HIGHER ED’S CONFIDENCE PROBLEM IS WORSE THAN IT LOOKS: Americans already think college faculties are far more ideologically balanced than they are. Give them a clearer picture and confidence falls. Apparently the problem isn’t just the sales pitch.
September 2, 2026
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: $400K for AI Cheaters Luxury Camp: How many colleges will survive?
“I just don’t see a world in which parents continue to indefinitely fork up nearly half a million to send their kids to AI Cheating Young Adult Luxury Camp,” tweets Tyler Austin Harper, a professor turned Atlantic writer. “Some will, but how many? Enough to sustain most colleges?”
He envisions a “black-swan-esque event where significant chunks of higher ed collapse suddenly.” Colleges are playing chicken with parents, he tweets. “The wager seems to be that college is so entrenched as the default that parents will continue to pay for it even as the value proposition and quality collapse due to AI. I think that bluff gets called.”
The Syracuse University is in trouble, reports Douglas Belkin and Roshan Fernandez in the Wall Street Journal. Total cost of attendance at the private university increased to $98,544 this year. Enrollment fell short.
Syracuse borrowed “nearly half a billion in debt to build desperately needed new dorms,” they write. To fill the dorms, the university may need to lower admissions standards, risking its prestige and reducing its appeal to students whose parents can pay tuition.
To be fair, most universities have done much worse than that to damage their prestige.
“FOR THIS REASON, ACADEMIA DOESN’T JUST ATTRACT LEFTISTS, IT ATTRACTS THE MOST NEUROTIC, EMOTIONALLY FRAGILE, AND INTELLECTUALLY CONFORMING LEFTISTS”:
Western academia is a giant, supra-national safe space for leftist ideologues. Within its hallowed halls, leftists can spend their lives in a kind of fantastic alternate reality, confident that no one around them will be so gauche as to confront them with facts. For this reason,… pic.twitter.com/NdqdUoBogX
— Collin Cleary (@collin_cleary) September 1, 2026
THE QUESTION SOMEBODY WAS SUPPOSED TO ASK BEFORE MAKING HIRING DECISIONS: Who Is the Market for Gay NFL Cheerleaders?
READER FAVORITE: roborock Qrevo CurvX Robot Vacuum and Mop, 22,000Pa Suction.#CommissionEarned
KEEP YOUR POWDER DRY…:
Zohran/hasan/Ilhan fans now just directly calling for gangs of people to murder bank employees — as their ‘job.’
Understand, they want us dead. They aren’t joking.
There is no way to share a civilization with these people and something will have to be done. pic.twitter.com/uaHJfoUHNv
— Hon. Vickie Paladino (@VickieforNYC) September 2, 2026
…and keep lots of powder.
And if you don’t click through to the second screencap, it contains this gem: “All leftist teaching says unity!”
Except, of course, for all the people lefties need to murder.
HMM: Pentagon Will Own 35% Of Venezuela Oil Venture, White House Reveals.
The announcement comes three days after Trump unveiled the agreement without naming the private partner or the terms of the deal. The Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital (OSC) will hold the 35% ownership stake in the venture while the State Department will also hold the right to buy 20% of the venture’s output at cost and the right of first refusal on the rest, according to a Monday fact sheet from the White House.
The Trump administration identified the partner in the deal as North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP) — a Venezuelan-owned firm that is the country’s second-largest oil operator behind Chevron.
State ownership doesn’t usually go very well.
THE FRESH YOUNG FACE OF THE DEMOCRAT PARTY:
Great job by my talented colleague @mVespa1, Managing Editor at @townhallcom. Every talk radio show, podcast and cable news show should be highlighting his work today!
We Found Every 9/11 Tweet Abdul El-Sayed Didn't Want You to See https://t.co/UVbKTaDqqo
— L A R R Y (@LarryOConnor) September 2, 2026
HE’S MERELY TRANSITIONING TO “GOOD COMMUNIST”: Report: Raúl Castro Is on His Deathbed
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Texas pushes three-year bachelor’s degrees to cut college costs.
EXERCISE YOUR RIGHTS: William English’s National Firearms Survey 2.0 Should Terrify Assault Weapons Ban Fans.
“The new survey also shows at least 25 percent of American gun owners currently own an AR-15 type rifle, 12.9% currently own other similarly styled semi-automatic rifles, and 30.0% – approximately 26.4 million adults – currently own at least one firearm in one of these two categories,” noted CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “This updated National Firearms Survey is loaded with information and it is presented in an easy-to-understand narrative. Honestly, this new survey comes at a very important moment, considering that we’re looking at a major Supreme Court case on the constitutionality of laws banning AR-15 type rifles and pistols, probably sometime this fall.
