“designating disrespect and denigration as beyond the pale, as grounds for exclusion from polite company, is “turning the temperature down.” Klein and others are helping to turn it up.”

"Campaigns that should be building movements are instead building donor databases. Political energy that could mobilize communities gets redirected into optimizing email subject lines and testing which desperate plea extracts the most dollars from exhausted supporters." substack.com/inbox/post/1...

Reupping our nine-month deep dive into why the sickest and neediest in the subways keep falling thru the city’s expansive social safety net.

A new paper led by Harvard Health Policy PhD student Ye Shen finds that, in the current policy environment, more than six in ten kids will have been enrolled in Medicaid for some period of time by their 18th birthday; the program is absolutley critical for children. jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

As the Trump administration is expected to add a $100,000 fee for H-1B visas, here's what we know about H1-B visas www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/... 🧵

Updated map of the Northeast Public Health Collaborative. Health departments who have officially confirmed that they are part of the collaborative include Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York State, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and New York City.

generally speaking, and with the glaring exception of november 2024, the more directly democratic an institution has been, the better it has checked Trump (eg grand and petit juries); the more elite and insular, the less effective (the Senate, the Supreme Court, big business)

In 2016, democratic erosion scholar Jeff Colgan created a useful 10 point list of signs of emerging authoritarianism. Here is his original list with a little bit of added explanation:

For your Constitution Day reading: www.commondreams.org/opinion/fail...

My article, "Social Work under Rising Authoritarian in the United States" is now published in the European Journal of Social Work. Despite the title, I think it can speak to all kinds of folks struggling to figure out how to think about this moment and what to do. www.tandfonline.com/eprint/YGQTN...

My article, "Social Work under Rising Authoritarian in the United States" is now published in the European Journal of Social Work. Despite the title, I think it can speak to all kinds of folks struggling to figure out how to think about this moment and what to do. www.tandfonline.com/eprint/YGQTN...

The Ag Dept has released guidance on implementing new #SNAP work requirements. “There are estimates that about 2.4M people would lose benefits under these time-limit-related changes,” says CBPP’s Ed Bolen in this #GreatRead via @npr.org All Things Considered: www.npr.org/2025/09/08/n...

Thrilled to co-author 2 recent qualitative papers that perfectly demonstrate the importance of mixed methods research to inform US policy. In the first aptly titled "It's confusing as hell" we examined lived experiences of low-income people applying for the EITC. academic.oup.com/healthaffair... 1/

The belief that poverty and homelessness are about "individual choices" didn't arise on its own. It was manufactured through decades of messaging designed to protect the policies and interests that create mass precarity. As this new poll shows, that propaganda campaign has been wildly successful.

I was a guest on the Attitude with Arnie Arnesen yesterday. www.podomatic.com/podcasts/sta... w/ @pchowder.bsky.social @stephenpimpare.bsky.social

the maga constitution doesn’t allow any institution, public or private, to explicitly work to ameliorate racial inequality but allows the government to racially profile

Wanna know a bit about my latest book? Here's a discussion: newbooksnetwork.com/doing-good-s...

Over the next 15 months, we can expect a coordinated campaign — backed by the full power of the executive branch — to undermine confidence in our election system. Here’s what to expect, and how key actors can be ready to respond: bit.ly/4fRIqtA

What will it take to win Zohran's agenda? Here's our proposal for a mass organizing campaign after election day that can build enough power to force establishment politicians to fund Zohran's vision 🧵 www.thenation.com/article/poli...

Thanks to @brianbeutler.bsky.social for handing me the keys to his newsletter to talk about why the anti-Trump coalition needs to be thinking now about rebuilding the government once he leaves office -- and about why we'll fail if we're too timid or play conventional budget politics.

A must read for anyone trying to figure out how to resist the creeping autocracy and wanting to understand how their personal acts of Resistance matter: www.thenation.com/article/acti...

"While organizers expected 30 people in Rutland, about 15 came, including local officials and former legislators. . . . No one who works for Americans for Prosperity on Vermont issues lives in Vermont. . . "

"liminal fascist space" is great I've been going with "authoritarian regime still struggling to get its footing"

New, from me: America is no longer a functioning democracy. It is a competitive authoritarian system, hurtling rapidly toward authoritarianism. This was a hard piece to write but we can't move forward if we don’t acknowledge where we are. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-author...

