A quick update on the story about computer science Professor Xiaofeng Wang and Indiana University. A local NPR affiliate published what purports to be the letter IU Provost Rahul Shrivastav wrote to Wang firing him last Friday.

The relevant portion of the letter goes as follows …

I am writing to advise you that Indiana University has decided to terminate your employment effective immediately. Its my understanding you have informed the chair of your department that you have accepted a faculty appointment with a university in Singapore and will start your role there this summer. Please note that you will not be eligible for rehire with Indiana University.

Amid the chaos and cacophony of Donald Trump’s second term, we’re sucked into this new mini-debate over a potential Trump third term. NBC News got the ball rolling with a headline that read: “Trump won’t rule out seeking third term in the White House, tells NBC News ‘there are methods’ for doing so.” They were roundly criticized for that framing and other news organizations did better by putting the matter more squarely in their headline. For instance, there was The Washington Post, whose headline ran “Trump suggests ‘methods’ exist for bid for unconstitutional third term.”

That’s better, certainly. But there’s only one proper response to all these comments: “No, you’re not.”

Full stop. That’s the whole response.

At roughly 6 p.m. ET this evening the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) sent out a notice to employees on a commission intranet/internal hub that “the NRC has terminated the NRC’s Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA).” The notice has yet to appear in an agency-wide email. The message cites the President’s March 27th, 2025 Executive Order purporting to cancel union contracts across a broad swath of the federal workforce. As you’d expect, it’s all heading to the courts.

Today is the last day of our Annual March TPM Membership Drive. It’s also the last day of our 25% discount. We’ve already hit our 2,500 new member goal. But we’re so close we’re making a push to get to 3,000. We’re currently 67 new members short of that number. Thank you to everyone who helped us to get to 2,500. And if you haven’t become a member yet but would like to support our team and our work just click right here.

Thank you.

I wanted to provide a quick update on the case of Professor Xiaofeng Wang at Indiana University. For overview details, see the posts below. The latest is the IU chapter of a faculty organization (the American Association of University Professors) has sent a letter to the university challenging Professor Wang’s termination. You can see that letter here. The letter itself is the best evidence we as yet have that Wang was in fact fired by the university. The university itself has not confirmed that or publicly commented at all. And at least no one who is talking appears to be in contact with Wang. So we don’t have any confirmation from him or anyone speaking on his behalf.

Yesterday I told you about a situation at Indiana University tied to a Professor of Computer Science and cryptography named Xiaofeng Wang. According to very sketchy public reports, the FBI and DHS police searched two homes owned by Wang and a Library Systems analyst named Nianli Ma, who I assume is his spouse. Colleagues at other universities noted that Wang’s bio pages had been removed from the University website and no one seemed to know where he was. It was unclear whether he had been arrested or perhaps detained in an immigration action.

I can now report some new and as yet unreported details, which largely go to the timeline of events.