If you're reading this, my cat and I have boarded a one-way flight out of the United States. The Trump administration wrongfully denied my work permit renewal; after months of demanding that they follow the law, we have run out of legal recourse, and I have no choice but to leave the country. (🧵)

We launch at @strandbooks.com TOMORROW, still a few tickets left to see Una, @samhita.bsky.social @reetamac.bsky.social @afeefness.bsky.social & yours truly in person!! 👉 www.strandbooks.com/steven-w-thr...

I really do think Trump misheard Talarico saying "cisgender" as "six genders," and that's just a thing he says now. The first person I saw make this observation deleted the post saying it, but yeah.

In WW2, the USA said: Don't talk about it. Now I say, let's talk about TROOP MOVEMENTS — my book out this Sep. Checkout blurbs from Robin DG Kelley, Will Jones, etc—and PRE-ORDER it! www.amazon.com/Troop-Moveme... Contact me with any ideas? — RE: events, teaching it, podcasts, book-reviews… Thx!

Finances don't care about Ben's feelings.

AJMaxxing! Was so blessed to have some study hall time with @ajbauer.bsky.social and to be gifted a copy of MAKING THE LIBERAL MEDIA www.amazon.com/Making-Liber...

The entire Twitter vs. BlueSky discourse is so boring. The solution is obviously that nothing matters on either and we should probably abolish both.

The Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television has issued a call for an Editorial Assistant. Great opportunity for a PhD Candidate! Interested candidates should contact the journal co-editors at hjfrt.1981[at]gmail[dot]com before 25 May. See visuals (with alt text) for more details!

What “distressing” ideas? How are they “cocooned”? It’s amazing how much publicity one can get by reinforcing cliches that accord so little with the experiences of so many of us who actually teach college students.

It is subtle if you know that by "home" Tommy means "Florida."

In this episode of Flux, author A.J. Bauer discusses MAKING THE LIBERAL MEDIA. This book traces how decades of right-wing criticism of the “liberal media” reshaped US news culture and came to define conservative politics. buff.ly/KYdUscC #ListenUP

My research assistant seems awfully confident for someone who can’t even read.

We have a Republican Party committed to building systematic advantages into the current system to maintain power indefinitely and a Democratic Party that cannot think outside the bounds of the current system even as it is being actively restructured against them.

100 percent of Republicans are over-babied.

It's the same pathology, in fact.

Punditry’s fixation on parallelism between right and left creates the same conceptual error as does the balance imperative. It imposes symmetry onto real-existing asymmetry.

For this holiday weekend, here’s the mother of all #ScholarSunday threads, my epic 275th of public scholarly writing, podcast episodes, new & forthcoming books from the past week. Add more below, share as widely as possible, & enjoy, all! 🗃️ + blackwhiteandread.com/scholarsunda...

Read Making the Liberal Media by @ajbauer.bsky.social

Have the UFO Files also been redacted to exclude any reference to Donald Trump, or?

I am not in the business of just preparing “future workers” no matter how hard they try to make me.

Write this in the fucking sky.

In general we need to see more things as ends unto themselves and fewer things as mere means to ends.

New arrival! Thanks, @ajbauer.bsky.social!

You can have a right-wing fever dream or the public’s love and respect but you can’t have both.

In light of Ted Turner’s passing, I thought I’d share these excerpts from my current book manuscript on the Atlanta youth murders. 🗃️

This is correct Elon Musk’s legacy is >500,000 tiny coffins*—these are coffins of kids in low-income places of the world, so his actions were very fitting with the MAGA/MAHA Administration’s world view (*Brooke Nichols at BU estimates 750,000 deaths by Jan 2026, of which >500k were in kids)

ICYMI: Nine local TX activists have been convicted of terrorism for a fireworks display on July 4. This is their story…

Reactionary Americans' constant obsession about "liberal media bias" has completely warped their ability to understand reality. But this idea has also distorted the mainstream media, & even the broader left. @ajbauer.bsky.social & I discussed his new book about the origins of this pernicious myth

In the latest Theory of Change, @ajbauer.bsky.social joins @matthew.flux.community to discuss his new book about how the myth of "liberal media bias" has warped American politics. Even Democrats and the mainstream media have been badly damaged by this manipulation:

Sorry to miss this! ICA and Cape Town folks: Check this out!

Beyond Bias Recording 🎥 Missed it? Watch @ajbauer.bsky.social unpack the myth of media bias and challenge the idea that political disagreement is just a lack of facts. With Michael D. Bolden and Lawrence A. Rosenthal Hosted by CRWS at @berkeleyjournalism.bsky.social youtu.be/Y3auRTWpdks?...

In a previous book, political scientist Suzanne Mettler identified polarization as one of "Four Threats" to American democracy. Her most recent book, "Rural vs Urban" shows that depolarizing that divide--which is surprisingly recent & contingent--is the most promising way forward. 1/x

This is correct. And coupled with the attacks on people of color in the workplace, colleges, and the military, we are likely to see a profound resegregation across American society.

American Business Consultants, H.L. Hunt, the John Birch Society, Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew, Accuracy in Media... cup.columbia.edu/book/making-...

I moderated this roundtable with Lara Deeb, Darryl Li, Andrew Ross, and Meera Shah. It's part of the new issue of Middle East Report on Campus Politics -- Palestine and the New University. www.merip.org/2026/04/the-...

Nothing will change so long as journalists keep inviting him to dinner. Access journalism is a dead end. The people deserve better.

My book is focused on U.S. history so it's super cool to see folks in other countries finding it useful anyway. www.portalnovosti.com/konzervativc...

A small request: Making the Liberal Media isn’t part of a series so it may not receive the quick library adoption that series books sometimes benefit from. Would you mind asking your local or university library to carry it? cup.columbia.edu/book/making-...

Incredible stuff happening over on Twitter.

A small request: Making the Liberal Media isn’t part of a series so it may not receive the quick library adoption that series books sometimes benefit from. Would you mind asking your local or university library to carry it? cup.columbia.edu/book/making-...

The dream of the aughts is alive in Davis.

In case you missed this yesterday!

Okay, hear me out. What if Alex Jones is auditioning to have The Onion hire him to continue this bit?

This is an important book you should pre-order it now!

Great @citationspod.bsky.social news brief with author and professor @ajbauer.bsky.social on the origins of the "liberal media". It was especially informative, and could easily have been a full episode. #StraightBanger

In case you missed this yesterday!

My latest newsletter: Cory Booker went to Michigan and told the voters who sat out 2024 that the problem was them. I don’t think this is good strategy. www.readtpa.com/p/the-scolding

Thanks to @nimashirazi.bsky.social and @ahjohnson.bsky.social for having me on the pod!

In this News Brief, we talk @ajbauer.bsky.social about his new book, "Making the Liberal Media," and the corporate and ideological forces that shaped the popular idea mainstream media was crawling with fifth columnist agitators hostile to the values of Real America.

listen hun if you can't handle the Washington Post editorial board at their the Texas gerrymander "freakout" is "not a threat to democracy" you don't deserve them at their "Virginia plunges America deeper into the gerrymandering abyss"