-impotent imbecile.

What would you do or say if he approached your table? pic.twitter.com/L5Lwnpa221

— Marina Medvin 🇺🇸 (@MarinaMedvin) June 2, 2025

A sore loser in chess. The NYT story says this:

Chess world champion Gukesh Dommaraju beat Magnus Carlsen in a classical match for the first time, causing the world No. 1 to slam the table in frustration at the Norway Chess 2025 event.

The pieces toppled over as Carlsen, widely regarded as one of chess’ greatest players, punched the table after realising defeat to the 19-year-old.

Carlsen had led much of the game but lost momentum after sacrificing his knight in a blunder. Dommaraju, the reigning world champion, looked in shock afterwards, calling the win “lucky” and said “99 out of 100 times I would lose,” according to Chess.com.

Carlsen shouted “oh my God” before apologising to the Indian teenager, who left the table to compose himself after the momentous win. As he walked out of the room, Carlsen then patted Dommaraju on the back.

OH MY GOD 😳🤯😲 pic.twitter.com/QSbbrvQFkE

— Norway Chess (@NorwayChess) June 1, 2025

One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

This French Jewish man lasted less than a month after arrival in Auschwitz.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-06-03T09:56:07.724Z

Two from Dr. Cobb. First, the eerie sounds of loons going wild:

VOLUME UP- these loons are absolutely bananas tonight

— Lauren in Saint Paul (@comobelladonna.bsky.social) 2025-06-01T03:23:21.818Z

And a hammerheaded fly. We have them in Drosophila, too, and the males use them when fighting head-to-head as a way of gauging body size.

WHERE MY FLY FREAKS AT!?🪰👀The Amazon is home to some WEIRD & WHACKY flies, such as this male Paragorgopis sp. 🌳Apart from looking like a hammerhead shark, we almost know nothing else about this genus of flies! There is still SO much to learn about the invertebrate world and it excites me so much!🤩

— Nick Volpe (@nvolpe.bsky.social) 2025-06-02T01:21:13.281Z

Welcome to the last Monday in May: Monday, May 26, 2025, and it’s Memorial Day, honor members of the U.S. armed forces who died serving their country.  Here’s a picture of only one of several cemeteries overseas where American soldiers are buried. These boys never made it home. Note the Jewish grave at lower left.

There’s a special Google Doodle in gray to mark the day; click on it to see where it goes:

News will be sparse today because, really, not much is happening in the world and I’m busy reading about academic freedom, which is a complex topic and the subject of many books and papers.

It’s also World Redhead Day (2% of the world’s population are so adorned), Sally Ride Day (the late astronaut was born on this day in 1951), National Blueberry Cheesecake Day, and National Cherry Dessert Day (cherries > blueberries on cheesecake).

Here’s Ride, the first American woman to go into space. She died at 61 of pancreatic cancer.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the May 1 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Russia launched a huge air attack on Ukraine yesterday, killing at least 12 people (article archived here).

Russia unleashed one of its largest drone and missile barrages of the war on Ukraine overnight, killing at least 12 people and injuring dozens across the country in an hourslong assault that Ukrainian officials said showed Moscow had no interest in a truce.

It was the second large-scale attack in two nights and the third in just a week, part of a broader, recent escalation by Russia that has brought a spike in civilian casualties despite cease-fire negotiations. Ukraine has also stepped up its own air attacks on Russian territory, though on a smaller scale and with far fewer civilian deaths.

The overnight strikes underscored how months of diplomatic efforts to broker a cease-fire have failed to yield a breakthrough as President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has dragged his feet on agreeing to any temporary truce, adding conditions that he knows Ukraine will not accept. And after threatening for weeks to walk away from the negotiations, President Trump now appears to be doing exactly that, telling President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine last week that Russia and Ukraine would have to find a solution to the war themselves.

Ukraine’s air force said on Sunday that Russia had launched 69 ballistic and cruise missiles along with 298 attack drones, adding that about two-thirds of the missiles and nearly all the drones were shot down. The air force spokesman, Yuriy Ihnat, said in an interview that it was the largest bombardment of the war in terms of the number of weapons used. Those numbers could not be independently verified.

It was the latest in a string of recent Russian attacks to involve swarms of more than 250 drones — a number unthinkable at the start of the war but now made possible by mass weapons production.

