Two thoughts. 1) The state treating leaders claims as facts with no care for their truth is the highway to dark places. Pretty much doin 90 to get to 1984. 2) the supremes should’ve seen this coming, in fact they were warned. Officials shouldn’t be above the law. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/13/u...

Where political science meets David Lynch

Summers Lovin' Epstein emails reveal that Harvard prez Larry was hopelessly devoted to grease ball Jeff. Did some of Summers' nights involve a hand jive from a beauty school dropout? And did he lose interest after girls went through those magic changes? by Maureen Dowd

For folks (and journalists) who want to search the Oversight Committee email texts, I made a database for searching the 20k text files: splendorous-chaja-f79791.netlify.app

Why is Michael Wolff advising Jeff Epstein in this way? I guess I haven’t really followed the issue closely enough to get what’s going on there

Really looking forward to the first annual Workshop on Organizational and Political Economics in Chicago (OPEC!) this coming Saturday. @luozhaotian.bsky.social has done fabulous work pulling this together.

Will people who this happens to blame the Democrats or the Republicans?

Assume all the yes and no votes from Dem senators are strategic and not sincere votes. The party caucus made a decision. No way to know how many were in favor. Then the caucus decided who would vote yes and no based on what would protect each of them politically the most. That’s how this works.

An extension until Jan 30 is not much of an extension, really. If the Republicans were not going to cave until after January, which seems a reasonable belief, it is not really obvious to me how the Ds are worse off through the deal. Let’s blow up the holidays for ACA tax credits is not a great sell.

Is it just me or does Thomas Paine look like a NYT columnist?

The budget negotiation is much like a strange production of Waiting for Godot, where Godot is played by Donald Trump

@himself.bsky.social nails it. People have so much pent up energy to be organized/to help. So enough with the text messages for $ and let’s get the Party started doing stuff for everyday people.

The question to sort out is how much of the impressive Dem sweep was a result of differential voter turnout that might not carry as strongly into 2026 and 2028 and how much of it signals a sustainable repudiation of Trump in the form of the mobilization of new voters and voters changing sides.

Cuomo was drummed out of office 4 years ago for sexual harassment. He then lost the mayoral Dem primary. He then employed rank gutter racism to win as an independent -- winning Trump's endorsement! -- and that didn't work either. Few modern politicians so richly deserve obscurity and exile.

This is a good idea

🚨More scholarship! In 'Noisy Politics, Quiet Technocrats' @benbraun.bsky.social & Maximilian Düsterhöft comb more than 11,000 speeches by 18 central banks to explore whether CBs discuss politically controversial topics, shedding light on how CBs strategically interact within their social context.🏦🌐

Poor Biden. Back in the basement I guess.

This is pretty cool.

Get the hell out of Evanston.

He’s asking the right questions.

The Working Class Has Shifted Left on ‘Virtually Everything’ www.nytimes.com/video/opinio... Wow Jared!

Versailles on the Potomac

My six year old, on the Simpsons: “all the important people are bad.”

they are too lazy, incompetent, and detached from reality to do full-blown IRL fascism; they visit gratuitous state violence on people at the margins and attempt to sell the rest of us a Videodrome simulacrum of authoritarianism but not enough of us wish to buy to make it work

Great episode of the reliably great podcast. open.spotify.com/episode/1IRR...

Why Did UChicago Destroy the Humanities? The answer is simple: to spend untold sums on useless buildings by starchitects An important piece on where higher education is rn.

The Supreme Court enabled this with their deranged decision to make it practically impossible to prosecute presidents for crimes. All we got to constrain the president is the “honor” of seal time six.

Trump treats strategic uncertainty “as if it were a lever: increase unpredictability, and your opponent backs down. .. “.. It draws from an incomplete version of brinkmanship—one that omits the crucial role of credible signaling, commitment mechanisms, and reputation.” @maverick12.bsky.social

It remains the biggest puzzle how American public opinion could possibly be behaving so normally when government is acting so abnormally. But one can take some conciliation in the normal operation of political gravity.

I am really glad that @jeremymberg.bsky.social wrote this. Everybody who cares about science, and about knowledge generation and civil society generally, should read and share with their favorite administrator. Deafening Quiet from the Scientific Establishment open.substack.com/pub/donmoyni...

Today my @nytimes.com colleagues and I are launching a new series called Lost Science. We interview US scientists who can no longer discover something new about our world, thanks to this year‘s cuts. Here is my first interview with a scientist who studied bees and fires. Gift link: nyti.ms/3IWXbiE

It's increasingly clear that the president lives in a constructed bubble of unreality designed by aides who are manipulating him in order to take control of US policy. Seems like an important story - wish media would cover it.

wizard frog is insane

I agree with Tom - we live in an electoral authoritarian regime. It has some fascist elements (e.g., disappearing migrants; masked agents detaining individuals without warrants), but the Trump regime is not (at least, yet) in a full fascist mode.

This is a really outstanding post. "That’s the point of the compact. .... It is about control. Specifically it is about turning existing federal law, over which the administration has limited control, into terms of a 'deal' that offers the government much more control."

I found this Douthat column interesting, but basically I think it’s wrong. Why Left and Right Can’t Understand Each Other’s Fears www.nytimes.com/2025/10/04/o...

You have to admit it’s hilarious that literally 6mos ago Argentina was the country MAGA was saying was gonna dunk on all the neolibs and show them how to run a proper economy and now they’re literally begging for (and getting!) a handout from American taxpayers. Clown ideology. 🤡

I always pay attention to what stories People Magazine and other consumer media outlets cover. That's how you can tell that something has broken through the usual political and news bubbles. This horrific Chicago story has broken through. people.com/ice-agents-o...

Two senior Republican appropriators agree it doesn't make any sense for Democrats to agree to a government funding deal unless Trump actually adheres to the deal. The Democratic alternative CR had language that would address this, but the White House came out strongly against.

I have deep respect for Risa (she is one of the best in civ-mil) but I disagree with this take. This was a regime trying to gain the loyalty of the military and failing. 1/n

Great take

I'm excited to share that we're running a junior faculty search in American politics. Proud to see GWU continue to invest in political science. Link: www.gwu.jobs/postings/122...

I really don’t understand why anyone sits down for an interview with that Chotiner guy.

Negativity bias in media is incredible.

Yesterday I posted about how I used comet browser to take a Qualtrics survey almost undetected. Last night, I ran a pilot (N=400) on @joinprolific.bsky.social . I found that almost 10% of "respondents" identified as AI when directly asked.

Absolutely necessary, this is what it takes.

🎉 Congrats to @nicolewilson.bsky.social , winner of the 2025 Lynne Rienner Best Dissertation Award 👏 Honorable Mention: @victoragboga.bsky.social 👉 www.afpol.org/blog/nicole-...

My new paper, The Crisis of Appropriations Law. Very much a draft -- and perhaps a little too timely. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Told my six year old about the time I had a minor role in a middle school production of Fiddler on the Roof. Now I can’t get that Gwen Stefani song out of my head.