Slow learners
By 
Last night I read thePolitico piece about Bari Weiss’s UATX grift thatScott wrote about with a level of slack-jawed wonderment that ended up resembling an anaconda about to swallow a full-grown capybara. I’ll have a lot more to say about that shortly, but for now I just wanted to note this passage:
In December 2024, [Niall] Ferguson attended a fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago hosted by Marissa Streit, CEO of the conservative educational nonprofit PragerU, which, among other things, has produced material comparing climate change deniers to Jews who resisted the Nazis. Soon thereafter, Ferguson softened his previously harsh criticisms of Trump, saying that he’d been wrong to call him a “would-be tyrant,” that the system could contain whatever tyrannical impulses the once-and-future president might have, and that it would have been a “disaster” if Kamala Harris had won the election. . . .
The bulk of his remarks [this past May] focused on the Trump administration’s threats to the existing higher education order. The day after Lonsdale’s all-staff meeting, Harvard had received a letter accusing it of failing to protect students from antisemitism followed, one week later, by a letter demanding a long list of reforms as a condition of receiving continued federal funding.
In mid-April, FIRE issued a statement condemning the attacks as an infringement of the First Amendment and academic freedom that would “render Harvard a vassal institution.” At the summit, Ferguson said that UATX’s leaders needed to “think twice” before they uncritically embraced FIRE’s narrative that Trump was “the villain” and Harvard professors the heroes.
It’s just astonishing to me — this is a rhetorical turn of phrase; it actually isn’t — that somebody like Nadine Strossen [!] STILL needs a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing:
Strossen said that she admired Ferguson — “he’s brilliant, he’s witty, he’s erudite” — but she strongly disagreed with his questioning how FIRE could defend Harvard. “It’s as absurd as saying, ‘How can the ACLU be defending the Nazis?’” she said. “There had never been a stronger critic of Harvard,” Strossen added, noting that FIRE had ranked Harvard at the bottom of its free-speech rankings. “We were defending the academic freedom principles that were threatened by what the Trump administration was doing.”
Newsflash for Nadine: Donald Trump is a fascist, his supporters like your great good buddy Niall Ferguson are fascists, and fascists don’t actually support free speech and open intellectual inquiry and the ACLU and all that good stuff. In fact these people are unalterably and intractably opposed to literally everything you’ve spent your life promoting and defending.
This is what your dear friend Niall Ferguson is enthusiastically supporting, right here right now:
The Trump administration has opened a criminal investigation into elected Democrats in Minnesota, according to a senior law enforcement official familiar with the matter, a major escalation in the fight between the federal government and local officials over the aggressive immigration crackdown underway in the city.
The investigation would focus on allegations that Gov. Tim Walz and Jacob Frey, the mayor of Minneapolis, had conspired to impede thousands of federal agents who have been sent to the city since last month. Last week, one of those agents killed a 37-year-old woman, Renee Good.
It remained unclear what investigative steps have been taken. The senior law enforcement official said subpoenas had yet to be issued, but could be in the days to come. Both Mr. Walz and Mr. Frey responded with combative statements on Friday night, denouncing what they said was a weaponized use of law enforcement power and promising to stand firm in the face of the administration’s efforts.
“Weaponizing the justice system and threatening political opponents is a dangerous, authoritarian tactic,” Mr. Walz said in a statement released by his office, which said it had not yet received notice of an investigation. “The only person not being investigated for the shooting of Renee Good is the federal agent who shot her.”
Mr. Frey described the investigation as an “obvious attempt to intimidate” him, but vowed it would not work.
“America depends on leaders that use integrity and the rule of the law as the guideposts for governance,” he said. “Neither our city nor our country will succumb to this fear. We stand rock solid.”
The shooting of Ms. Good, an unarmed mother of three, has led to sustained protests against the agents in Minneapolis. Mr. Frey, in the immediate wake of Ms. Good’s death, used an expletive to demand that the agents leave the city. Mr. Walz has also sharply criticized the agents’ conduct.
Justice Department leaders, in turn, have vowed to arrest anyone impeding federal agents, and the new investigation seeks to determine if senior Democrats in the state conspired to impede law enforcement.
News of the investigation, which was reported earlier by CBS News, came only two days after Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, posted an incendiary message on social media, accusing Mr. Walz and Mr. Frey of “encouraging violence against law enforcement” and referring to their actions as “terrorism.”
Quite a coincidence that this bit of terroristic prosecution was leaked to Bari Weiss’s media mouthpiece for the administration! The circle is small I guess.