Attacks involving swarms of drones are often designed to overwhelm the enemy’s air defenses. Ukraine’s are already stretched, and each consecutive attack adds further strain. The latest barrage also hit western and southern regions of Ukraine which, unlike the capital, Kyiv, are poorly protected by air defenses, increasing the likelihood of fatalities.

There was hope in Ukraine that the cease-fire talks that Mr. Trump initiated in February would at least ease air attacks on civilian areas. Instead, the violence has intensified. Ukrainian civilian deaths have risen each month since February, according to the United Nations, reaching 209 in April — one of the highest monthly tolls in two years.

Two things here: first, clearly Trump was incapable of ending this war on “Day One” of his Presidency, as he promised (LOL), and he has no more interest in doing so.  Granted that Putin doesn’t want a cease-fire, Trump should still be plumping for the democratic Ukraine instead of just ignoring the conflict or, previously, trying to broker peace by giving another chunk of Ukraine to Russia.  Second, I’m not sure whether Russia would be satisfied with a chunk of Ukraine: perhaps it wants the whole country. On top of taking Crimea, the odious Putin isn’t facing near the opprobrium from the world that he should have.  How often do you hear democracies speaking up for Ukraine these days?

*The Jewish Insider reports that Kingsley Wilson, a woman with a history of antisemitic posts, has been promoted to the position of press secretary at the U.S. Department of Defense.

Kingsley Wilson, a deputy press secretary at the Department of Defense who has come under fire from Democratic and Republican lawmakers and Jewish communal organizations for promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories, has been promoted to serve as the department’s press secretary, the Pentagon announced on Friday.

“Kingsley’s leadership has been integral to the DoD’s success & we look forward to her continued service to President [Donald] Trump,” Sean Parnell, the chief Pentagon spokesman and a senior advisor to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, posted on X on Friday.

When Wilson was named deputy press secretary in March, she faced widespread condemnation for dozens of tweets viewed as antisemitic and racist. On two different occasions, she attacked the Anti-Defamation League for sharing its origin story — the organization was founded after the lynching of Leo Frank, an Atlanta Jew widely believed to have been wrongly convicted of raping and murdering a white child over a century ago.

“Leo Frank raped and murdered a 13-year-old girl,” Wilson wrote in 2023 in response to a post from the ADL, and repeated the claim a year later. “He also tried to frame a black man for his crime. The ADL is despicable.” (The tweet has not been deleted.)

Wilson has also called Confederate General Robert E. Lee “one of the greatest Americans to ever live” and regularly promoted the antisemitic “Great Replacement Theory.”

Her appointment in March drew bipartisan criticism. “Obviously I don’t agree with her comments. I trust the Pentagon will address this,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) told Jewish Insider at the time. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called for her firing.

Spokespeople for the Pentagon and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Friday.

And from NPR:

Mother Jones and Jewish Insider first reported many of Wilson’s comments, including her stated belief in the “great replacement theory,” which the Anti-Defamation League describes as a “racist conspiracy theory” amplified by white nationalist groups. The “great replacement theory” poses that societal elites, often cast as Jewish leaders, are orchestrating mass migration to the United States in order to displace white people and seize power.

Republican U.S. Sen. Deb Fischer told Politico that Wilson’s comments were “horrible” and “just not appropriate.”

A relevant tweet is below.  Wilson’s speech may have been free speech, but that doesn’t mean she deserves to be appointed a press secretary in the government, for you have no right to a job. And what rational person is going to trust her objectivity—indeed, her sanity—when she says stuff like that?

Anyone who posts antisemitic conspiracy theories lifted right out of the neo-Nazi playbook should not be in public office.

Kingsley Wilson, newly appointed @DepPressSecDOD, is clearly unfit for her role.https://t.co/OvsGHMDBa1

— American Jewish Committee (@AJCGlobal) March 5, 2025

*Speaking of semites, the Jerusalem Post notes that the National Security Council of Israel has issued a travel warning for Jews and Israelis traveling to CANADA, for crying out loud, upping the threat one notch for those individuals.. (h/t Malgorzata).

Israel’s National Security Council raised the travel warning for Canada from Level 1 to Level 2 on Sunday, citing “an increasing threat from terrorist elements against Israelis and Jews in Canada.”

The National Security Council called on the Israeli public in the country to exercise extreme caution, especially in anticipation of anti-Israel demonstrations expected to take place in Toronto and Waterloo.

