tomorrow is with one of the biggest election days of the year. there's so much to go over it's hard to know where to start. so, let me help: here are the *10* elections i'm watching the most closely, *at the state and local level* (=no federal elections included!) 🧵:

I know all eyes are on Minneapolis, but there's a fast-approaching nightmare in Springfield, Ohio. Trump is revoking protected status for tens of thousands of Haitians living there on Feb. 3. Reportedly, on Feb. 4, 1000 ICE agents are arriving to remove this population. Ethnic cleansing.

I am not being snarky. I need my colleagues who wrote on covid school lockdowns to engage with this. To be as loud as they have been about prior "learning loss." Hell, you can cite Tom & Mark's AERJ paper so you feel better that there's some econ somewhere in your argument.

This is such valuable advice and put plainly. Please take a moment. TY @tressiemcphd.bsky.social

This is the most astonishing graph of what the Trump regime has done to US science. They have destroyed the federal science workforce across the board. The negative impacts on Americans will be felt for generations, and the US might never be the same again. www.nature.com/immersive/d4...

Congress scholar here. This is good advice.

For some reason, very few people these days will stand up and say it, but: the US federal bureaucracy is one of the great wonders of the world, staffed with incredibly diligent people who do their jobs well and care deeply. Trump's destruction of the federal apparaus was a historic crime.

Explain to Congress how important it is to keep multiyear funding of NIH grants in the funding bill. This protects against Russell Vought's trick, which is to make this year's NIH budget cover multiple years of research in advance. Tell your Congresscritter. US Capitol switchboard: 202-224-3121.

APSA Ed Politics & Policy Virtual Conference Presentation Schedule is up! It is free to attend and will take place February 26th from 12:00 to 3:30pm EST. connect.apsanet.org/s51/events/

This beautifully written piece by my pal @adambonica.bsky.social is worth your time today. A bit of light amid the darkness. open.substack.com/pub/data4dem...

Stephen Colbert on the ICE murder of Renee Nicole Good: “The message from this administration is clear. Only they determine the truth. And when their forces come to your city: obey or die. And if you die, you clearly didn’t obey. This should be an alarm bell for the entire country.”

To ring in the new year, I'm excited to announce the launch of the Politics of Education Lab (PEdL) at the Stanford GSE. The goal is to advance understanding of the political dimensions of education policymaking to help policymakers and practitioners strengthen school systems. pedl.stanford.edu

The right, along the Roberts Court, is trying to nullify the Reconstruction amendments guaranteeing equality under the law, in order to restore the Antebellum Constitution, which envisions “liberty” as an eternal aristocracy of race and class (gift link) www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...

Don’t look away. sahanjournal.com/immigration/...

Final day to submit an abstract!

I'm not exaggerating when I say following @boltsmag.org rn will unlock money for our journalism. A generous reader, @russ41.bsky.social, has offered to donate $1 for every 1-person increase to our follower count. If you're not following @boltsmag.org yet, it'll directly help fund our reporting!

Last Friday, Dr. Caitlin Jewitt, Associate Professor of Political Science, discussed and workshopped a chapter of her upcoming book as a part of the CAIR working group paper series! 📚

Join us on November 11th at 12pm for the latest installment of the Conversations in International Studies series!🗓️ Prof. Lorenza Violini's talk entitled, "Federalism in Context: The Strange Case of the European Union." 📚

Trying to figure out what #SCOTUS just did with #SNAP, and why Justice Jackson temporarily froze the district court's ruling? Via "One First," me on what's going on—and why I think Jackson's move was savvy, notwithstanding the awful circumstances that forced it: www.stevevladeck.com/p/190-snap-wtf

Came here to say this, but Jamelle Bouie has this covered. 👇 When the Democratic tent includes candidates like Spanberger and Mamdani, there is no crisis, or fight, for the party. IT’S A COALITION, NOT A POINT ESTIMATE.

The trend is real, but this NYT analysis at the Congressional district level has big ecological bias Poor *areas* vote Republican, but it's often the richer *individuals* within those poorer areas that are most Republican And many poor *individuals* rich blue urban *areas* vote Dem

NYT pushed its “Dems must go moderate” take again yesterday. In a new piece out today, @adambonica.bsky.social shows even more clearly why the data don’t support it. It also shows what a skilled empiricist and teacher Adam is. Very proud of my pal’s public work. open.substack.com/pub/data4dem...

