This conversation at the American Political History Conference this Friday was always important, but it gets more relevant by the day. 🗃️ Looking forward to talking with @jamellebouie.net @nikobowie.bsky.social @kmtani.bsky.social @stevevladeck.bsky.social @gauthamrao.bsky.social

@oliverbullough.bsky.social reckoning that 80% of the luxury watch trade is for money laundering unlocked something for me. (this is a fantastic piece all around) www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

the Trump admin has already bullied some hospitals into ending gender-affirming care for minors, even in states where there's no ban on the books. and they are not content to stop there: now they want patients' records and providers' files and are turning to one federal judge to get them. my story:

My latest for Truthout. Black job loss due to structural racism in Trump 2.0 truthout.org/articles/bla...

“Assuming courts will save us absolves our political leaders of both responsibility and accountability for allowing this kind of mischief to continue, and it absolves all of us of our responsibility to refuse to tolerate those who would just as quickly shrug their shoulders and move on.” My latest:

UC Berkeley Law: new AI policy bans AI for "conceptualizing, outlining, drafting, revising, translating, or editing any work submitted for credit" or exams because "thinking remains the sine qua non of good lawyering (and of a quality legal education)."

Wrote a piece about Martha and the Vandellas, civil rights, and their place in the history of Black women R&B groups. I also created a YouTube playlist (in the comments) with some of their hits

Read that again. This Louisiana bill forces homeless people to choose between jail and "treatment"—and if they can't pay for the latter, they will be forced to perform unpaid labor. The historical precedents are clear: convict leasing, Black Codes, debtor's prison.

"BLUE POWER: How Police Organized to Protect and Serve Themselves" by Stuart Schrader (@stschrader1.bsky.social) is now available from Basic Books! A history of police unions that reveals how American law enforcement built a political movement that made cops untouchable.

Historian here 💯some of the unhinged attacks on Mary Todd Lincoln by historians like Michael Burlingame border on misogyny and completely misrepresent the historical record. She was a favorite among radicals like Charles Sumner and black abolitionists. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/11/o...

so, fellow historians, this is a 12-alarm fire if "learn about history" is the top use of AI (related to the Humanities). this should be an all-hands-on-deck conversation with @historians.org and every history department to work K-16 to get us away from history as just "names and dates"

Solidarity with Idris Robinson. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Another day, another violation of academic freedom in Texas. This time a university is firing a philosophy professor owing to complaints about an off-campus talk he gave on the Israeli-Palestine conflict...

Prof gets his day in court. “The Guardian has seen university emails; the suspension, termination and denial of appeal did not offer a substantive explanation for each decision and make no reference to specific rules, regulations or laws violated.” www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Precisely. The subject of one of my favorite pieces by Lynn Hunt, which I love teaching

Friends, I hope you’ll share this widely. The @jcblibrary.bsky.social is hiring 2 3-yr research associates for collaborative work on religions and freedoms in the early Americas. Info is here and I’m happy to take questions offline: brown.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/staff-...

Deadline in 3 weeks.

If you're an author and haven't yet signed up for the Anthropic settlement, do yourself a favor (and strike a blow against AI) by checking to see if any of your books were involved. www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

Check out this project to document and preserve existing National Park Service signs before they disappear under orders of the regime. Help gather information and spread the word. sites.google.com/umn.edu/save...

If I had to suggest an era to study to understand how we got here, it’d be Reconstruction. To learn about the roots of modern policing and the carceral state, how “taxpayer” became an identity, and what W.E.B. Du Bois called the “counter-revolution of property”—all in opposition to Black freedom.

Decades of mechanistic talk about university degrees as if they were bundles of 'skills' and 'prep' are about to be proved completely wrong (obviously). Want to get a real boost? Do History or English.

The Ku Klux Klan Acts (passed in 1870 & 1871 to protect 14th amend rights) were a response to masked violent men who terrorized Black communities, violating their civil rights.The deployment of violent masked ICE ofcrs are tapping into this unique form of terror. open.substack.com/pub/sherrily...

@womenknowhistory.bsky.social @berksconference.bsky.social @theccwh.bsky.social

My article exploring US immigration policy & family separation in the 1930s is out. It uses deportation files of the 'immoral classes' to show the ways that the deportation was structured around denying women's citizenship and separating mothers from children. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Now that we’ve seen the full Senate text, we can say for certain: either the House or the Senate version would be the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in a single law in history. Each have the largest Medicaid and largest SNAP cuts ever. And each give huge tax cuts to the rich.

Buried in a Senate budget bill is a massive giveaway to corporate developers and fossil fuel companies. It forces the sale of at least 2 million acres of Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management land in 11 Western states *every 60 days* until millions of acres are gone.

Please circulate: The Department of History at Texas State University invites applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor of environmental history with a focus on water in human history (regional and period specialization open). jobs.hr.txstate.edu/postings/53043 #envhist

🚨 Attention all wordsmiths and grammar gurus! 📚✨ Are you ready to take your editing skills to the next level? We’re on the hunt for passionate editors to join the JHS team! Apply today and help us shape stories that resonate! @pliley.bsky.social @nimishabarton.bsky.social

leftists: that thing you teach us in school to be terrified of is happening historians: that thing is definitely happening star wars: here is a beat-for-beat breakdown of how the thing happens, but with pew pew lasers. we know you watched it news outlets: these protesters are out of control

"Here it's also useful to make a distinction between property damage (which protesters in the USA in our era have done from time to time) and harming living beings (which is largely something done by law enforcement in these demonstrations)."

The news emphasizes low-level theft instead of corporate crime, pollution, and other predatory behavior.

Excellent opportunity!

She Got an Abortion. So A Texas Cop Used 83,000 Cameras to Track Her Down. The current setup of the Flock ALPR system is incompatible with a free society.

😭Very disappointing to see SB37 pass on a party line vote. Institutions of higher education did NOT ask for this bill. Faculty overwhelmingly testified against it. This is an unnecessary and disastrous bill that makes Texas, with Florida, a leader in dismantling higher ed. 1/

Your daily reminder that the U.S. Postal SERVICE is a service that is designed to benefit taxpayers and not a business that should be expected to turn a profit.

One of the thing that angers me most about unaccountable federal police, including ICE, but also police in general--is every step over the last 30 years to aggrandize their power has been met with warnings that exactly this would happen.

@womenknowhistory.bsky.social @jwomenshistory.bsky.social

For those of you who rely on government websites for your research, American University has put together this guide to sites that have archived them. subjectguides.library.american.edu/data_rescue/...

I just received the first copy of Copaganda! It will be sold anywhere books are sold. I try to explain the role of the media, the police, and academia in how we got to this authoritarian moment.

After the brutal reality of dealing with student papers in the ChatGPT era finally hit me, here are a few tactics that I've found at least somewhat effective in getting students to do their own writing: 🧵

📣 Mark your calendars! 📣 MiSC scholar Marla Ramírez's latest book, "Banished Citizens: A History of the Mexican American Women Who Endured Repatriation," will be released this October. This powerful book delves into a grim period of forcible removal 🧵👇

NEW: Inside this Cambodian factory making clothes for Nike, the infirmary each month saw * Up to 15 workers who became too weak to work in hot months * 8-10 at other times of year * 1-2 who fell unconscious U.N. inspectors who audited told me they didn't know. www.propublica.org/article/nike...