Charlie Kirk had an unmistakable & lasting effect in galvanizing young conservatives, but he's actually fairly unpopular among young people

An open endorsement of hate - precisely what you do not want the President to do after an assassination when messages from leaders disavowing violence are especially important www.nytimes.com/2025/09/21/u...

Unconstitutional, petty, and authoritarian behavior of the kind that led the colonists to declare their independence from the king www.usatoday.com/story/news/p...

No administration in my lifetime has been this hostile to the free speech protections of the First Amendment

Thank goodness because we were told it was Antifa that attacked the Capitol on January 6

Kash Patel running the FBI, Trump suing the NYT, and RFK Jr trying to stop vaccinations can only mean that our government actually AI slop

My department @uwmadison.bsky.social is hiring an assistant professor with expertise in environmental politics. Send us your application. jobs.wisc.edu/jobs/assista...

Please let me know when you actually want to do something about gun violence directed at politicians and school children

Join us for the next installment in our Election Matters panel series on "Money, Politics, and the First Amendment." This event will explore the impacts of increasingly expensive elections and the tension between campaign finance regulation and free speech. Register here: go.wisc.edu/190re6

There’s also an accompany purge of competence, expertise, and independence in government and other institutions

No longer a full democracy. The US has already become a (competitive) authoritarian system. And it’s getting worse. The receipts from @donmoyn.bsky.social donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-author...

Trump learning what Biden folks did not get about branding of the Inflation Reduction Act

🗺️ Do bigger districts make gerrymandering easier? @bcburden.bsky.social & Veronica J. Judson find that larger district populations give mapmakers more “raw material” to distort boundaries, leading to less compact and more biased maps. Read now: 🔗 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

New @misofact.bsky.social bit from me: party activists both sides of the aisle believe extremism hurts Democrats but helps Republicans misofact.substack.com/p/democrats-...

New open access @lsqjournal.bsky.social article from me & Veronica Judson shows that legislative districts with larger populations experience more partisan gerrymandering onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Zero public chatter about who might run for Wisconsin AG in 2026 if Kaul runs for gov www.jsonline.com/story/news/p...

Our follow-up study in APR: perceived electability is affected more by fundraising from donors than self-funding by the candidate. Campaign money is apparently seen as a measure of public support and not merely a resource to win elections. journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Our new @polbehavior.bsky.social article uses survey experiments in real state primaries to show that perceptions of candidate electability are boosted by moderating among Democrats and by fundraising among Republicans link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Trump himself votes by mail He does not have this power (& wouldn’t allow a Dem president to control state elections this way) Creates pretense to challenge midterms if GOP loses ground as expected Distraction from Epstein files www.reuters.com/world/us/tru...

Would pay for a Slate or Atlantic article about this company that is always hiring and operates at every big concert and sporting event

Corrected headline: "To create fake jobs statistics, Trump replaces esteemed economist with inexperienced loyalist."

Politics is so disgusting at the moment that we all need what is happening with the Brewers www.espn.com/mlb/game/_/g...

New article: "Path to the Polls: A Study of How Poll Workers Become Poll Workers" by Matt Lamb, Bob Stein, & me in APR shows that veteran poll workers are recruited by different pathways than new recruits. News you can use for election officials. journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

A quickie census won’t be accurate and probably won’t be constitutional www.npr.org/2025/08/07/n...

ICYMI: new edition of the classic text on political parties is now available for beach reading and fall classes

As mid-decade redistricting wars heat up, keep in mind that in some states with early 2026 primaries, candidates need to file for office just a few months from now www.ncsl.org/elections-an...

Just this week: Random tariff rates announced again Firing BLS director over bad jobs numbers Trump removed from Smithsonian exhibit on impeachment CPB announces its demise Ghislaine Maxwell moved to minimum security President exempted from proposed ban on stock trading

Note that a gain of 5 GOP seats also means a loss of 5 Dem seats = net swing of TEN seats www.politico.com/news/2025/07...

Administration demanding emails and drafts of a faculty resolution? Petty. Undemocratic. Probably illegal. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/u...

I asked ChatGPT to write a review of the paper. It came out bland & flattering but generally correct. Seems fine if you don’t want or are unable to be more discerning.

Got my first manuscript to review where the author disclosed using AI (to assist with writing).

Anything Trump can do to get Epstein out of the headlines

The amazing legacy of my friend and coauthor Bob Stein who we lost today news.rice.edu/news/2025/ri...

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said the Jeffrey Epstein client list is "sitting on my desk right now" www.foxnews.com/politics/bon...

All eyes on next Coldplay show in Madison tomorrow night abcnews.go.com/GMA/Culture/...

Misleading NYT clickbait featuring the giant basket next to my elementary school. The building is in disrepair & not open to the public. Have fun driving by on route 16!

October 1999: Trump officially joins Reform Party www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/...

His money makes this formidable because it solves common minor party hurdles of ballot access, legal battles, & advertising The party might pull off victories in a a few districts but GOP unity on the big bill says it’s not much of a wedge The party will not represent anything like “the middle”

From our Declaration: He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. 1/4

Embarrassing capitulation to leader www.nytimes.com/2025/07/02/b...

I’ve been saying the state budget surplus is big enough to support both GOP tax cuts & Dem spending on health & education. Did narrowing of GOP majorities under the new districts lead to a more cooperative budget process this time? www.wispolitics.com/2025/budget-...

So many valuable insights in Pew's review of the presidential election. No doubt that Trump's coalition has grown more racially & ethnically diverse. (But is it true for other GOP candidates?) 1/2 www.pewresearch.org/politics/202...

So interesting that Republicans would change course during the Biden admin. Not just thermostatic because it didn’t happen under Obama. @gallup.com

Major media outlets agree on the number of takeaways

Wisconsin Assembly and Senate have been on different pages for years despite single party control

Maybe the difficulty of polling RCV elections is a feature not a bug. The actual voters ultimately decide.

We should probably be thinking about the One Big Beautiful Bill in relative rather than absolute dollars. As a share of GDP, deficits have only increased marginally over time, but debt has risen sharply. Expert analysis says the bill is going to make both lines worse.

It’s an honor to be coauthor w Marjorie Hershey of the 19th edition of Party Politics in America. I was assigned this text as a college student when the coauthors were Sorauf & Beck. Updated through the 2024 election. Consider adopting in your courses. www.routledge.com/Party-Politi...

Is no one pointing out the irony of the dueling events yesterday? Trump’s parade celebrated 250 years since founding of the *Continental Army* which was created to combat a *king*

The party decides www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...