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What role should the Supreme Court play in American politics?
A wide-ranging new book by Nikolas Bowie and Daphna Renan examines how America’s highest court often gets in the way of democratic politics.
Kimberly Guilfoyle asked to resign by White House, new press secretary says
Guilfoyle, the ambassador to Greece, has faced allegations she asked a political donor for $100,000 to pay her personal American Express bill.
Ken Paxton took campaign funds from donors with interests before his office
The Texas attorney general and GOP Senate nominee received contributions from parties in cases he was involved in, some predating his current competitive race.
PAC linked to GOP firm is boosting Ohio socialist in Senate race
The socialist candidate says the effort is “deceiving” voters.
Voters in Portland (Oregon) get ads meant for Portland (Maine)
The ad buyer admitted the mistake and refunded the money to the political group that ordered it.
In Ohio, some Trump voters question whether he’s still fighting for them
High costs opened a divide between Trump and some who voted for him. His support for data centers has widened that gap.
Speaker Johnson walks back talk about potentially leaving Congress
He said he intends to remain the House Republican leader even if his party loses the chamber.
Judge blocks Trump administration from airing taxpayer-funded campaign-style ads
A coalition of nonprofits had sued, calling the ads “propaganda.” The president has said campaign funds would be used to pay for the commercials going forward.
Chuck Schumer has broad support from his caucus, but midterms could decide his future as leader
Chuck Schumer has won and lost Senate majorities since becoming Democratic leader a decade ago
U.S. doctors are aging, raising concerns about patient safety
Proposals to assess older physicians have collided with fierce professional resistance, legal challenges and debate about the value of cognitive screening.
A Spanish-language radio show overflows with voters' frustration in Pennsylvania battleground
Victor Martinez, who runs a Spanish-language radio station in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, talks about voters’ frustration with everyday realities like higher fuel prices and inflation ahead of next month’s closely contested midterm election
Trump could face a new threat in January: A Democratic Senate
Republicans predict that Democrats will not confirm Supreme Court and Cabinet nominees if they retake the Senate in the midterm elections.
Nonpartisan state Supreme Court elections are being put to the test in Montana
Montana’s voters are set to decide a ballot proposal that would enshrine nonpartisan judicial elections in the state constitution
In the race for AI dominance, the U.S. relies on a surprising ally: China
The Trump administration paints AI development as a winner-take-all contest, but U.S. data centers are full of made-in-China equipment and many U.S. companies rely on Chinese AI.
Substitute teacher fired over OnlyFans account says business is booming
A Missouri woman says her free speech was violated. Her adult content site has attracted more subscribers after news spread of her dismissal.
4 mental tricks to help you remember things you tend to forget
The key to remembering mundane moments — like turning off the stove — is to make them feel extraordinary.
Trump fumes at 'stain' on Norway after missing out on Nobel Peace Prize
The president described the decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to Navi Pillay as "disgraceful and embarrassing" and said he would "not forget."
Darline Graham opposes Chinese manufacturing. Her husband’s employers rely on it.
The senator and sister of the late Lindsey Graham has said the U.S. must “stop depending on Communist China for things America can make ourselves.”
D.C. judge bars DOJ from gathering states’ voter lists to find noncitizens
Voting rights groups had challenged the effort, noting federal data includes errors that have led to citizens being wrongly removed from electoral rolls.
Trump taps conservative commentator as next White House press secretary
Katie Zacharia replaces Karoline Leavitt, who departed the White House in August after giving birth to her second child.
Cook moves 18 more House races toward the left
Polling and the work of prognosticators like the Cook Political Report suggest Democrats are likely to take back the House in November.
Analysis | The politics of prediction markets
Amid concerns that political insiders might use privileged knowledge to make money, there’s a new wave of efforts to regulate the platforms.
Talarico vowed to back an LGBTQ rights bill. Now, his stance isn’t so clear.
The Texas Democrat pledged during the primary to sponsor the Equality Act. As he moderates in the general election, his campaign won't say if he still intends to.
Trump’s ‘Super Intelligence Force’ wants safety without slowing innovation
The administration hopes to reap what it sees as the economic opportunities of AI while easing fears that the technology could wage cyberattacks, ax jobs and raise energy prices.
