What is really going on in this society that elected Donald Trump president a second time?   I wrote about three stubborn myths about Trump’s support – and why America has experienced a de-alignment rather than a rightward realignment.   My new piece for @zeit.de – and some thoughts in English:

Online child sexual abuse material (CSAM) has been getting noticeably less attention and follow-up from authorities, per NYT, as the DHS is overwhelmingly used for Stephen Miller’s immigration crusade www.nytimes.com/2025/11/16/u...

FCC Chair Brendan Carr just shared a Truth Social post from Trump calling for Seth Meyers to be fired

Interesting. MTG goes mostly for the high road, though accuses Trump of having venomous paid (!) internet trolls and throws in a dash of Epstein

I just don’t understand what these folks’ theory of human behavior is. Do they not think people in the Tunisian or Egyptian revolutions for example cared about ”affordability”? But rage at the grotesque corruption of their ruling elites was also a powerful driver of anti-authoritarian mobilization

“straight up giving the president a bar of gold” is where we’re at now on the “corruption isn’t real” scale good work, John Roberts

Eventually someone will have to turn that term — RINO, a powerful accusation and tool for policing group membership — back on him. But I imagine nothing like that will happen till after the midterms

I'd guess that 85-90% of American scientists would be ineligible for future funding under this law, maybe close to 100% in the R1 universities. So much for funding proposals based on scientific merit. Apart from being sinophobes, the people pushing this have no clue how science or higher ed works.

I know this is far from the main point of the Epstein emails, but I’m amazed at how all these prominent folks put so much of their unfiltered jabbering, personal digs, and offensive bar jokes out there on email The dummies use emails like they’re 2005 AIM chats

1) Ethics officials at Fannie Mae investigate how Bill Pulte got Letitia James mortgage docs 2) They send findings to Inspector Gen. of FHFA, which Pulte heads 3) IG sends it to Lindsay Halligan, new USA prosecuting James 4) IG and ethics officials are all fired. www.wsj.com/finance/regu...

Epstein Gave NY Times Journalist Tips About Trump. Why Did They Never Get Reported? What did the Times know? And When did they know it? Don't miss this one by @noahhurowitz.bsky.social theintercept.com/2025/11/14/e...

Here are 3 major NYT stories on Epstein I found from 2015–19 (before his arrest) One goes after Acosta during his 2017 nomination process, raising serious Qs about the plea deal But there is *literally no mention of a Trump-Epstein connection*

Whenever Ken Starr returns to the news, it's fun to remember that one deputy investigating Bill Clinton (and Vice Foster) was ... Brett Kavanaugh! Extra fun to remember that GWBush FL Recount team in 2000 included Brett K, J Roberts, AC Barrett. Plus help from FL gov Jeb Bush. Good times!

“I want you to realize that the dog that hasn’t barked is trump. VICTIM spent hours at my home with him .. he has never once been mentioned. police chief etc. im 75% there.” What does this mean? Does it mean they suspected Trump cut a deal and ratted them out to save himself?

"Republicans are bracing for a significant chunk of the conference to vote for Rep. Ro Khanna’s (D-Calif.) and Rep. Thomas Massie’s (R-Ky.) Epstein file disclosure bill once it lands on the House floor." www.politico.com/live-updates...

There's a (real) populist lane so wide you could drive an Abrams tank through it

It will be very interesting to watch what JD Vance says about all this

Yes, amid the maelstrom this caught my eye too. Wolff essentially tells Epstein to try and blackmail (“generate a debt” from) a major presidential candidate/the potential next President

So on Epstein, the Democratic position should be "Trump should resign." If you are a Democratic elected, practice saying "We demand the president's resignation" in front of a mirror as many times as it takes until the dry-heaving that comes from having a phobia about actually doing politics passes.

OVERT ACT 125 In additional furtherance of the conspiracy, DEFENDANTS met on November 12, 2025 to discuss ways to wield official government power to prevent further news of the child sex trafficking ring from becoming public.

“These latest emails and correspondence raise glaring questions about what else the White House is hiding and the nature of the relationship between Epstein and the president,” said Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/12/u...

