DL Open Thread: Monday, April 14, 2025

MAGAt Torches Pa. Governor’s Mansion With Governor And His Family In It.  No, he wasn’t a Palestinian sympathizer:

The man arrested on suspicion of setting fire to Democratic Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s residence appears to have posted several social media posts criticizing former president Joe Biden.

Cody Balmer, 38, of Harrisburg, will face charges of attempted murder, terrorism, aggravated arson and aggravated assault, authorities said.

In September 2021, Balmer appears to have posted a meme on Facebook about the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. It shows Biden in a car with overlaid text reading: “Get in, loser. We’re leaving Afghanistan.” A second picture of Biden is captioned: “Drives off without you.”

In a post in March 2021, Balmer wrote that “five dollars was gas money when Trump was president.” He also wrote in a post that month that “Joe Biden owes me 2 grand” over a picture of himself.

This guy probably won’t be subject to the ‘sovereign domestic authority of El Salvador’.  Too bad.  So, far, he hasn’t been charged with a hate crime.  I mean, it’s not as if he keyed a Tesla or something.

M. Gessen To Universities: ‘Band Together’.  They also explain why they haven’t already done so.  Well worth reading:

Almost three months into the Trump administration’s war on universities, and a year and a half into the Republican Party’s organized campaign against the presidents of top colleges, it is clear that antisemitism and D.E.I. are mere pretexts for these attacks. Like much of what this administration does, the war on higher education is driven by anti-intellectualism and greed. Trump is building a mafia state, in which the don distributes both money and power. Universities are independent centers of intellectual and, to some extent, political power. He is trying to destroy that independence.

There is a way for universities to fight back. It requires more than refusing to bend to Trump’s will, and it requires more than forming a united front. They must abandon all the concerns — rankings, donors, campus amenities — that preoccupy and distract them, and focus on their core mission: the production and dissemination of knowledge. Intellectuals have adopted this strategy to fight against autocrats in other countries. It works.

Because Trump views everything as transactional and assumes everyone to be driven by profit, he has approached universities the same way he approached law firms and, arguably, countries: by deploying devastating financial threats against each one individually, to compel compliance and prevent coalitions. Trump could have started by imposing a tax on universities’ endowments, a move that almost certainly would enjoy broad popular support. That, however, would presumably affect every major university, which could prompt them to band together. Research grants, which are specific to each university, are an ideal instrument to divide and weaken them.

Most prominent American universities, most of the time, measure their success not so much by the degree to which their faculty and graduates contribute to the world as by the size of their endowment, the number of students seeking admission and their ascent in rankings by U.S. News & World Report and others, which assess the value of a university education in part by looking at graduates’ starting salaries. As for professors, while universities do compete for the best minds, they more frequently compete for the loudest names, in the hopes that these will attract the biggest bucks.

Gessen describes how Polish dissidents successfully countered autocratic attempts to control education, and cites Bard College as an example of how it can be done here.  Their conclusion:

So this is my radical proposal for universities: Act like universities, not like businesses. Spend your endowments. Accept more, not fewer students. Open up your campuses and expand your reach not by buying real estate but by bringing education to communities. Create a base. Become a movement.

Alternatively, you can try to negotiate with a mafia boss who wants to see you grovel. When these negotiations fail, as they inevitably will, it will be too late to ask for the public’s support.

Oops. Turns Out Nobody Is Collecting Those Trump Tariffs.  Who do they think they are–the IRS?:

Thanks to a technical glitch, Donald Trump’s tariffs haven’t even been collected at U.S. ports.

On Friday, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported that an entry code in the U.S. system for American ships to use to have their freight exempted from tariffs isn’t working, and “the issue is being reviewed.” As a result, no tariffs are being collected by the U.S. government for the time being.

U.S. shippers told the news outlet that they have not been charged higher tariff rates on their containers as recently as Thursday, despite Trump’s claims that tariffs are in effect and are being collected. This latest snafu is on top of the fact that many companies and industry groups are still unsure of when tariffs will be collected, especially since Trump keeps changing the rates erratically in social media posts and executive orders, and making new threats almost daily.

The Golf Grand Slam is comprised of the Masters, US Open, British Open, and the PGA Championship.  Rory McElroy had long since won all but the Masters.  He had come close on several occasions, but always seemed to let his nerves get the better of him.  Yesterday, he took a four-stroke lead and lost it, with some incomprehensibly-bad shots to go along with some shots for the ages. He wound up in a playoff with good friend Justin Rose. And then:

As sports and business have become one and the same, it’s so rare to see such a moment of pure catharsis.  12 years of him trying and failing to win the Masters, and the weight is finally lifted.  I loved that moment, hope you did too.

What do you want to talk about?