Vance, Rubio brush off questions about claim that Guilfoyle asked donor to pay $100K Amex bill
Allegations by former congressional candidate Eric Deters are the latest controversy to swirl around the U.S. ambassador to Greece.
Health Brief: Surprise billing gets a new House fight
Plus: A new path emerges for peptides
Speaker Johnson says he doesn’t know what’s next for him if GOP loses House
The remarks prompted speculation the Republican leader might retire from politics if Democrats retake the chamber.
U.S. backtracked on critical mineral, data demands in health deal with Zambia
The administration signed a $1.5 billion agreement with Zambia, but only after being forced to abandon controversial data-sharing and resource-access provisions.
Hayden Panettiere's ex Wladimir Klitschko gets legal status to protect their daughter's inheritance
A California court has granted Wladimir Klitschko legal authority to protect his daughter Kaya’s inheritance following her mother Hayden Panettiere’s death
No new attack on Iran before the midterm elections, Trump says
The president has acknowledged sometimes using public statements about negotiations and military planning to keep adversaries off guard.
US, Zambia sign $2.49B health financing pact after removing data and specimen-sharing terms
The U.S. and Zambia have signed a $2.49 billion health financing deal after removing clauses on specimen-sharing and patient data
Obama endorses Troy Jackson in Maine Senate race
The former president told voters he is “proud to be on board” the Democrats’ campaign to oust Republican Sen. Susan Collins.
Most Americans think artificial intelligence is developing too fast, a new AP-NORC poll finds
A new AP-NORC poll finds that most Americans think artificial intelligence is developing too fast
At 81, he’s the most-cited nutrition expert. Here’s what he eats in a day.
Walter Willett’s research has changed the way Americans eat, revealing how diet and other lifestyle choices can shape your risk of chronic illnesses.
America's bond market may be catching a break
France is the latest flashpoint in the global bond selloff as mounting debt worries rattle investors and send government borrowing costs higher.
After vast sewage spill, officials say testing shows Potomac is back to health
Testing “found no current signs of harm” from the millions of gallons of raw sewage that flowed into the river in January, according to D.C. Water.
Competitive House races see massive influx of ad spending over past week
In one Florida district rated a “toss-up,” there was an outpouring of $5.7 million.
Prosecutor says man charged in killing of British ex-politician tried to break into Farage's home
A prosecutor says a man accused of killing former British politician Ann Widdecombe allegedly tried to break into Nigel Farage’s home about a year earlier
Half a billion dollars in GOP spending does little to move polls
Republicans’ massive money advantage has yet to reshape the midterm map, as Democrats keep expanding their ambitions.
Israelis scarred by Oct. 7 attack weigh Netanyahu’s political future
Some survivors of the deadliest day in Israel’s history see this month’s election as a long-delayed reckoning for the officials in charge when the country dropped its guard.
Trump wants to turn his West Palm Beach golf course into the new Camp David
The plan calls for the federal government to be granted part of the property, with the rest maintained as a private course.
Analysis | The midterm battle for power in the states
Republicans are on defense in governor and state legislative races.
Susan Collins, a political survivor, tries to outrun Trump
In her bid for a sixth term representing Maine, Susan Collins has been beset by President Donald Trump weighing her down with constant controversy.
Another sign of rapidly expanding political map: Pollsters can’t keep up
Increased demand for polling has strained call centers that conduct surveys, squeezed capacity and complicated the task of getting accurate reads on public opinion, according to pollsters.
California leaders slam Trump for saying Iran could ‘take out’ L.A. or San Diego
Officials in California condemned the president's comments as “dangerous,” after he told a Nebraska rally the war in Iran was a “small price to pay for keeping the world safe.”
Medicare-for-all support is rising, KFF poll finds
The survey also found that the public’s views of a national health plan are highly malleable.
Complaints against town attorney a flashpoint in Clifton Park politics
Town attorney Kevin Dailey said two complaints have been filed against him.
Kamala Harris has a 2028 opening
The former Democratic standard bearer retains considerable respect in the party, but there’s an undercurrent of anxiety about her return to the political conversation.
