"If it was good news, it would have been leaked. We'd all know about it. Donald Trump would stay around to sign and pass out pens. The fact that he is getting out of town does not bode well," @DavidJUrban says of the MOU.

Malcolm Gladwell revealed why you shouldn't go to Harvard: 1. America does not have a shortage of students who want science and math degrees. It has a shortage of students who finish them. Half of all high school seniors who intend to study STEM drop out by the end of their second year. The problem is not interest. It is persistence. 2. The obvious assumption is that smarter students persist longer. So Gladwell tested it. At Hartwick College, a small liberal arts school in New York, the top third of math SAT scorers took the majority of STEM degrees. The bottom third dropped out in large numbers. The data seemed to confirm it. Smarter kids stick around longer. 3. Then he looked at Harvard. The bottom third of Harvard's math SAT scores are equal to the top third at Hartwick. By the logic above, everyone at Harvard should graduate with a STEM degree. They are all brilliant. Nobody should be dropping out. 4. Harvard showed the exact same pattern as Hartwick. Top students graduated. Bottom students dropped out like flies. Even though the bottom Harvard students were objectively brilliant by any global standard. Something else entirely was driving the dropout rate. 5. That something is called relative deprivation theory. Human beings do not measure themselves against the world. They measure themselves against the people immediately around them. A Harvard student in the bottom third does not think I am in the top one percent of all students globally. They think that kid next to me keeps getting everything right and I keep getting it wrong. So they quit. 6. The research from UCLA puts a specific number on it. Your odds of graduating with a STEM degree fall by two percentage points for every ten point increase in the average SAT score of your peers. Choose Harvard over the University of Maryland and your chance of finishing a STEM degree drops by thirty percent. Thirty percent. Just to put a brand name on your resume. 7. Relative position matters more than absolute position when it comes to confidence, motivation, and self belief. The eightieth percentile student at Harvard looks up at the people above them and feels like they cannot compete. The number one student at a state school feels like they can conquer the world. That feeling drives everything. 8. The practical hiring implication is radical. Class rank matters more than institution name. Gladwell argues companies should have a don't ask don't tell policy for where someone went to college. Hiring only from top schools means missing the top students from every other school. That is not smart hiring. That is brand worship. 9. When choosing a college, never go to the best school you get into. Go to the school where you are guaranteed to be near the top of your class. Being a big fish in a smaller pond does not just feel better. It statistically produces better outcomes than being a small fish in the most prestigious pond available. 10. So why do we keep choosing Harvard over Maryland? Because we are flattered. Because the acceptance letter feels like validation. Because we make an irrational decision in a moment of enormous flattery and call it ambition. Gladwell's conclusion is simple and brutal. When we have the chance to join an elite institution we do things that are genuinely against our own interest and we feel great about it the whole time.

SCOOP: Top White House officials believe NYT reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan obtained audio recordings of Situation Room meetings for their new book. Such a taped leak would be a shocking breach of one of the most secure settings on Earth. axios.com/2026/06/14/trump-s…

A Louisiana school district says some teachers will receive $50,000 bonuses this year thanks to increased tax revenue from a @Meta data center construction project. Local officials said the windfall for teachers, funded by a portion of the parish’s sales tax, reflects an influx of economic activity that is revitalizing a slumping region. wsj.com/us-news/education/th…

This is what my general election opponent thinks counts as "leadership" in Texas. The Texas Railroad Commission is a complex regulatory agency tasked with fixing our power grid, preventing toxic chemical leaks, and managing our state's water supply. It requires data-driven, serious management. Instead, Bo French uses his platform to fuel toxic division and stoke religious bigotry. Even top leaders in his own party have condemned this exact post and called for his resignation. Texas is an energy superpower. We deserve an experienced mechanical engineer on the job, not an internet troll who puts party politics and hate above the public.

I reported last month that @johnofa, one of the first partners at Andreessen Horowitz, left his role at the firm due to political disagreements with Marc Ben. Today, he's expanding on that in a column in NYT. "Some of the most powerful players in A.I. — led by some of my friends and former partners, to my great sadness — have raised hundreds of millions of dollars to forestall a more serious and meaningful debate about how A.I. should be governed." nytimes.com/2026/06/11/opini…

Ainsley Earhardt: "Now ICE is funded through the end of Donald Trump's reign"

This has to be the best crowd pop in the history of sports. The roof is off. The city is on fire. I can’t stop listening to it.

Postal Service won’t deliver mail ballots for states that don’t hand over voter lists, under plan for Trump directive cnn.com/2026/06/10/politics/…

Jamie Foxx does impressions of Shaq, Charles Barkley, and Ernie Johnson after the New York Knicks’ Game 3 loss to the San Antonio Spurs at Madison Square Garden. (🎥 iamjamiefoxx/IG)

Bird flu, screwworm monitoring among foreign aid programs killed by Trump agri-pulse.com/articles/2263…