For whatever reason people are now back to discussing who Donald Trump will pick as his running mate. I guess it’s likely because of the ongoing Kristi Noem implosion. This is a perennial parlor game for all presidential nominees. But it is worth noting how different it is for Trump, or, more specifically, how the list of qualifications Trump requires are based on the mix of predation and insecurity that make up his personality. As with Trump himself these are so extreme as to be qualitatively different from that of any other presidential candidate ever. Indeed, he requires characteristics that are so impossible to squeeze together that they leave only the tiniest of openings for a contender to be viable.

Very weird story here to keep an eye on. Last week either 15 or 17 police cars at a Portland Police Bureau lot were torched in what was treated as a suspected case of arson. Yesterday local news reported that a group calling itself the “Rachel Corrie Ghost Brigade” claimed responsibility for the incident. (Corrie was a pro-Palestinian activist who was run over by an IDF bulldozer in 2003). The group said that they cut through a fence at the Bureau’s training facility and lit the fires to strike a blow before police could respond to a pro-Palestine occupation at Portland State’s Millar Library — “raid them before they raid you.”

It’s important to note that people can claim responsibility for something they didn’t do in order to gain publicity for a cause. So we shouldn’t assume the claim is necessarily legitimate. But someone did apparently light the vehicles on fire. Portland police say they’re aware of the claim of responsibility but won’t comment beyond that.

A TPM Reader passed on to us this post from David Pozen writing at Balkinization on the recent events at Columbia University. But Pozen sets aside the specific controversy — Gaza, antisemitism, the use of the NYPD — to look at what is shows about university governance more generally. As he writes, “For all the talk of how the modern university has been corporatized, neoliberalized, and so on, there hasn’t been as much attention paid to the ways in which it has been presidentialized.” I don’t know enough about the history of the internal governance of universities over the last century to have a good feel for how much has changed on this front. My general sense is that boards of trustees, acting through university presidents, have always called the shots, at least in the final analysis. But there’s where ultimate power lies and there’s how government actually functions — how much university administration seeks to create consensus among major stakeholders versus acting in a more unilateral way. I’m still digesting what I think of the post but I wanted to flag it to your attention.