Arkansas campaign ad sparks conservative backlash for portraying lazy welfare recipient as white
A new video from Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders was standard issue Republican messaging for promoting her state’s stricter rules for people on Medicaid
Nobel for medicine awarded to 3 scientists for work that helps map the brain
A method that controls nerve signals with light, developed by an American and two Germans, has provided greater understanding of Alzheimer’s and is used in efforts to restore sight.
Health Brief: Exclusive | Inside the new health price transparency rules
Plus: Trump’s checks to Medicare enrollees could complicate year-end health care negotiations,
Medicare-for-all is back. Now comes the hard part.
Democrats are reviving an old idea. Now they have to define it and pay for it.
Study finds a whole grain sweet spot for heart health
You know that whole grains are good for your heart. New research identifies how much it takes to notice improvements in cholesterol, blood pressure and more.
Scientists uncover a clue that could hint at why we regain weight after diets
A chemical mechanism may cause weight regain by creating a “memory” of obesity in fat cells, a study suggests.
Four ways the midterm elections could go, one month away
Democrats have polls and history on their side. Republicans have money.
How Democrats hope to reverse Trump’s changes to the presidency
As the midterms approach, some of the president’s foes are working to ensure his aggressive approach to executive power doesn’t outlast him.
Why you should think about getting your flu shot right now
Flu is surging unusually early in some parts of the western United States, catching doctors by surprise.
A record number of Native Americans are running in the 2026 midterms
At least 355 Native American and Indigenous candidates ran or are running in local, state and federal primary and general elections this year — a record number.
In New Hampshire Senate race, the Democrat faces an unusually tough time
The race’s competitiveness is somewhat surprising in a state that former Vice President Kamala Harris carried by 2.8 percentage points in 2024.
Trump heads back to Texas on Wednesday as GOP fights to keep state red
Texas, long a safe Republican state, has emerged as a top battleground in midterm races up and down the ballot — but especially in the U.S. Senate race.
Elon Musk splits with longtime business confidante, co-parent ‘with no warning’
Shivon Zilis, the mother of four children with Musk, said their breakup was sudden but wished him the best.
Studying Science in an Anti-Scientific Time
This Chronicle Review Deep Cut was first published in 2025. By Julianne Werlin Thanks for reading The Chronicle Review! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Subscribe The last two decades have not been kind to science studies. Already bruised and battered by the “science wars” of the 1990s, by the 2000s sociologists of science — who had long argued that science had to be understood in its human context — were encountering the funhouse-mirror version of their own views in right-wing critiques of climate scientists. It was enough to give some prominent scholars pause. “Was I wrong to participate in the invention of this field known as science studies?” asked Bruno Latour, the most famous sociologist of science in the world, in 2003. “Should we apologize for having been wrong all along? Or should we rather bring the sword of criticism to criticism itself and do a bit of soul-searching here: What were we really after when we were so intent on showing the social construction of scientific facts?” In response, Latour proposed a change of method and attitude. Science studies, now chastened and contrite, would no longer seek to strip facts of their authority, but to enrich and enhance them. What this meant in practice was never fully clear. But his diagnosis of problems resonated, even if his solutions did not. Latour’s exercise in public hand-wringing signaled a shift in mood. By 2016, with the first election of Donald Trump, the idea that skepticism of science was a right-wing position, not a left-wing one, had become a commonplace, discussed eagerly in The New York Times. For liberals, vaccine denial during the Covid era and Trump’s second-term attacks on the funding of scientific research, covered extensively in these pages, added a new urgency to the defense of science on both practical and principled grounds. There was little appetite for a sociology or philosophy of science that emphasized the messiness and missteps of the scientific process rather than its integrity and triumphs. The distinguished historian of science Peter Dear’s new book, The World as We Know It: From Natural Philosophy to Modern Science (Princeton University Press, 2025), which seeks to tell the story of 18th- and 19th-century science for a general public, may seem comfortably remote from these bitter contests. In its 16 short chapters, Dear draws swift, sure sketches of major discoveries from Newton to Einstein, ably guiding the reader