Trump's tariffs cost American households $1,000 last year: Research group President Donald Trump’s tariffs cost the average American household $1,000 last year, according to new research from the nonpartisan Tax Foundation.

President Donald Trump's tariffs cost the average American household $1,000 last year, according to new research from the nonpartisan Tax Foundation. abcnews.go.com/Business/tru...

Opinion | Time to Say Goodbye

www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/o...

Worth the read.

Two babies were born in New York within a year of each other, soon after WWII.

One, Rob Reiner, lived a life of humanity and achievement. He brought us delight and joy. His memory will be a blessing.

The other, Donald Trump, will be remembered as an embarrassment to our nation.

Colleges Are Preparing to Self-Lobotomize The skills that students will need in an age of automation are precisely those that are eroded by inserting AI into the educational process.

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...

Senators demand Linda McMahon ask DHS to stop immigration enforcement near schools The letter says that “if society can agree that alcohol, tobacco and drugs should be kept at least 1,000 feet away from our schools,” then “violent DHS tools and tactics also belong on that list.”

The letter says that “if society can agree that alcohol, tobacco and drugs should be kept at least 1,000 feet away from our schools,” then “violent DHS tools and tactics also belong on that list.”

More than Words by John Warner

image of revolutionary era soldiers throwing computers into the harbor and text that says "Spilling the AI Tea: the important work of building community. Available July 9th, 2025 at theimportantwork.substack.com

theimportantwork.substack.com is back tomorrow with the first in a summer series from instructors writing about collaboration and conversation with other educators as we navigate the current moment. If you're looking for an antidote to big tech-sponsored professional development, check us out!

Same here.

Who Owns the AI Dividend? There is a growing divide among those who use AI and those who do not.

@marcwatkins.bsky.social raises important questions and consequences surrounding educator use of AI.

open.substack.com/pub/marcwatk...

The link leads to a different article.

ChatGPT's Impact On Our Brains According to an MIT Study The study, from MIT Lab scholars, measured the brain activity of subjects writing SAT essays with and without ChatGPT.

‪🧵Not yet peer reviewed. But also: decisions are already being made with no research. “What really motivated me to put it out now before waiting for a full peer review is that I am afraid in 6-8 months, there will be some policymaker who decides, ‘let’s do GPT kindergarten.’ time.com/7295195/ai-c...

And I think one of the fundamentals is confidence. During the book club yesterday, I was struck by how our students (and we) feel like imposters as writers, but using LLMs turns them into academic cosplayers as you state in your book.

Those shirts are the best!

Congratulations!!

A.I. Hallucinations Are Getting Worse, Even as New Systems Become More Powerful A new wave of “reasoning” systems from companies like OpenAI is producing incorrect information more often. Even the companies don’t know why.

The newest and most powerful A.I. technologies — so-called reasoning systems from companies like OpenAI, Google and the Chinese start-up DeepSeek — are generating more errors, not fewer. As their math skills have notably improved, their handle on facts has gotten shakier.

I love them—how fun!

We want the war horse.
Jesus rides a donkey.

We want the eagle.
The Holy Spirit descends as a dove.

We want to take up swords.
Jesus takes up a cross.

We want the roaring lion.
God comes as a slaughtered lamb.

We keep trying to arm God.
God keeps trying to disarm us.

Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom

Thinking about calls for students to refine their prompt engineering skills because it's supposed to help secure The Jobs of the Future and wondering if instead we should be working with youth to analyze the political economy of AI, develop a Luddite praxis, and build coalitions to fight back.

Reading in the Age of Social Media (and AI) I’ve published quite a bit about AI’s impact on reading and I’m still not entirely sure how students or the general public will use AI reading assistance.

How we read online is already deeply complicated. New AI tools are bound to change our reading habits and our relationship with text. What this means for how we teach reading as a skill in the wake of AI agents is something we should consider. marcwatkins.substack.com/p/reading-in...

It’s like they need all the electricity to run AI. 🙄

Movement

Happy New Year!

Teacher Consultant—Flint Hills Writing Project, Kansas