Notices by Alfie Kohn (alfiekohn@sciences.social)

Yes, destroying foreign aid ultimately will boomerang on Americans because pandemics know no borders.
Yes, terrorizing immigrants will affect our food supply and slow down construction.
And, yes, the GOP's mammoth tax cuts for the uberwealthy funded by cuts to programs for the needy will be bad for the economy.

But these are secondary objections. What matters most - what we need to emphasize - is that the acts are outrageously immoral in their own right.

Imagine if we lived in a country where it would be almost impossible for Trump to find elected officials, lawyers, law enforcement officers, and businesspeople willing to participate in this evil.

Alongside my horror, anger, and fear these days is a deep sadness that he seems to have no trouble recruiting accomplices.

Read this account by a reporter who interviews people eager to join the MAGAstapo: "The US is filled with 'pretty nice guys'" - many of them apparently dog-lovers - "who are ready to inflict, who have already inflicted, senseless and life-shattering violence on innocent, impoverished people" -
https://www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/two-days-talking-to-people-looking-for-jobs-at-ice/

“All forms of education are political because they can enable or inhibit the questioning habits of students, thus developing or disabling their critical relation to knowledge and society.” One important implication: “Rote learning and skills drills" inhibit kids' "civic and emotional developments.”
-Ira Shor

“The difference between a journalist and a historian is that the historian knows the difference.”

-Bill Moyers (1934-2025)

The best arguments against the use of AI in schools are made unwittingly by the people enthusiastically promoting the use of AI in schools: https://www.businessinsider.com/khan-academy-ceo-ai-classroom-teacher-aid-not-replacement-2025-6

A NYT article about evaluating ChapGPT says in passing: "But standardized tests are not always a good judge of how technologies will perform in real-world situations."

Yikes! What if journalists figure out that this is also true of students? Would they then have to rethink decades of reporting about education policy?

"How many bodies did you guys grab today?" one ICE agent asks another. The answer is 31, and the two high-five.

Concentration camps and totalitarianism are possible only because of people like this who willingly follow any orders they're given.

... by people like Miller, Noem, and Homan.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-06-20/border-patrol-agents-brag-in-front-of-detained

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/a-letter-to-home-from-a-weary-ice-agent

Another superb piece by Adam Serwer, this one explaining how Republicans have gone "from condemning leaders who threaten their own citizens to becoming sycophants for one": https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/06/trump-military-force-protests/683198/?gift=Je3D9AQS-C17lUTOnl2W8Cdfor12GRVOUysWoqfjmig&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

Please read this thread:
https://skywriter.blue/pages/kenwhite.bsky.social/post/3kx6yqeb7hu2l

Pictures from America's two coasts today

If you use, expect to use, or have an opinion about using AI, you definitely need to read this. Jaw-dropping stuff.

https://amandaguinzburg.substack.com/p/diabolus-ex-machina

I don't know where you bellyachers get the idea that AI isn't going to benefit all of us.

This story appeared on p. 17 of today's print edition and featured typical NYT weasel phrasing ("The deportations deepened the questions surrounding the Trump administration's legal tactics and administrative errors...").
It should have been on the front page with a huge all-caps headline: TRUMP BRAZENLY FLOUTS COURT ORDER, IMPERILING DEMOCRACY

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/us/politics/trump-deportation-el-salvador.html

Axiom: The lower the status of the student population, the more traditional and teacher-centered the education they're likely to receive.

Corollary: When this proves counterproductive, it will be assumed the problem is with the kids... prompting adults to double down on the traditionalism (and the use of control).

Is a plan to remake it backfiring, or is a plan to destroy it proceeding exactly as intended?

Well, yeah, but Stephen Miller points out that anyone with darker skin isn't, like, *really* an American citizen, right?

Rest of the world (except for a few dictators): "Trump has poisoned the U.S. & turned it into a pariah state. It no longer makes sense to buy its products, invest in its bonds, trust its research, visit its sites, or study (or work) at its universities."

MAGA: "Yeah! We're number one! USA! USA!"

https://www.americaamerica.news/p/once-a-magnet-becoming-a-pariah?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=283745&post_id=162053725