through debates on stellar nebulae, animal taxonomy, atomic chemistry, evolution, and other flashpoints in the history of science. But though a work of history, Dear’s book must still negotiate our polarized present. In a blurb on its back cover, the historian of biology Lynn K. Nyhart alludes to the “present moment, when scientific knowledge is being swamped by misinformation and its institutions are under siege.” Dear himself, in his conclusion, refers to the “yard signs” and “bumper stickers” that proclaim “Science Is Real.” One antidote to both anti-science propaganda and to reductive slogans in science’s defense is a robust history and philosophy of science: exactly what Dear’s scholarship has long offered. But his new book illustrates how difficult such work has become. Dear, an emeritus professor of history at Cornell University, is best known as a creative and philosophically minded historian of the Scientific Revolution. His edited volume The Literary Structure of Scientific Argument (1991) analyzed the rhetoric of Galileo’s thought experiments to brilliant effect. Discipline and Experience: The Mathematical Way in the Scientific Revolution (1995) was a major contribution to the analysis of scientific experiments in early modern Europe and beyond, while Revolutionizing the Sciences: European Knowledge in Transition, 1500-1700 (2001), now in its third edition, remains one of the best overviews of the profound epistemological upheavals of 16th- and 17th-century science. But Dear has also ventured into later periods. Nearly two decades ago, in The Intelligibility of Nature: How Science Makes Sense of the World (2006), he turned to the 18th and 19th centuries to sketch a history and theory of scientific knowledge. Aimed at a generalist audience, Dear’s simple prose belied serious philosophical ambitions. Science, Dear argued, has two aspects: “natural philosophy,” the quest to understand the true nature of the universe, and “instrumentality,” the applied skills and technologies that allow us to manipulate the world for human advantage. Both strands are ancient, but the innovation of the phenomenon we call “science” was to yoke them together. As Francis Bacon wrote, “Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known, the effect cannot be produced,” an insight typically abridged to “knowledge is power.” Or, in Bertrand Russell’s characteristically blunt phrase, science has two functions, “1. to enable us to know things, and 2., to enable us to do things.” So far, so conventional. But Dear took issue with this familiar story in one respect. Bacon’s formula implied that theory and practice could be fused in a single method. In fact, Dear argued, the quest to understand nature and the desire to manipulate it were coupled only loosely. They could come together, but they could also pull apart. Focusing on natural philosophy, the “knowing” half of the scientific circle, he used a series of case studies from cosmology, taxonomy, chemistry, electromagnetism, and quantum theory to show how theories changed over time, in dialogue with practice, but never reducible to it. Take the case of matter, the basic substrate of the physical world. In the 18th and 19th centuries, scientists not only disagreed about what it was, but also about how well it could be known. In 1789, the chemist Antoine Lavoisier dismissed speculation about the atomic composition of chemicals as “discussions entirely of a metaphysical nature,” as he sought to orient chemistry away from philosophical abstraction and toward laboratory results. But in the 19th century, atoms returned with a vengeance in the atomic chemistry of John Dalton, who wanted to explain the underlying structure of nature. It was not just that Dalton and Lavoisier had a different set of experimental results, or even a different theory, Dear showed. What counted as an explanation had changed. In arguing that scientific theories depended on their intelligibility to human beings with complex arrays of beliefs and commitments, Dear was in sympathy with science studies. Key figures such as the sociologist Steven Shapin emphasized the importance of psychological mechanisms like trust in the formation and acceptance of scientific ideas. But in focusing on the scientific pursuit of knowledge, not its politics or economics, Dear resisted the more cynical perspective of some of his colleagues. The Intelligibility of Nature strikes a very different note than Shapin’s collection of a few years later, Never Pure: Historical Studies of Science as If It Was Produced by People With Bodies, Situated in Time, Space, Culture, and Society, and Struggling for Credibility and Authority (2010), to name just one example. Walking a very fine line, Dear depicted science as driven at once by complex social dynamics and by the intellectual power of real discoveries. It was a testament not only to his own acumen but also to the vitality of the field that he was able to do so. Nearly two decades later, The World as We Know It returns to the questions broached in The Intelligibility of Nature. Like