| President Trump can't seem to stop hating on Harvard, so I guess we gotta talk about it. Today, a letter revealed that his administration plans to rip up $100 million worth of federal contracts with the university. In case you need reminding, Harvard is the oldest and richest school in the nation, so people are very, ahem, passionate about it, as evidenced by this 2,264-word tweet billionaire hedge fund investor Bill Ackman fired off on Memorial Day.  Noah Feldman, a law professor at the esteemed Ivy, calls Trump's attack on the college's international student population a blatant violation of the law, amounting to something "much greater than visas for foreign students." In his eyes, "Trump is trying to break the world's leading university because he knows that higher education — everywhere — is one of the bulwarks of a free society devoted to pursuing truth without fear or favor … if he can defeat a school that is so well-resourced, globally known, and institutionally powerful, then he can take down any university he wants." But artificial intelligence might beat the president to it: Bloomberg's editorial board says AI is quickly turning higher education into a copy-and-pasted pursuit that's void of instruction and learning. "Assignments that once demanded days of diligent research can be accomplished in minutes. Polished essays are available, on demand, for any topic under the sun. No need to trudge through Dickens or Demosthenes; all the relevant material can be instantly summarized after a single chatbot prompt," the editors write (free read). "Students who still put in the hard work often look worse by comparison with their peers who don't." Then there's perhaps the biggest losers: students who insist they aren't using AI when their teacher says they are. "It's an untenable situation," the editors write. "Computers grading papers written by computers, students and professors idly observing, and parents paying tens of thousands of dollars a year for the privilege." They point to a number of solutions — tightening policies around AI, paying for software to combat cheaters — but the most obvious thing might be more in-class assessments. Time to bring back these bad boys and "use your imagination," I guess:  But no amount of dreaded blue books will solve the college affordability crisis. Will investing $1,000 for each American citizen born through 2028 help? Perhaps, yet Abby McCloskey has her doubts about the efficacy of the so-called "Trump Accounts" in the Republican tax bill: "Two-thirds of American kids cannot read or do math at grade-level by fourth grade. This suggests that instead of an investment whose biggest expected use is higher education, children need earlier investments in high-quality tutoring to stay on track," she writes. "Before sharing in the noble goal of stock ownership, let's get reading and math right." Speaking of getting the math right: I'm not sure Trump's attack on international students really adds up. On Tuesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio ordered US embassies to stop scheduling student visa interviews while the administration mulls a plan that would force all international candidates to undergo social media screening. What are they gonna do, Control + F to find all the watermelon emojis in the WhatsApp chat? Not only would that be a gross invasion of people's privacy, it'd be a waste of time and resources. If anything, this administration would be better off digging through the ChatGPT histories of all applicants instead. Bonus AI Reading: - Despite the tech industry's rush, there are foundational cracks that will hold back AI agents in the near term. That's a good thing. — Catherine Thorbecke
- The Trump administration might turn over the Library of Congress' intellectual property to the tech sector, which could use it to train AI. — Stephen Mihm
After placing a wreath in front of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery on Monday, Trump told a crowd of veterans he was actually glad he didn't win the 2020 election because without that loss, he wouldn't have been able to preside over (1) The FIFA World Cup in 2026, (2) The 250th anniversary of America's founding and (3) The 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. "Amazing the way things work out," he said. "God did that." Hmm. Did God force Germany and the Netherlands and Belgium to issue travel advisories for the US? Did God make sure travel from Canada was down for the third straight month? Did God deny entry to travelers with visas at the border over minor infractions? No, no, and no — Erika D. Smith says that was all Trump. And that hostility might put a damper on the trifecta of parties he's planning: "At a time when the US should be preparing to roll out the proverbial welcome mat to the world, Trump's erratic immigration policies and draconian rhetoric are instead scaring tourists away," she writes. Unsurprisingly, those foreigners are taking their dollars elsewhere. Specifically, the land of 7-Eleven and kawaii: "A cottage industry has spun up in Japan in the last few years offering abandoned houses, known as akiya, to foreigners," writes Gearoid Reidy. Although cosplaying My Neighbor Totoro sounds fun — see: this couple from Brisbane living out their Pinterest-board dreams — Gearoid says it's not all it's cracked up to be. "It was only this decade that Japan first began making it harder for foreigners to buy properties even in sensitive areas next to military bases or nuclear plants," he writes. Health risks aside, there are the unhappy locals to deal with: "With the secret now out about Tokyo's international attractiveness as a place to live, it's a good time for lawmakers to get ahead of the conversation — before it fuels further public discontent." Bonus Unwelcome Mat Reading: Legal immigrants — many of whom are gainfully employed — are now getting swept up in Trump's deportation obsession. — Patricia Lopez | 