As a social scientist and a citizen, I always hate dealing with counterfactual claims about what a negotiating process *would have* gotten for your side if only it lasted longer, was done differently, etc. So hard (impossible?) to evaluate, from Russia-Ukraine to the govt shutdown

This kind of negatively polarized framing is so annoying “Trump is bad, therefore we should criticize his entente with jihadi Syria” Never mind it’s probably a good thing and we shouldn’t mindlessly adopt hawkish foreign policy frames just to spite Trump?

Good screenshot to save for misinfo courses

🚨New WP🚨 We examine news sharing on 7 platforms: 1)Right-leaning platforms=lower quality news 2)Echo-platforms: Right-leaning news gets more engagement on right-leaning platforms, vice-versa for left-leaning 3)But low-quality news gets more engagement EVERYWHERE, even BlueSky! osf.io/preprints/ps...

I wonder if the United States can learn anything from the last time a major industrialized country decided to isolate itself from the rest of the world? Almost a decade after the Brexit vote, GDP in the UK is around 6-8% lower relative to peer countries. (Source: www.nber.org/papers/w34459)

I was poking around a bit on Google Trends this morning, and apparently one of the more common searches about Jews in the U.S. is "are Jewish people Christian?" Has increased lately, and seems to be particularly popular in Oklahoma

Interesting. Female suicide bombers may not actually be more lethal than their male counterparts (popular belief in terrorism studies)

Damn, guess there’s no chance of the first ever intra-family primary with Shaheen retiring

I need people to take a breath and take a step back if they believe this is true of how normie types are going to respond to this a year from now, or if they want to manifest this narrative to make them respond that way.

BREAKING: A whistleblower tells House Judiciary Democrats that convicted sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell is in the process of seeking a commutation of her 20-year prison sentence from Donald Trump. tinyurl.com/582addcc

Trump: I lost because of the shutdown! Moderate Senate Dems: the shutdown has failed

What is the penalty for this? It really is making a mockery of publication and should be strongly deterred IMO

“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake” — Napoleon Bonaparte

Someone could write a great dissertation on conflict orientation/aversion among opposition legislators in backsliding democracies

folks. this is not going to blunt the blue wave. i am going to need you to ease all the way back on the dooming. trump is going to do eighteen more horrible things that eat news cycles by next *week*. no one is going to still be fuming about this in a year

BREAKING: Mark Wolf, appointed to the federal bench by Ronald Reagan, writes that he is resigning as a judge to have the freedom to speak out against the president's assault on the rule of law. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...

the Iranian drought story is insanely undercovered. foreignpolicy.com/2025/08/07/i...

Earlier today, a mob of Israeli Jewish settlers attacked and assaulted roughly 30 Palestinian villagers and activists, plus about 10 journalists who had gathered during an attempt to harvest olives near a settler outpost in the Israeli-occupied West Bank

There’s no daylight between what Candace says here about “the Jews” & what Nazi propagandists & Father Coughlin said about the Jews in the 1930s. Her show is one of the top 5 “conservative” podcasts in the US. She has 5.5 million subscribers on YouTube and 7.3 million followers on X.

I actually think what ICE is doing under Trump 2.0 is shaping up to be a world-historic campaign of human rights violations in an advanced industrialized ~democracy I’m not sure I have many modern parallels. Japanese internment? Treatment of French-Algerians in the Algerian war? Those were wartime.

every time you think the new WaPo editorial board can't embarrass itself any more, they manage to find a way. Left: 'Texas gerrymandering is no big deal!', from August. Right: 'Maryland gerrymandering is an affront to Western civilization!', from today.

Geez, this guy *really* doesn’t take no for an answer. Though I guess we knew that already…

Indian Illinois Department of Transportation employee stopped by ICE agents, questioned if he was 'aware' of NYC Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani

Emeritus prof during the job talk, by about the “methods” slide

If you're a doomer after these past three weeks, you aren't paying attention

Remember when Harris said she would go after price gouging companies and everyone yelled about communism? Fun times.

VICTORY: Federal court dismisses class action lawsuit against pollster J. Ann Selzer, filed by the “Center for American Rights” www.thefire.org/news/victory...

Yes. And I still think Trump's most masterful move is forgotten. IMO it was in the 2016 GOP primaries when he started to get boos in the debates -- and he began belittling the crowd and calling it "the donor class." That was the closest we've had to FDR's "I welcome their hatred" in generations