Our Winter Education Politics & Policy Virtual Conference will take place on Wed. Feb 25, and Thurs., Feb 26, 2026 from 9am-12:30pm Pacific. We invite proposals from scholars at all stages of their careers. Please send us your proposal by Dec. 8th, 2025, using this form: forms.gle/2Ets9aj1YP9b....

George was just trying to get to work. ICE pepper-sprayed him, dragged him from his car, locked him in a detention center, and placed him on suicide watch. He even missed his young daughter’s birthday in the process. This man is a veteran and American citizen. Don't look away.

Government shutdowns offer a rare opportunity to un-submerge the submerged state. Something Democrats could/should be doing is every day of shutdown, pick some agency and focus on it for the day. Highlight what it does and what we're losing each day their staff are furloughed.

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

My new op-ed with @lkfazio.bsky.social: Trump sent a 'compact' to our universities. They should reject this devil's bargain. Any institution that yields to these broad and intrusive demands would forever be subservient to the whims of the government. www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnb...

This is lawless, inhumane, and cruel. It’s also official government policy personally endorsed by the president and his cabinet. The president may be immune but those who serve him are not.

Our department is hiring for U.S. Political Institutions! careers.pageuppeople.com/968/cw/en-us...

An important political tactic that helped advance the defeat of enslavers was creating the term Slave Power, which *correctly* diagnosed the way a shadowy & corrupt network of white conservatives hijacked the state for their own profit & power. We need some version of that today.

New from me: Russ Vought is using federal employees as hostages in federal shutdown negotiations, threatening mass firings if Dems do not accept Trump's terms. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court just allowed Vought to impose a de facto impoundment of foreign aid. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/shutdown-h...

Our department is hiring for U.S. Political Institutions! careers.pageuppeople.com/968/cw/en-us...

"Why Aren't There More Republican Women in Congress? Gender, Partisanship, and Fundraising Support in the 2010 and 2012 Elections" - @karinkitchens.bsky.social & Michele L. Swers www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Our new Virtual Special Issue highlights some of our editors' favorite articles published during their editorial terms. Jill A. Irvine & Cindy Simon Rosenthal (2013-2016) selected articles that investigate gender gaps in new and innovative ways. #OpenAccess until December 2025!

State capacity that is being gutted now will need to be rebuilt in the future. Alex Hertel-Fernandez looks back at his time in the Biden administration to identify ways that governments could better use social scientists to improve public services. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/how-social...

Thrilled to see my work with Michele Swers included in this special issue! The issue is open access until December!

People missing an important point about folks getting fired for whatever they said about Charlie Kirk: Americans are being conditioned to be snitches on their fellow citizens who don’t toe a party line on what is “allowed” to be expressed. And employers are going along. It’s the new secret police

Research on the postwar South from @meganastewart.bsky.social and @karinkitchens.bsky.social suggests that "contraband camps" - hubs that emerged during the US Civil War as Black Americans sought freedom and protection behind Union lines- help explain variation in social welfare policies. #APSA2025

Sure does seem to capture the vibe

A top 50 US university yesterday fired an instructor, a department chair, and a dean because a course made some reference to transgender people without the brief official course description in the catalog saying “trigger warning: gender.” In conclusion, those intolerant lefty kids, cancel culture.

The thing about using Senate obstruction tools is that it's win-win for liberals. Either you successfully slow down or block action by Trump. Or you get the Republicans in the Senate to weaken or abolish the filibuster. Either thing is an improvement over the status quo.

If *your department head and your dean* can be removed for supporting your colleague in teaching in their area of expertise, then you have no academic freedom. In a functional sense, you don't work at a university at all.

I will work with any Republicans willing to put science and facts over politics and ideology to push out RFK Jr. That man is a serious threat to public health and American lives. It's never too late to do the right thing. Join me in calling for RFK Jr. to be fired immediately.

Authoritarians thrive on your silence — be loud — for America.

There is, as of right now, no coverage of this protest on the WaPo website or in their @washingtonpost.com feed. So, if you (you reading this) want people to SEE this protest, you must share it.

The president is sending the military to control American cities and if you're a reporter who's framing that illegal power grab as "pushing the boundaries of constitutionality" or "acting boldly to fight crime" or whatever, please go find another line of work where you won't get us all killed.

Pritzker: "Any rational person who has spent even the most minimal amount of time studying human history has to ask themselves one important question: once they get the citizens of this nation comfortable with the current atrocities committed under the color of law, what comes next?"