“The Citizens Committee is particularly interested in the number of law-abiding Americans who carry firearms for personal safety in public places,” he added. “With all of those millions of legally armed private citizens responsibly carrying firearms, it explodes another myth of the gun ban bunch, that more guns in private hands leads to more crime. As we recently noted, thanks to updated FBI data, that is simply not the case.
“More guns, less crime,” the wise man once said.
HISTORY:
On this day in 1945, Japan signed the instrument of surrender aboard the Battleship Missouri.
Officially ending the deadliest war in human history. pic.twitter.com/AaAaAhs2qv
— InfantryDort (@infantrydort) September 2, 2026
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Begun, the Meme Assault on Canada Has… “They’ve all lost their way up there ever since we took hockey from them. Canada’s biggest export in recent years has been reasons to mock it. Canadian Maple Festival King (also called the ‘prime minister’) Mark Carney (no relation to Art) has just given us the best one yet. He doesn’t want to engage in talks about a trade agreement because Americans have been giving him a good taunting.”
THE NARRATIVE MUST BE SERVED: Politicians need to stop holding press conferences every time someone dies of measles. (But they probably won’t.)
The Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) is the hardline regime’s chief propaganda organ, responsible for blasting Tehran’s virulent brand of radicalism to a domestic audience and supporters across the globe, including inside the United States. The IRIB has become instrumental to the regime’s survival in the past year, since nationwide protests inside Iran threatened the mullahs’ hold on power in the lead-up to the U.S.-led war. In recent weeks, the IRIB—which oversees a wide network of media including newspapers, websites, and social media channels—has been responsible for publishing a series of disturbing death threats against Trump, his wife Melania, and their son Barron. This includes an Aug. 23 video, since taken down, purporting to document both Melania and Barron’s movements as part of an assassination scheme that the Secret Service says it is actively monitoring.
But during this time, the State Department waived longstanding sanctions on the IRIB, permitting it to freely operate and access satellite services that are pivotal to its existence, the Free Beacon has learned. Crippling financial sanctions and taking steps to block the IRIB’s technical operations would make it hard for the regime mouthpiece to broadcast outside Iran, and would undermine its internal broadcasting and publishing operations as well.
In 1999 and 2003, the United States and its allies bombed state television in Belgrade and Baghdad, effectively shutting down state media for a time. The United States is not believed to have targeted Iranian state broadcasting in its current campaign.
That’s… odd.
COLOR ME UNSURPRISED:
1/ OUR NEW REPORT: EQUITY REDUCES EXCELLENCE. Jason Arday was not an aberration. He was a feature, not a bug, of a system that replaced merit with identity. Our new study of nearly 2,000 prestigious Canada Research Chairs provides the hard numbers. 🧵 pic.twitter.com/5h6ifelwmu
— Eric Kaufmann (@epkaufm) September 1, 2026
HIGHER EDUCATION’S FUNDING IS DELIBERATELY OBSCURE. END THAT.
Who controls the funding influences the education of our next generation. There is no good argument against transparency in the funding of higher education. https://t.co/yEpiyqAN8N
— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) September 2, 2026
TO A LEFTIST, THESE THINGS ARE CONNECTED BECAUSE THEY DISLIKE BOTH OF THEM:
On CNN NewsNight, The Atlantic’s Jemele Hill argues that capitalism is oppressive and bound up in white supremacy.
Kmele Foster: “It's one thing to not think capitalism isn't working ideally. It's another thing entirely to insist that it is oppressive, that it is bound up with… pic.twitter.com/PLWRCuxt7v
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) September 2, 2026
DEMOCRATS DESPISE THEIR OWN CONSTITUENTS, EXHIBIT #1,000,006:
🚨 WTF?! The State of New York has ordered Elon Musk's X Money to STOP paying out 6% interest to any New Yorker with their bank account
Instead, interest has to drop to 0%. X is trying to reverse it.
New York leaders hate their own people! pic.twitter.com/qNzAz8eGbC
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) September 1, 2026
X Money is basically a PayPal-type transmitter account (there’s an optional physical debit card) that pays 6% on deposits.
YOU GOTTA PUMP THOSE NUMBERS UP: DHS Arrests More Than 2,000 Illegal Aliens in New York ‘Operation Rotten Apple.’
LIGHTNING DEAL: 4-in-1 Laser Level with Line Laser, Drill Dust Collector. #CommissionEarned