Leaders of Canada, Britain, and France recently warned of sanctions against Israel if the country didn’t lift restrictions on humanitarian aid and end the military offensive in Gaza.

“We oppose any attempt to expand settlements in the West Bank. We will not hesitate to take further action, including targeted sanctions,” the countries said in a joint statement.

During last month’s elections, many Jews reported concerns about safety and antisemitism influencing their decisions.

The Liberal Party, led by Prime Minister Mark Carney, has received criticism for rising antisemitism under its watch, making antisemitism an election issue. Antisemitism escalated following the October 7 massacre, as did anti-Israel protests and pushes for pro-Palestinian policy, leading to debates about  Israel-Canada ties.

I wouldn’t be afraid to travel in Canada, though I do recognize an unusually high level of anti-Semitism in our friendly northern neighbor. But really, what solution to the war do Canada, Britain, France, and other countries that condemn Israel suggest?  Two states, with Palestine ruled by Hamas? Do they think ahead about what that would entail? For that’s what would happen—if Palestinians even wants a state. The carnage in Palestine—and I do mourn every dead civilian—can be laid directly at the door of Hamas, who wants more dead Gazan civilians since it furthers their cause.  Nobody can deny that the IDF has tried, more than any other army, to avoid killing civilians, but Hamas embeds itself among them to increase the carnage. It is a great frustration that nobody (not even many Israelis) seems to recognize these facts.  Those who want a “two-state solution” right now are asking for more attacks on Israel, and forgetting that Palestinians rejected this solution at least five times.

*The Chicago site for NPR discusses Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s new book, Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, and has a short  Q&A session with Tapper giving “interview highlights”.

CNN’s Jake Tapper calls his new book a tragedy. Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, which Tapper co-authored with Axios’ Alex Thompson, describes two Joe Bidens.

“The first one is the one that everybody got to know during his vice presidency,” Tapper says. “And the second one was kind of a non-functioning Joe Biden. … And that non-functioning Biden would rear his head increasingly starting in, like, 2019, 2020. And then, as his term went on, more and more behind the scenes.”

The book describes a president who failed to recognize longtime political allies, lost his train of thought in important conversations and forgot important dates, including the death of his son, Beau: “We in the public would see some of it in front of the cameras … but we had no idea how bad it was,” Tapper says.

Tapper says one source described a president that was being propped up by aides: “One person told us that the presidency was, at best, a five-person board with Joe Biden as chairman of the board.”

Looking back now, Tapper says he regrets not covering Biden’s decline more aggressively. “I can point to times where I asked him this or I asked them that … but knowing what I know now, I barely scratched the surface,” he says. “I need to run more towards the discomfort of questions about health because they’re so important and they’re so under-covered in Washington.”

It’s a pity that Biden was just diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer, because the book comes out at an inopportune time. Still, it needed to be written and I’m going to read it.  Two of Tapper’s interview highlights:

On the Democratic Party’s reaction to Biden’s debate performance

Democrats were shocked. They were just absolutely stunned. And I think there were really two camps. There was the Biden camp, which was, “OK, how do we get out of this? How do we crawl back?” Because Joe Biden, as I said earlier, as a compliment, he cannot be defeated. That’s his great attitude. He’s not going to be defeated by brain aneurysms, by this tragedy, by that tragedy. …

You don’t need to be a genius political consultant to know that the obvious remedy to fixing what he had just done was to go out and do 15 interviews and 20 town halls and five press conferences and just show people that he was as sharp as a tack as they had been saying. And the problem was he couldn’t do that, and that’s why his pollsters ultimately concluded there was just no way to get out of it. This was a disaster and it was going to keep getting worse and worse until election day.

On the public’s lack of trust in legacy media 

The news media is in a crisis. … Reporters in general, CNN, NPR, ABC, CBS, all of us, people don’t trust us. One of the reasons they don’t trust us is what just happened with Joe Biden and his acuity and the fact that we in the media were pretty late to the story. I should [say], we in the legacy media were late to that story, because conservative media was not late to it. And I think that we are in an existential fight for a free press. Not that it’s gonna be taken away, but it certainly runs the risk of not thriving as it has. And that just calls on us to be as good and professional as possible.

*The Washington Post reports that a young bear cub rescued alone in the woods is being raised by humans dressed like bears (h/t Barry). I have a video below, and you can see more pictures at the archived article.

