🧵 (1/7) With @knittelmit.bsky.social and @cwolfram.bsky.social, happy to announce our new paper on “Who Bears the Burden of Climate Inaction?”, just posted for BPEA @brookings.edu. We find large climate cost impacts that vary by both geography and income. www.brookings.edu/articles/who...

Alright here we go: You Love America. I started writing this last year; it had this same title last year; depressingly little had to be changed for it to fit in to this moment. open.substack.com/pub/rottenan...

Oh wow anti-trust, wealth taxation...you are telling me these can be tools to promote democratic stability and there were a whole boatload of centrist economists who couldn't think beyond deadweight loss and consumer welfare?

So many immediate horrors right now, but I appreciated the invitation from @donmoyn.bsky.social to reflect on the future and how social scientists could help with the eventual federal government rebuilding. As @sbagen.bsky.social has argued persuasively, we need to start now with that effort! 1/

this from my piece on charlie kirk is probably the most important takeaway if you want to know why bad faith, right-wing voices in media are treated as just another set of peers

This is fascinating. Who in the admin is pushing to end corporate short-termism? Is this just intended to hide reporting on the current economic slowdown, or will it mark a genuine shift in policy? www.ft.com/content/d5d4...

Aaron Klein with a really clear summary of why the Lisa Cook firing is so important: in Februrary, the regional Fed presidents are up for reapproval. If Cook is successfully fired before then, Trump appointees would have the majority necessary to reject them and completely take control of the FOMC.

“Mr. Van Hollen saw a different lesson [from his role in the Abrego Garcia case]. ‘This finger in the wind stuff has got to end. We also need to stop deluding ourselves that the problem is all about messaging, or about volume, or style. We don’t just need to fight. We need to fight for something.’”

Today in 'stylized facts I'd never really internalized': the drop in the US employment + LFP rates during and after 2008 was so severe that we went from among the highest employment rate in the G7 to one of the lowest; just two points above France. (Chart is G7 ex Italy, with US series highlighted.)

Pluralistic democracy depends on people feeling safe enough in the public square to express themselves and participate in the political process. If they don’t, because the public square is dominated by intimidation and violent threat, democracy must perish.

The message should not be that political violence is bad because it targeted a good guy who was “practicing politics the right way” (which Kirk definitely was not). Political violence is bad because it inherently corrodes the democratic polity, because it makes democracy impossible.

Seems like a really interesting project - the first essays are already worth a read.

It was already clear that EJ Antoni was a remarkably unqualified pick to lead BLS. After this reporting, it's also clear that he is incredibly sexist and homophobic, and suspiciously into Nazi military history. His nomination goes through HELP cmte; Murkowski, Collins, and Hawley are all members.

I know there's a lot going on, but it should be getting more attention that the governor of Illinois just credibly accused Texas of planning to literally invade his state. I unpack how profoundly alarming this is @theunpopulist.net:

Most work out there argues that it doesn't pay off for center-right parties to move closer to the far-right. Using some of the best evidence yet, this paper shows that the same is true for center *left* parties. Crucial finding as these parties increasingly move in a nativist direction.

also Miran, 2024: "to pretend that one can easily shift between highly political and allegedly nonpolitical roles without letting political biases inform policy is, at best, naïve—and, at worst, sinister." media4.manhattan-institute.org/wp-content/u...

1/12 Yale Budget Lab's new analysis reveals mixed results from 2025 tariffs through August. Some effects align with economic theory, others present concerning developments, and a few show unexpected bright spots. Here's what the data shows: budgetlab.yale.edu/research/sho...

My brother @eithorpe.bsky.social just put out a fantastic new piece in Health Affairs on the deregulatory push at EPA and its effects on health. Give the piece a read, and give him a follow if you're interested in early-career scholars at the intersections of law, health, and the environment!

IMPLIED CONSUMER PASSTHROUGH. In June alone, we estimate 61-80% of the new 2025 tariffs were passed through to consumer core goods/durables prices, roughly in the middle of prior studies. This suggests US consumers were paying the majority of tariffs by June. 6/13

Fantastic new report on the effects of tariffs so far. See Ernie's thread for twelve big-picture takeaways. The YBL team remain the gold standard for data-driven policy analysis!!

What we do not know is what happens if the federal govt tries to send in troops and the state resists (beyond filing a case). In all previous episodes of a prez sending mil force into a state against the gov’s wishes, the gov protested, but did not attempt resistance. This would be v bad all around.

Great thread from Tim highlighting his new reseach on what 'Abundance' should (and shouldn't) look like in left-behind places. You should read the whole thread, but this tweet gets at the heart of the problem.

Matching the Forbes 400 to tax data finds that they pay a total tax rate of 24 percent of economic income, lower than the 30 percent tax rate paid on average in the US, from Akcan S. Balkir, Emmanuel Saez, Danny Yagan, and Gabriel Zucman https://www.nber.org/papers/w34170

@sbagen.bsky.social has a somber but timely warning about various 2029 rebuilding efforts. This to me is the key. If future leaders bake imagined political constraints into their planning, there just won’t be much “rebuilding” per se. www.offmessage.net/p/project-20...