This is utterly crucial. The key to Trump's arrogation of power these past few months has been his capturing of the future. He's trying to create an impression that his rule is forever. Every capitulation helps him do that. Reopening the future is an essential precondition for fighting Trumpism.

Show hearings and trials are a key marker of a concentration-camp regime. Even in countries with existing detention crises, the conscious step to degrade due process for targeted groups further diminishes the larger legal system while shifting power to emerging quasi-legal and extralegal approaches.

Brief 🧵, as someone who has studied mass shootings for 13 years: -gender does not cause them -SSRIs, no -mental illness, no -internet/gaming, no Above can be compounding factors—but motive is complex, often very. The most fundamental combo: suicidality + rage + isolation + easy access to guns

New at Tusk: There's a straight line from southern redeemers in the 1870s to civil rights opponents in the 1960s to Trump's domestic troop deployments today

yes

3/3 Don’t let John Roberts et al. off the hook by claiming that Trump is somehow “defying” the Court here. He is, at most, taking advantage of incoherent nonsense in the Court’s opinions to be, in some sense, more principled than Roberts.

Another read is not that SCOTUS is shy about confronting Trump but that they're basically on board with his project but would be embarrassed about the legal arguments they'd have to make if they upheld his actions on the merits, so they find procedural means to let him get his way.

The first thing everyone in this country who is anti-fascist can do now is to join something where people are already gathering to address any issue. Can't find anything you want to join, then make your own thing and invite people to join you. This is not a time for Lone Rangers.

61 years ago today Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer one of the most courageous activists of the Civil Rights Movement posed the question that echoes today with every migrant round-up by masked officers, as federal troops converge on D.C.,as institutions are threatened: “IS THIS AMERICA?” youtu.be/DFC1nc3IXBM

Justice Jackson is basically reporting live from inside a garbage fire www.ballsandstrikes.org/scotus/nih-c...

It's like a nesting doll of civil-military crises. Just today: 1. Head of DIA fired 2. Trump threatens to deploy Army to Chicago + NYC 3. Blurring of police + military in DC 4. Use of FBI in political attack on Bolton 5. Goons in DC curtailing basic civil rights

May this portion of the dissent by Ketanji Brown Jackson haunt John Roberts forever and be the final word on his tenure as Chief Justice.

The Trump Regime is operating outside the bounds of the Constitution, which means that we can use this moment of destruction to imagine the future we would like to build, and the people and processes and institutions we want to build it with

The central feature of the 🇺🇸 Republic is the total failure of elite accountability, from Appomattox to now:

If you've never experienced this, it's very draining. The unpredictability of the noise and patterns plus the knowledge of surveillance / threat keeps you in a state of hypervigilance and mental and physical arousal, which makes it hard to think, relax, or sleep.

Junior faculty and grad students in political science, history, law, and Native American Studies, come take a class with us at the New York Historical Society (and via Zoom) on Native Peoples, American Colonialism, and the U.S. Constitution. To apply, Institute for Constitutional History: 1/2

"America's autocratic ruler imported loyal military units from an outlying province to help him tighten his grip on the capital"

Some excellent analysis and practical advice. Go read Laura.

For those who may have missed the EO that purports to grant them authority for this (and more): www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

The militarized rounding up or forced removal of the unhoused is the tip of a very dangerous sword. Who will they come for next? And how many "law and order" Democrats will stand by and quietly applaud?

Here is the chart showing the growth of reported protest over time, 2025 vs. 2017, referenced in the piece below.

"Children Left Behind by the H.R.1 “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” Child Tax Credit" povertycenter.columbia.edu/publication/...

the thing everyone is going to have to accept is that the post-trump period, whenever it comes, will not and cannot be a project of national unity, it must be a project of partisan project of renewal, in the same way that reconstruction and the new deal were partisan projects of renewal.

Democratic governors want all-out warfare on gerrymandering. Other than California, this will not deliver what they want. In replies, name a state and I will explain why it will fail. www.politico.com/news/2025/08...

How did we get to an era in which there are men rich enough to own the U.S. government? @pkrugman.bsky.social tracks how modern U.S. oligarchs got so wealthy in Part IV of "Understanding Inequality." stonecenter.gc.cuny.edu/oligarchs-an...

For those who refuse loyalty as an option, the dilemma between voice vs exit is a feature of authoritarianism, not a bug.