Dear’s earlier study, it begins with the Newtonian cosmos and ends with debates between Einstein and Bohr on quantum physics. Beyond its terminal figures, many of the same characters appear in both studies, including the naturalists John Ray and the Comte de Buffon; the chemists Étienne François Geoffroy, Antoine Lavoisier, and John Dalton; as well as Charles Darwin and Michael Faraday, among others. Its subject is nearly identical: As in The Intelligibility of Nature, The World as We Know It considers natural philosophy as opposed to instrumentality, here defined as the “desire to create a picture of what the world is really like — the world as God knows it — rather than simply having instrumental or operational control over it.” The two books also overlap in insights — and sometimes even in language. The reader who has learned in The Intelligibility of Nature that Buffon’s method of classifying animals “reflected his belief in the importance of the senses and empiricism in learning about nature (a doctrine associated with Newton and the philosopher John Locke)” will experience a sense of déjà vu on reading, in The World as We Know It, that the classification “reflects Buffon’s commitment to the epistemological stance of Newton and his philosophical underlaborer John Locke, who stressed the role of the senses in creating natural knowledge.” Later in the passage, we read that, “because of its stress on understanding the ways of life of animals in their environments, Buffon’s approach could almost be labeled (anachronistically) as ‘ecological.’” And again, “an anachronistic way of putting it would be to say that Buffon recommends an ecological mode of understanding.” Likewise, in The Intelligibility of Nature we read of Dalton that he was initially drawn to meteorology, and that: He did a bit of experimental work on these things, especially having to do with the water-holding capacity of gases, but his real interest lay in understanding what, at an underlying natural-philosophical level, was really going on physically.” Whereas, in The World as We Know It: He did experimental work on these things, especially concerning the water-holding capacity of gases — although not at a very refined level quantitatively — but he was continually trying to develop a theoretical conception of what was happening physically. The final full chapter of each book closes on the same resigned note. Intelligibility: These days, most serious work on the natural philosophical underpinnings and implications of quantum mechanics is performed not by physicists but by philosophers of science. Among scientific practitioners themselves, Bohr’s attempt to use instrumentality as sufficient grounds for a respectable science has met with a high degree of success. And again, in The World as We Know It: Bohr’s and Einstein’s concerns are now questions that are mostly discussed by philosophers of science rather than by physicists themselves. The marginalization of these sorts of questions amounts to the demise of natural philosophy, at least in physics, in the 20th century. Quantum mechanics “works,” and that’s good enough for most scientists who encounter it. Examples could be multiplied. When handling the same subject matter, some echoes are inevitable. Scholars should not feel that because they have written “Isaac Newton died in 1727” in one book, in the next they must describe him as perishing, expiring, or meeting his maker. But the repetitions of language and arguments (not to mention six reproduced images) threaded throughout The World as We Know It are more extensive than that. They should have been caught by Princeton University Press or its reviewers, and revised. Because the two books have so much in common, it is easy to see where they diverge. The World as We Know It is a less theoretical work than its predecessor. The sociology of knowledge that organized The Intelligibility of Nature has been reduced in scale and folded into readings and examples. The taut interplay between history and theory, which gave the earlier study so much interest, is there, but it is subtle. In the earlier book, the case studies demonstrated theoretical claims about the character and development of science. In the later work, each narrative of discovery is an end in itself. Insights emerge from the history, but they do not control the organization of the study. With the theory muted, it can be hard to understand the logic uniting Dear’s sprawling history of more than two centuries of scientific knowledge. The 16 brisk chapters cover an enormous amount of material. But the closer the volume edges to comprehensiveness, the more obvious the missing elements become. A chapter on “Institutions and Pedagogy,” describing the birth of the research university, illustrates the problem. Inserted roughly halfway through the book, the unnumbered chapter is designed as an “entr’acte,” in acknowledgement that it does not fit the study’s organization around scientific discoveries. Yet as Dear is well aware, no general history of the development of modern science can