Not a band to be outdone, Spinal Tap is demanding that the Trump campaign refrain from playing “Sex Farm” at their rallies.

The demonization of other countries and peoples, the inability to understand the worldview of challengers and adversaries, the overreliance on force: these traits remain, because they were ingrained in Washington long before 9/11. From Jordan Michael Smith in 2021: trib.al/7HJbuaO

As colleges and universities reopen, we should ask what the pro-Palestine protests achieved—and what’s in store for the fall. From Jordan Michael Smith: newrepublic.com/article/185455…

One of Toronto's newest park is built on a former giant mound of trash blogto.com/city/2024/09/b…

My latest investigation: Fossil Fuel Interests Are Working to Kill Solar in One Ohio County. The Hometown Newspaper Is Helping. W/ Jennifer Smith Richards & Priyanjana Bengani propublica.org/article/ohio-m…

My The Chronicle of Higher Education investigation reveals that some top universities are providing health care to prison inmates. In some cases, they have established consulting arms that rake in lucrative contract fees while providing subpar care to inmates. Economic Hardship Reporting Project chronicle.com/article/higher…

ICYMI:

Please consider this for your weekend reading!

“For Mick, the residents were simply people in need of care. They had committed crimes, but they had completed their sentences. ‘No human being is beyond redemption,’ she told me.” Jordan Michael Smith reports on civil commitment programs for sex offenders. harpers.org/archive/2025/0…

“Although he committed his only crimes as a juvenile more than twenty-­five years ago, Merryfield, now in his mid-­forties, is still at Larned, with no release in sight.” —Jordan Michael Smith (Jordan Michael Smith) harpers.org/archive/2025/0…

“Out of sight, out of mind: this is the attitude most people seemed to have about those in civil commitment, no matter the human cost.” —Jordan Michael Smith (Jordan Michael Smith) harpers.org/archive/2025/0…

“She came to believe that the SPTP would never release most of these people, no matter how eagerly they participated in treatment and kept up good behavior; her job wasn’t to treat these patients but to perpetuate the illusion of treatment.” —Jordan Michael Smith harpers.org/archive/2025/0…

I have heard that the SPTP is confiscating copies of this story from its residents and reprimanding them for having it. The Kansas ACLU has been contacted for their assistance.

North America is not normal.

“The pretension to treatment there was a ‘façade,’ she wrote, and the SPTP ­effectively a ‘shadow prison masking as a treatment facility. . . .’” —Jordan Michael Smith harpers.org/archive/2025/0…

“But Mick cannot forget what she saw at Larned. She believes that people like her former patients deserve an honest chance at rehabilitation, and she will keep fighting for their rights and dignity, no matter how unpopular this cause may be.” —Jordan Michael Smith harpers.org/archive/2025/0…

Reporter Jordan Michael Smith investigates how top universities provide deplorably subpar healthcare to incarcerated populations while misusing public funds. For EHRP + The Chronicle of Higher Education: economichardship.org/2024/12/higher…

Side issue but it irks me when people say Churchill or Great Britain saved Western civ. Nazi Germany was as much a part of 'the West' as England. Some people equate Western civ with freedom or liberalism but genocide and totalitarianism are equally part of Western history.

Jordan Michael Smith (Jordan Michael Smith) in Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, for his review of Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew by Avi Shlaim