my favorite step in the scientific method: gossip

As the brother of an autistic American, as a person who worked on US scientific integrity policy at the White House, and as human being, I'm boiling at the RFK idiocy. And though I have little to offer beyond surpassing rage and national shame, I did smile at this statement from NYU's Arthur Caplan:

It's too much liquid

Idk it feels like something is shifting. This tweet was also the language of the AP push alert, and just now the Times chimed in:

Democratic women are disadvantaged in competitive district primaries, where party elites prioritize electability & view men as safer. Republican women are disadvantaged in safe district primaries, where elites & voters assume they are less conservative. www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1...

I’m convinced that @sharonsaysso.bsky.social has an an enormous impact on Gen X and millennial women, I just need to figure out how to measure it…

The real shift to Trump from 2020 to 2024 was among Black and Latino men, not Blacks or Latinos defined by any shared economic status. That points toward cultural/identity factors. Not clear Black/Latino men suffered economically much more under Biden compared to their female counterparts.

currently at record-high search interest for canceling disney plus. pulling kimmel is a bigger deal to the company's bottom line than any of the "woke" scandals of the past 5 years. i think news & entertainment corp execs need put more work into understanding their audience, & get off twitter

Republicans think free speech is when they can say what they want and when you can say what they want. bsky.app/profile/npr....

"The Colbert Report" is still the best program of its kind ever, and this "Late Show" segment was like the character had never left. youtu.be/ATxL1dLkPnY?...

K

move over soccer moms, there's a new swing vote fable in town.

The notion that a media outlet has to be nice to One Special Boy in order to exist is so fundamentally un-American it is almost beyond belief. The fact that ABC/Disney backed down is evidence that the corporate consolidation of the media is a huge problem.

“Democrats need to let it be known that any and all Trump accomplices who carry out corrupt or illegal actions on his behalf will face accountability later. It’s the only language these authoritarian thugs will ever understand.” newrepublic.com/article/2006...

Chotiner interview with @lilymasonphd.bsky.social www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a...

Empirically, we show that Democratic women are disadvantaged in competitive districts (likely due to perceptions of “electability”) whereas Republican women less often win safe districts (likely due to views about the role of women in politics/society among primary voters and party elites) #polisky

🚨🎉 New Publication 🎉🚨 w/ @meredithconroy.bsky.social Where Do Women Win Primaries? Asymmetric Opportunity Theory in Congressional Nominations We offer a party-asymmetric theory of incentives for female candidates in nominations across different districts www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Academics, journalists, lawyers, judges, and now late night comics. Anyone who can serve as an independent voice of truth is a target.

This is censorship in action. The FCC chair threatens ABC and Disney over Kimmel’s comments. Hours later, he’s off air. It’s dangerous and unconstitutional. The message to every media company is clear: Adopt the MAGA line or the Federal Censorship Commission will come after you.

What America is going through is not unusual in historical terms. Plenty of examples like it today elsewhere in the world. What makes it unusual is the rapid collapse from a set of widely espoused norms and values that centered on liberty. It is the sacking of the shining city on hill that shocks.

I love The Studio. #emmys

We're about to experience the first modern recession caused substantially, and perhaps primarily, by racism.

Congressional Republicans (especially the men of the party) are far more likely to host their own podcasts, go on other podcasts, and talk about podcasts in their official constituents communications than Democrats - this is a key part of our politics that is under understood.

In my convo with @perrybaconjr.bsky.social & @gelliottmorris.com, I laid out a new axis to consider in the internal Democratic Party divide: It’s both “fight vs fold” and “transform vs return.” newrepublic.com/article/2002...

Are you attending #APSA2025 and (thinking of) writing a book on the topic of gender and politics?! Come meet the editors of the @cambup-polsci.cambridge.org Cambridge Studies in Gender & Politics! Friday at 2:30pm at the Sutton Place Hotel (Salon Cezanne). We want to talk w/ you!

I've made ideological perception data I've been working on for a while available at the Harvard Dataverse and put together a website here voterperceptions.org with a bunch of visualizations about it and with too much explanation. I've spent too much time on this, so I hope people find it useful

Was about to eat a string cheese and then remembered this tweet I saw shared on Instagram. Stopped me dead in my tracks

“Taken together, the messages are incoherent. This is irony-poisoned nihilism, tactical gear as shitposting—the only cause this person seems to have is to troll the viewer.”

Massie, Greene, Mace and Boebert. Really interesting 3/4 are women. On the surface, could interpret this as gender solidarity or justice. Mace even made comments of this nature. Of course it’s not that.

surely we can come up with something better for 7 billion people than being lorded over by a bunch of plundering elderly murder and torture enthusiasts who whisper to each other about printing spare organs so they can immiserate others in perpetuity

The reason why the FP sold for so much — relative to its small output — is because it has a world view that is embraced by a readership of very wealthy people. Weiss isn't anti-establishment. She comforts the comfortable.

A federal judge in Boston said she found it "difficult to conclude anything other than that [the Trump administration] used antisemitism as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically-motivated assault on this country's premier universities, and did so in a way that runs afoul of [federal law]."

Next level poaster, absolutely nonsensical content to anyone who isn’t online 4 hours a day. So yes, this makes sense!

"Most of the Maga audience simply cannot be appeased."

Florida road crews in St. Pete were out at 3 a.m. just to do this

Vance follows a coterie of online Nazis on X, has described Curtis Yarvin as a major intellectual influence, and openly attacks immigrants in blood and soil terms. The response of most of the political press? "Doesn't look like anything to me."

you'd think the governor of illinois basically going "we're being invaded by an authoritarian" would be something you'd see real easy on the front page of most everything an hour later

Notre Dame is investing in democracy research in lots of exciting ways, including these hires. Happy to talk to senior folks about working at Notre Dame and living in South Bend. (Spoiler: There are lots of good reasons I've spent my entire career here).

Nine former CDC directors, from Bill Foege onward, speak out about the incalculable harm that RFK, Jr. is doing to public health in the US and around the world. Gift link.

Sounds like a very normal sequence of events to me!

Why don’t you send everyone proof of life first? (Either way, Chicago doesn’t want you here)

i find this image so fascinating. it is both a literal example of authoritarianism but also a second-hand reproduction of the aesthetics of other authoritarian states. it's like a simulacra of authoritarianism whose purpose is to attempt to make the simulacra real.

Sen Patty Murray (D-WA): “If there are any adults left in the White House, it’s well past time they face reality… We cannot let RFK Jr. burn what’s left of the CDC and our other critical health agencies to the ground—he must be fired.”

This is insanity. This is the sign of a government that has lost its mind.

It is abundantly clear that the worst people in the country see the iron is hot and now is the time to strike. Unvarnished and needless cruelty through and through.

The question for Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer in some sense is: What do you think and feel when you watch Pritzker’s remarks? Are you inspired, like millions of Democratic Party voters? Or do you think he’s a fool for not pivoting to tariffs? www.offmessage.net/p/jb-pritzke...

This imagery is the kind of thing you see in video games to let you know you’re in a totalitarian city or country.

probably one of the most important lines of empirical research on this topic