My son and I are happy to announce that I will be joining @ricepolisci.bsky.social this coming academic year as a Postdoctoral Associate! I will be working with @lowande.bsky.social  in the Executive Policy Research Group (EPRG) to examine the effects of unilateral policymaking. 🍚🦉

How should scholars who study American politics change what they do in a political time like ours? I'm skeptical it will get much circulation on this site, but in a new review, I critique the emerging turn toward a kind of political advocacy mixed with research. myumi.ch/w9R2W

NYT giving the president exactly what he wants. IT doesn't matter if this is legal or if it works. The point is the story. "The President Tried to Pay the TSA, but Congress Wouldn't Let Him"

$500 we get an SPG executive order this week

This only holds if think presidential approval ratings measure anything meaningful in American politics today. Is focusing so much energy on them in both academic and journalistic work helpful for understanding the world? (I don't think so.)

I'm hiring a Postdoctoral Research Fellow! Applications due Feb 16. Please reach out to me with questions. apply.interfolio.com/178829

Putting together my grad syllabus in American political institutions. Anyone have recommendations for new "must-read" books?

This is technically true. But if the rule of law is actually an attitude, and people believe EOs matter, then the technicality doesn't matter. This is why presidents sign symbolic orders anyway. The hope that people will believe in them.

This policy change might also might lead Congress to, at last, defeat Taco Bell in the contest for who has a lower annual staff turnover rate.

This isn't just a Trump thing. The presidency has been moving in this direction for decades. This is just the logical conclusion.

i see your bat signal and respond by throwing a book

The Trump admin owns the public narrative by taking executive action, over and over. Our new study shows this strategy has detectable impacts on Google search traffic for the incumbent president. Ballpark est. similar to pop artists when they release a new album.

NEW STUDY: White House staff hiring over 1996-2024 shows the diploma divide is in the White House. Elite universities sent far more alumni to work for Democratic presidents. Full paper: myumi.ch/pVMM5 Details: First --> Overall, Democratic presidents tend to value more credentials... 1/6

The DOD has billions in military hardware circulating among state and local police. Pleased to announce a tool developed to visualize and track this equipment, along with clean, historical data on all controlled items circulated between 2014-2025. police.executivepolicy.org

Counterpoint: there's never been more data available about what the government actually does. Most political scientists just have a soft spot for what happens between peoples' ears.

My book won the 2025 Neustadt award for best book on the American presidency. Presidents enact bad policies, on purpose, because it helps them define their brand & gives the impression they're in charge. If that basic message resonates, please give it some of your reading time: lnkd.in/dVPsriXt

When someone tells you a unitary executive will lead to more "energy" (a la Hamilton) remember that the President is a decision-making bottleneck. It's not complicated. The more things you put on his plate, the slower government moves.

The modern White House has the annual turnover rate of a Chili's. Full paper: shorturl.at/9u1LX

Why 100 days? Because humans like this number. How many policies were pushed out the door before they should have so the administration could pad its stats? More than any American should be comfortable with.

The irony is that Congress started delegating this power a century ago because taking it out of their hands helped REDUCE uncertainty about economic winners and losers after elections.

Journalists always frame stories about executive action with words that assign more credit to the Pres, relative to Congress. Executive action is a PR win, even when it's bad policy. (Dark bars: news with exec. action. Light: everything else about the pres, frm Ch 6 of my book: shorturl.at/eilg2)

As someone educated outside the elite doctoral programs, EITM was huge for me. If you want to be good enough at finding stuff out (i.e., "research") to be paid to do it, there's no substitute for being around the best of the best and trying to learn from them.

Again: The Trump admin is showing you they have capacity constraints -- they can only do this shake-down procedure piecemeal. If these institutions want this to stop, they'll refuse to negotiate and take them to court. Hold the line, create a bottleneck.

Someone get me a formal theorist stat, I need to know if inter-party bargains are possible when there's no credible commitment for any deal.

Going to the bargaining table guarantees this will continue. But if the goal is to stop executive action, they'd ignore the "review" period and take the gov to court. The President needs to know that if he uses this tactic, that's all his legal counsel will be doing for months. Every time.

This opinion is a good introduction to the debate in the Appointments Clause. I have one gripe, which is just shameless self-promotion. The gripe is about whether unitary executive theory is "efficient." The efficiency argument ignores administrative capacity. 1/

Grateful to have had the opportunity to talk about presidential power at the annual Teach In at OU's Institute for the American Constitutional Heritage. www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAd6...

Excited to join an amazing group at Oklahoma for tomorrow’s IACH Teach-In—“Presidential Power and the Constitution.” Incredible lineup: Bailey, Lowande, Albert, Katz, Rozelle, Thrower, and Rudalevidge. The whole event will stream tomorrow. www.ou.edu/iach/events/...

The controversial executive orders under Trump 2.0 are unique because political wins are their primary objective, and because they appear to be illegal by design, says Kenneth Lowande @umisrcps.bsky.social, an expert on executive power. Will they succeed? ➡️ myumi.ch/nyMm5 #PoliSky

@lowande.bsky.social discusses how executive orders work and what they can and can't do.

Unilateral actions serve as window dressing more often than you might think--they allow presidents to make it *look* like they're addressing issues without *actually* doing so. Interested in learning more? Check out @lowande.bsky.social's new book, False Front! press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

Its now probably obvious to everyone that the American presidency is the most important political institution in the world, but I almost never meet young scholars who say they want to study it.

Full interview: www.npr.org/podcasts/510...

I talked with KCBS Radio's Doug Sovern about Trump's use of executive powers and how it fits with historical trends (and doesn't). There's a shout out to @lowande.bsky.social and his great book on the symbolic nature of EOs, among other topics. www.audacy.com/podcast/the-...