bracket its 19th-century institutionalization and professionalization. It was the 19th-century university, after all, that gave us the “scientist,” a term coined by the Cambridge philosopher William Whewell. Dear’s history of scientific discoveries implies a wider social and institutional history, but it remains largely subterranean, only occasionally extruded under the pressure of the narrative. It must be said that the balance is not all on the side of the earlier study. There are some advantages to the more historical, less theoretical organization of The World as We Know It. Dear’s accounts of paradigm shifts are remarkably lucid, no small accomplishment given that they span fields and centuries. He makes excellent use of the wealth of new scholarship on Darwin and his influences, to which he has himself contributed. It is satisfying to see puzzle pieces from Buffon’s natural history, Georges Cuvier’s animal taxonomy, Thomas Robert Malthus’s demography, and Charles Lyell’s geology recombined seamlessly in the Darwinian jigsaw. Likewise, Dear’s discussion of stellar nebulae, divided between chapters two and 15, shows vividly how Newton, Kant, Herschel, and Hubble reimagined insights and observations as they sought to discover whether the diffuse light that filtered through early telescopes was a glowing, gaseous substance or discrete but distant stars. Yet despite such pleasures, the book remains a more modest work than The Intelligibility of Nature. Dear has clearly not changed his views about the history of science. But in the two decades that have elapsed, the discipline and the world around it have changed, making it harder to write a sociologically and philosophically ambitious history of science for the general reader. That is a shame, because in the age of Silicon Valley and biotechnology, both the reciprocity and the tensions Dear identified between the epistemological and instrumental ambitions of science are more evident than ever. In recent years, some of the most exciting new books on the history of science in early modernity have focused precisely on this pressure point. Important studies such as Pamela H. Smith’s From Lived Experience to the Written Word (2022), James Poskett’s Horizons: The Global Origins of Modern Science (2022), and Vera Keller’s The Interlopers: Early Stuart Projects and the Undisciplining of Knowledge (2023) all shed new light on how early modern science negotiated the relationship between its instrumental and epistemological ambitions, or in Russell’s phrase, knowing and doing. There is every opportunity for a philosophically informed approach to draw new insights from this wealth of material. Dear, unfortunately, has not done so in The World as We Know It. But for future scholars of the history of science, his body of work over nearly four decades may provide just the model. Julianne Werlin is an associate professor of English at Duke University. Thanks for reading The Chronicle Review! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Subscribe
Top Senate GOP-aligned super PAC pauses N.C. spending, in sign of deepening woes
The Senate Leadership Fund’s pulling money from North Carolina is the latest signal the Republican Party is giving up hope of holding that Senate seat.
Analysis | How Trump keeps embracing AI
And what else happened this week under his administration.
Only one browser has this really helpful search tool
This is great for experimentation with a different search site, keeping a particular search out of your history at your usual site, or giving yourself a break from AI-first answers.
Democrats expand battleground for House, reaching into bloodred districts
The additions include Kansas’s 2nd, Michigan’s 1st, North Carolina’s 13th, New Jersey’s 2nd, Oklahoma’s 5th, Texas’s 9th, Virginia’s 6th and Washington’s 5th.
Trump memecoin plans another gala amid backlash to self-enrichment
The latest event will take place next month at the president’s golf club in Northern Virginia.
Campaign-style Trump ads use money meant for border security, memorials
The White House Office of Management and Budget added $20 million to the pot for commemorative events a day before DHS awarded an advertising contract of the same amount.
Wes Moore forms bipartisan governors group on AI, citing federal inaction
Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland is forming a bipartisan group of governors to address concerns about artificial intelligence
Trump sends out $500 ACA refunds and a letter promoting his record
The rebate checks are headed to nearly 1 million people President Donald Trump says were overcharged under the Affordable Care Act.
GOP hold on Florida and Texas governors’ races weakens, nonpartisan analyst says
President Donald Trump’s poor ratings contributed to the Cook Political Report shifting both races from “Likely Republican” to “Lean Republican.”
Trump says Secret Service wants him to ‘take down’ Oval Office
The president also said he is looking into designating the White House room as a “federal landmark,” potentially preserving his changes.