A tiny black bear cub was crying alone in the California woods, his mother nowhere in sight. He was less than two months old and weighed about three pounds.

Campers in Los Padres National Forest found the baby bear on April 12 and the camp grounds host reported him to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. Initially, biologists monitored the environment, with the hope that the cub’s mother would return — but she did not. The cub couldn’t survive on his own in the wild, so he was brought to San Diego Humane Society’s Ramona Wildlife Center.

. . . . . Now, though, just over five weeks since he was rescued, the cub is thriving. He has gained nearly 10 pounds and has reached several developmental milestones — including learning to climb. The cub is the youngest black bear cub San Diego Humane Society has cared for.

. . . . When staff interact with the cub, they are usually garbed head-to-toe in a bear costume. They wear a bear mask and an oversize fur coat, as well as leather gloves. They also rub black-bear-scented hay they got from a local sanctuary all over.

“We don’t want him touching our skin at all,” Welch said, explaining that they are trying to prevent the cub from forming bonds with humans, which would disrupt his natural instincts and make it more difficult for him to survive in the wild. “He never sees us as humans.”

. . .  .“We’re dedicated to doing whatever we have to do to keep him wild,” she said.

Indeed, beyond their bear costumes, staff have also created two habitats for the cub — one inside and one enclosed outside — that mimic the wilderness. They’ve built climbing structures made from natural trees, and they’ve covered the environments with leaf litter, dirt and branches. They also place stuffed bears around the habitat. The cub often cuddles up with the large one.

“It’s his surrogate mama,” Welch said. “He would lay with her instead of laying out in the open and being exposed.”

Now that’s the way to rescue a bear cub!  What great, dedicated people. Here’s a video so you can see the baby and the bear costumes (there’s another video here):

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is sad thinking of her old d*g pal Cyrus, who has crossed the Rainbow Bridge:

Hili: I’m constantly thinking about them.

Andrzej: About whom?

Hili: About those who are no longer with us.

Hili: Ciągle o nich myślę.

Ja: O kim?

Hili: O tych, których już z nami nie ma.

*******************

From America’s Cultural Decline Into Idiocy:

From Things With Faces, an apple guy:

From Meow:

Masih is still resting, so here’s some words from another advocate for women. Read the whole tweet:

The only people who consider it ‘anti-feminist’ to point out that a woman is a woman by virtue of her biology are those who think female-specific anatomy or bodily functions are inferior in some way, that bearing young is a lowly, worthless occupation, or that misogynist social… pic.twitter.com/3o5YXdwS4v

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) May 24, 2025

From Luana, a big fan of AI. I sort of agree with Singal here, but I think AI spells doom for universities:

I’m realizing more and more that while I understood in some sort of abstract or intellectualized way that AI was about to change a lot of stuff, I didn’t understand the full extent of what’s coming. We’re genuinely on a precipice unlike anything in human history.

— Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) May 22, 2025

From Malcolm: a realistic mask (I’ve shown this one before) followed by BatCat:

pic.twitter.com/5o0Z2vJGbL

— awesome_visuals (@awesome_visuals) May 16, 2025

Two from my feed.  Speaking of baby bears:

Baby bear attack 😂😂 pic.twitter.com/UVAgDpmwzM

— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) May 24, 2025

Free speech in the UK is all but extinct:

BREAKING: A British man was arrested for saying to a group of Jihadis in London: “God bless Israel! God bless Jewish people!”

The UK has been taken over by Islamists. What has happened to Britain?

pic.twitter.com/h2yxvImaUp

— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) May 24, 2025

One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

A Dutch Jewish boy was gassed as soon as his train arrived at Auschwitz. He was four, and would have been 86 today had he lived.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-05-26T09:19:38.149Z

Matthew, feeling better, is in Cambridge visiting his daughter. Fortuitously, he visited “the Golden Helix,” the home where Francis Crick lived, clearly marked as such. Matthew says, “It was bought in 1986 by friends of the Cricks, Nigel and Janet Unwin.”

Another from Matthew: An Antarctic brittle star cleans itself off!

Interesting video showing off the Antarctic brittle star Ophionotus cleaning itself off! #echinoday youtube.com/shorts/9cBOk…

— Chris Mah (@echinoblog.bsky.social) 2025-05-23T19:38:23.048Z