Tariffs reduce our freedom by substituting the government's judgment for what we need in place of our own, and for how much we must pay to get it, rather than what it costs to make

This sure sounds like a plan designed to kill a lot of people right quick

The entire point of modern science is that you can work backwards to check that results are correct yourself, you don't need experts with exclusive access to arcane mysteries. In practice, it's often harder, but you can often just use your own judgment

Literally the authoritarian playbook: 1. Call your opponents terrorists. 2. Deploy state power against them. There's nothing subtle or confusing or complex about what's happening. The *outcome* is uncertain but the authoritarianism is right out in the open.

The abyss Nietzsche talked about gazing into to the point of madness was full of images of the world ruled by cruel evil idiots

This is really bad. It won’t get the popular opposition the Kimmel incident did, but it’s way more sweeping and authoritarian. This is an effort to bring the full force of government down on any and all opposition to this administration. www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

It’s really not too late to be a hero for democracy and the rule of law.

And just like his hatred of windmills, it stems from a business failure of his (he blames casinos on reservations for his gambling company going bankrupt).

He's right

Had to take this advice for a post that attracted the hammer and sickle crowd the other day

May Mailman, the Trump administration’s point person in its crackdown on higher education, relies on culture war cliches in making her case rather than evidence or law. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/25/o...

Weaponizing of the state against political opponents

In prior instances in the UK and the US, the establishment of a pluralist compact came about through the intervention of powerful actors, e.g. a segment of business, who bore the brunt of clientilistic and retributive politics. See Didi Kuo on this www.cambridge.org/core/books/c...

Friend-enemy politics is our new status quo, at least until we can stalemate its practitioners and force them back into a mutually-forebearing modus vivendi, on the long way back to a pluralist politics of compromise

Man he hates competition - in the economy as in elections.

None of this stops until this man is removed, by some legal or law-like process, from power. It will only get worse

very cool that trump is singularly dedicated to making everything in your life more expensive

Reads like a Reichstag Fire Decree

Political science has a term for decisions you make without knowing it: nondecisions. They're freakishly common!

I’m starting to notice a trend in the polling data… —Top Public Worry: Corruption —Biggest problem in Fed Gov: Corruption —Top fear: Corruption —What one word would you use to describe American government?: “Corrupt” It’s almost like voters are trying to tell us something.

Dave Matthews has the opportunity to do the funniest thing.

“Show me the man, and I’ll find you the crime.” — Lavrentiy Beria

They’re literally giving prosecutors the names of people and organizations, and telling them to go find crimes. It’s clear from the NYT that the directive came from Trump. This is a direct consequence of Roberts explicitly immunizing weaponization of DOJ in Trump v. US.

We’ve created a system in which there’s no disincentive stopping a shameless, power mad administration from doing this. At worst, they get struck down in court and they get to ruin a lot of people in the process. But civil, criminal liability for this sort of abuse of power are nonstarters.

Much like voters literally do not believe the policies publicly championed and enacted into law by the Republican Party are, in fact, the policies they support

here's the more targeted data on gender men's social circles have shrunk more than women's, and fewer men report having friends they lean on for emotional support but this is clearly a whole of society problem, with secondary gendered effects www.americansurveycenter.org/why-mens-soc...

Evergreen

You can't put it more succinctly than this:

Good frame for understanding loneliness today: we're all subject to the forces generating it, but some groups are struggling to respond more than others

Goddamn, IF ONLY they did something as harmless as build pyramids, we'd be much better off. Our old scared rich bastards are dedicated to hoovering up all wealth in society like dragons & spending it to sabotage any efforts to prevent the rest of us from dying right after they do

If they had a right-wing, “tough-on-crime” coded mayor there would be endless national profiles about him and how he finally brought sanity back to Chicago.

The ancient Greeks would agree

Another reason to demand RFK Jr's impeachment is that it helps to normalize a removal politics that's sorely missing in the US. Our politics needs a widespread sense that contempt for proper service to the public can get you kicked out of office

It’s hard to explain how bad you have to be acting to get all of these people on the same side.

“It is beyond highly irregular to have all the operational and command GOFOs tasked to fly to DC and also not tell any of them why,” said one of the officials, using military shorthand for general and flag officers. “To say the military leadership is anxious would be an understatement.”

At the Department of Political Science (University of Amsterdam, @uva-fmg.bsky.social), we are looking for a new Assistant Professor to join our team. Interested? You can find all details and apply here: werkenbij.uva.nl/en/vacancies....

A future president should turn this into a type of visitors' center. We need to return to republican virtue.

i'm a skocpol-putnamist a lot of american politics and the turn to hyper-atomism comes down to the evaporation of Third Spaces and social capital

n.b., the Emily Witt manosphere essay Derek Thompson criticizes here is far more insightful and worthy of study than anything he's written in years www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

I wrote a whole book about this, and how to come to grips with it: press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

Anytime I give a talk I always tell my audience “you are weird because you came to hear me talk about politics.” Most of the people, most of the time, don’t pay attention to politics.

With France joining the proud club of democracies with the balls (i.e. hatred of elite impunity) to put a former head of state/government in jail, the same logic that says wealth taxes will cause the rich to flee suggests criminal politicians will move to places like the US, that love impunity

I've been sitting with this piece of @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social for two days, reading it, re-reading it. You should too. #EzraKlein is the avatar of a new kind of liberal indulgence for the worst of the far-right, embracing bad-faith as a practice. www.bostonreview.net/articles/how...

When the Democratic Party comes back to federal power - and I fear this could take quite a while - they will face a true "deep state" that is deeply hostile to its power and liberal democracy. Democrats will have to not just fire many people but also abolish whole institutions to protect both.

Coming from a place of pure ignorance: what do these investigative powers, when in the minority, consist in? Can't issue subpoenas IIRC, so what's included?

i think this gets into @kjephd.bsky.social's work on DEMOCRACY FOR BUSY PEOPLE holds up - time is basically a resource in politics which primarily the wealthy have

Is this a crime (by Kai Trump)