How Washington Funded the Politicization of Science
Over the last half-decade, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on projects designed to influence academic policies, both in the sciences and other disciplines. The aim was to foster a progressive conception of social justice in these fields. In pursuit of this end, the foundation earmarked nearly a million dollars for a project titled “Creating Inclusive Scientific Societies through Policies and Practices,” over a million for a project on “Faculty Online Learning Communities for Gender Equity,” and over $2 million to foster “racial equity focused departmental change.” Through a public records request, I’ve obtained the proposals and progress reports for dozens of NSF grants designed to promote social justice. Although funding for these grants was eventually halted by the Trump administration, the projects illustrate an important facet of recent higher-education policy. Many of the university policies that promised “social transformation” didn’t arise in a vacuum. They were actively encouraged by outside funders—often by the federal government itself. Subscribe Accreditation—the peer-review process which enables universities to receive federal grants and student loans—has recently become a policy battleground, with accreditors wielding significant power over both universities and academic disciplines. In 2020, when Oregon Health and Science University’s medical school issued an extensive diversity action plan—which promised “consequences” for employees who failed to support “DEI, anti-racism and social justice”—it specifically pointed to the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME), the medical-school accrediting body, to justify the overhaul. The NSF actively promoted DEI-focused accreditation policies. The proposal for a $1.2 million program on promoting “community engagement” in STEM, which I obtained through a records request, notes that the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology was exploring changes to its criteria “that would incorporate JEDI [justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion].” The proposal promised to “support broader JEDI efforts in the general criteria for engineering.” Another grant funded a conference designed to “identify and share best practices and strategies to integrate IDEA principles in accreditation criteria”—referring to an acronym that stands for “inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility.” Scholarly societies have become another flashpoint in debates over higher education. Critics argue that many of these societies, which have the power to shape entire disciplines, have become increasingly politicized. Again, through its giving, the NSF played a role in promoting this politicization. In one million-dollar grant that received funding in 2024, a group of psychologists proposed a series of social-justice reforms to the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues. The proposal, which I obtained via a records request, asserts that “[r]edistributing resources (such as moving different people into leadership roles) is not enough” and that the society’s “governance structures do not yet reflect its stated values of diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Its solution: review and rework the society’s criteria for leadership development, academic awards, conferences, and publications. Adjusting review criteria informed by “intersectionality” designed to fight “epistemic exclusion” is an easy way to introduce de facto ideological litmus tests into the peer-review process. For many of the grants I obtained, such litmus tests seem to be the point. “Academic departments are racialized social systems that produce and sustain the byproducts of systemic racism,” a proposal for a $2.7 million project funded in 2024 asserts, promising to develop “departmentally-focused change efforts that cultivate values, assumptions, and behaviors that advance racial equity.” The University of Illinois Urbana Champaign’s million-dollar “I-ADVANCE” project, which effectively created a small DEI bureaucracy on campus, promised to Embed 28 ADVANCE faculty fellows in STEM departments” to amplify its equity goals. Another $1.2 million project promised to create “faculty online learning communities,” made up of scientists at universities around the country, that would eventually build department-level diversity action plans. “Ultimately,” the proposal asserts, perhaps more perceptively than its authors realized, “both organizational change and intersectionality frameworks deal with power.” Indeed, such grants confer a great deal of power to administrators and scholar-activists, who can even use the mere availability of funding as a tool to advance their causes. That history is worth remembering amid today’s debate over federal involvement in higher education: Washington has been shaping university priorities for years, including by financing efforts to instill progressive ideas about race, gender, and equity into academic institutions—and many of the policies those grants encouraged remain embedded within universities long after the federal money has stopped flowing. John D. Sailer is the director of higher education policy and a senior fellow at Manhattan Institute. Share
Elon Musk to return his attention to government, advise Pentagon on future of war
Musk will join Anduril founder Palmer Luckey and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich on a panel for what the Defense Department is calling Project Meridian.
Analysis | Trump’s playing his greatest hits. They don’t work as well as they used to.
With midterm elections a month away, the president is turning the audacity up to 11 as he labors to reverse his party’s decline in the polls.
Political climate has so soured for GOP, even Mississippi Democrats are hopeful
A Democrat hasn’t won a Senate race in the state since 1982, but a young district attorney has a message for party officials and donors: “If we try, we win these voters.”
Gas service could be cut off, switched to electric under Mass. bill
The proposal represents the latest flashpoint in a debate over how much of a role natural gas should play here.