Bingo. Westminster majoritarianism makes democratic backsliding not only easier to carry out but also harder to warn against, as I argued here. bsky.app/profile/leon...

Update: Appeals court overturns 90-years-settled law to make American employees' legal rights to speak up & act together to improve their jobs subject to presidential veto. Huge victory handed to Musk, Bezos, & other bosses. Big loss for labor. SCOTUS likely upholds prospect.org/justice/2025...

"That amounts to the loss of about one in eight federal civilian workers...." www.nytimes.com/2025/08/22/u...

Ironically this article really undermines the carve-out the Supreme Court majority has tried to create for the Fed, separating it from other independent agencies with a mix of legislative and executive powers

Horse race coverage, but the horses are democracy and authoritarianism

Apropos of nothing, a reminder that German stock markets kept climbing in an almost uninterrupted fashion in the run-up to WW2. Investors are really, really bad at pricing serious institutional and political risks.

Ominous: Trump and Stephen Miller are very clearly working to acclimate Americans to the spectacle of US troops in US cities, to the idea of the military carrying out domestic enforcement on US citizens. Harrowing stuff from @vermontgmg.bsky.social in this exchange: newrepublic.com/article/1995...

Lots of reporting on Cook's firing at the Fed overlooks probably the most important part: the presidents of all 12 regional Feds are up for renewal in February 2026!! If Trump replaces Cook by then, he will have appointed a majority on the Board of Governors, who approve regional Fed appointments. 🧵

Today’s Executive Order creating a *nationwide* military “quick reaction force” and setting up an online portal to permit random fascist vigilantes to join soldiers is one of the scariest things I’ve seen in U.S. politics in my adult life. Why is it not getting more attention?

To be clear, this is the ball game for Federal Reserve independence. If Trump can decide what constitutes "for cause" basis for firing, then every Fed board member can be fired until he has a Board that is completely acquiescent to his every demand. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/trump-uses...

There's a point Arendt makes in Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship that people who convince themselves to cooperate with the regime in pursuit of "the lesser evil" end up conditioning themselves to accept evil, which the regime then ratchets up. A similar story with the press here.

Sharing a new paper forthcoming in Harv. J. on Legislation. Takes a step back to ask when policymakers enact a new spending program or a tax cut, who pays for the policy? Policymakers may not say or, even if they do, what they say may not be the ultimate financing. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

With Rs using the ICA to unilaterally break approps deals, the only path forward for bipartisan approps is ensuring any new dollars are ineligible for an ICA §1012 rescission. If Rs say no and demand the ability to unilaterally break deals after the fact, we’ll be in shutdown land — because of Rs.

What the current administration understands -- and what Democratic establishment and many of my liberal fellow-travelers have ignored for far too long -- is that there are no *fundamental* rules in the game of politics. The rules are created by humans, and they are enforced by humans. Or not. 2/

This is a season of trench warfare and we have to continue to fight because a law passed is NOT the end and I think we all know this. There will be implementation fight opportunities, there will be constant organizing and pushback. Nothing is permanent. Onwards.

Well, the bill passed. It will force 17 million Americans off their insurance, put millions more at risk of not being able to put food on the table, and supercharge ICE's ability to deport immigrants and threaten citizens, all while cutting taxes on the richest Americans. A sad day for our country.

Yeah, this is the thing, it’s hard to understate how much this influx of resources for immigrant detention is going to change the ways that ICE does business. Like really fundamentally change what capacity the agency has.

This is a key point. If you are server making $65k after tips, you are getting a $2,500 tax break, but your insurance costs go up by $3,000. You just lost $500.

Another demonstration of just how economically incoherent this Republican budget bill is: new estimates show that by 2033, it would reduce incomes for the bottom 60% (!!!) of the country.

The Republican budget bill that just passed the senate would cut health care and food assistance for working-class Americans to give tax cuts to the rich. More than anything else, that is the point of this bill. If House Republicans cave and pass it, that will be their legacy.

If this thing becomes law, it will be essential for Democrats to not simply run against it. They must demonstrate to voters that they also understand that the pre-Trump status quo was unacceptable and articulate an affirmative vision of how we can do better if voters return them to office.

Never have so many been so grievously hurt in the service of so few.

Final vote. 50-50. VP breaks the tie. One single GOP Senator could have stopped this abomination. Saved millions of parents from watching their child go hungry. Saved the lives destroyed when Medicaid disappears. They will all live forever with the horror of this bill.

The Senate just passed their version of the "Big, Beautiful Bill." If it passes the House, it will take health care and food away from millions of Americans, gut green energy production, and increase ICE deportation funding by more than 250%. Meanwhile, millionaires would get a tax cut of >$60,000.

After a long night of frantic negotiations, Senate Rs appear to have settled on a compromise on SNAP in order to buy Sen. Murkowski's vote: delay any cuts for states with the HIGHEST error rates, including Alaska. This will *incentivize,* rather than end, waste, fraud, and abuse.