Trump loses favor with crypto fans who call him out for cashing in
The president’s 2024 campaign leaned into crypto to attract young men, a demographic that is deserting Republicans in the midterms.
No longer a secret, Nathan Fielder's Elizabeth Holmes doc 'You Can See Everything' lands in New York
No longer a secret, “You Can See Everything,” Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s Elizabeth Holmes documentary, has premiered at the New York Film Festival
Presidents rarely visit Indian Country. Trump’s planned Choctaw Nation rally will be the latest
President Donald Trump is holding a campaign rally in the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma
White House touts big-ticket projects in hope of swaying key races
With few tools to bring down prices in the short run, Trump hopes to focus voters on investments that could pay off in years to come.
Trump says ‘only Hispanic’ could survive fall at ballroom site
Trump invited attendees of a Hispanic Heritage Month to be among the first to walk on his ballroom floor.
Fed watchdog finds no crimes in $2.4B building renovation, only mismanagement
The renovation became a high-profile flashpoint in the Trump administration's efforts to pressure the Fed into cutting its key interest rate
Fed watchdog finds no crimes in $2.4B building renovation, only mismanagement
The renovation became a high-profile flashpoint in the Trump administration's efforts to pressure the Fed into cutting its key interest rate
Dems kill Republican's chances of lowering Americans' electricity bills in key election flashpoint
Senate Democrats blocked the Ratepayer Protection Act, a bill aimed at making AI data centers bear rising electricity costs that Jon Husted championed.
Immigrants with legal status at risk of being dropped from Medicaid
The One Big Beautiful Bill ends eligibility for refugees, asylees, trafficking victims and others, and its impact could be larger than initially predicted.
Romanian lawmakers set to vote on new center-right Cabinet as political crisis drags on
Romanian lawmakers are set to vote on a new center-right Cabinet proposed by Prime Minister-designate Siegfried Muresan
Republican blocks Senate resolution criticizing Trump’s taxpayer-funded ads
Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyoming) argued that past presidents in both parties have aired similar announcements.
Officials cast doubt on Trump’s plan for drones, snipers at proposed arch
The arch is still envisioned to be a tourist site, despite the president’s announcement that it would be a “military complex,” administration officials told advocacy groups.
Jasmine Crockett’s PAC released new endorsements. Talarico is still not on the list.
Rep. Jasmine Crockett has stepped back from Texas’s high-profile Senate race since losing the Democratic primary in March.
Andy Burnham pledges a big shakeup for Britain in a high-risk political speech
Prime Minister Andy Burnham has vowed to give Britain “a new social contract for the 21st century.”
Brisket is missing from Texas menus. A Democrat blames Republicans.
Vicente Gonzalez releases a new ad connecting high beef costs to the loss of an important South Texas tradition.
GOP senator blocks bill to stop Trump from demolishing Kennedy Center
The bipartisan effort to ban the demolition of presidential memorials was thwarted in the Senate by an objection from Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah).
Ex-Trump prosecutor Smith will tell senators he won't 'be silenced' by threats of prosecution
The former Justice Department special counsel who brought two federal indictments against President Donald Trump will tell lawmakers he “will not be silenced by continued threats of prosecution” from the Trump administration and believes the rule of law is being threatened like never before
Analysis | Democrats coalesce around a message about the cost of corruption
Their message accuses Republicans of flagrant corruption, tying the attack to the billions President Donald Trump has made during his second term.
$10 for a gallon of gas has red Alaska thinking about a Democratic senator
Mary Peltola hopes to unseat Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan in a race all about prices, federal aid and Donald Trump.
FEMA can’t condition security grants on election changes, judge says
The Trump administration had sought to limit anti-terrorism funding for local governments that didn’t check the citizenship status of voters.
Trump dined with the Anthropic CEO who called for AI slowdown
The president’s first one-on-one meeting with Dario Amodei followed months of tensions.
In Iowa, Republicans feel the heat and try to motivate ‘frustrated’ base
The political environment for the party has led to widespread alarm. “It feels like it could be a wipeout,” one strategist said.
Analysis | Trump says he has an off-ramp to his biggest political problem. He refuses to take it.
There is nothing holding back Republican political fortunes this year more than the war that President Donald Trump started with Iran.