Well subscribers to my newsletter learned this within the first 200 words or so link.heartlandsignal.com/v/443/b6619d...

The coverage of Democrats since the NY primary has been incredibly shallow. Two notes: 1. DSA success beyond NYC has been limited (so far!). Could be national trend, could be local organization. 2. Winning candidates were not the same. Massive difference ideologically between Lander and Chevalier.

This is great

New midweek podcast is up! Featuring @zackbeauchamp.bsky.social:

Being willing to work with others is good; abandoning a positive vision of what you stand for is not.

Glad to have contributed to this piece on the decline of Labour under Starmer. We have plenty of evidence on why Starmer's strategy failed. Yet, social democrats still remain convinced that they can only win elections when they moderate and when they appeal to workers with social conservatism.

@zackbeauchamp.bsky.social on Starmerism www.vox.com/politics/492...

Keir Starmer is the fail case for moderation as a political strategy www.vox.com/politics/492...

"The growing ranks of the 'hot dog men'"

The American right's top voices are experiencing the consequences of their own actions. Ben Shapiro is complaining about the rise of a podcaster he hired; Joe Rogan is upset about the spread of conspiracy theories. This isn't just ironic, but a sign of a deeper crackup www.vox.com/politics/492...

My daughter (5) explains my job: “I’m going to work on my computer and see what Donald Trump is doing“

In case you ever think that posting is a modern phenomenon: John Adams wrote a column where he pretended to be a farmer named Humphrey Ploughjogger

It is so, so funny to hear Vance trying to do woke but for conservative white people

My dude eats like he's about to storm a beer hall in Munich

Cannot about imagine how this preposterously offensive piece got published www.nytimes.com/2026/06/18/m...

This seems like the correct synthesis of the raging "how to talk about the war" debate on the left right now: one that allows both criticizing the war's outcome without abandoning an overall anti-war stance

I learned the same lesson when I spent half a year reporting on incels. Spending hours every day reading their forums and talking to them subtly changed the categories I used to interpret the world, in ways that were really bad for my mental health!

New polling data suggests JD Vance's blood-and-soil nationalism is toxically unpopular with actual Americans

Name a TV show you're positive no one remembers but you.

Everything is gender, American Revolution edition

Between Paul Kennedy predicting American decline in the 1980s and Paul Ehrlich predicting overpopulation in the 1960s, the latter 20th century was a bad time to be a forecaster named Paul

The first thing I wrote about Vance after he got the nomination was that he was from "the authoritarian wing of the authoritarian party." His conduct in office bears that out www.nytimes.com/2026/06/15/u...

Turns the Roman empire guy is a very old Kind of Guy (from Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws)

Cannot get enough of foreigners discovering normal American stuff for the first time

Obviously it's funny to hear the Secretary of Homeland Security unilaterally declare an end to the Good Friday Accords. But it's also worth noting that the right that spent years smearing the George Floyd protests as violent are now defending an honest-to-goodness race riot

Trump's entire strategy in Iran is trying to get the benefits of regime change without the costs. Since that's impossible, it will either fail or else *become* an actual regime change war.

This is really good. I truly regret not taking any of Wood's courses while at Brown

I'm not usually affected by celebrity deaths, but I was a diehard Buffy fan growing up and this one hits *hard* www.bbc.com/news/article...

Platner needs to withdraw www.nytimes.com/2026/06/04/u...

Best one I've done so far www.82-0.com/share?id=3bK...

Tabletop gaming has this reactionary nerd rep but is actually extremely woke (complimentary). I often say I have met more trans people playing Magic the Gathering than I have in any other part of my life.

Trump has mismanaged his relationship with Congress so badly that even the pliant Republican majority found a reason to stand up to him www.vox.com/politics/490...

I've been doing some reporting on this issue today, and it's legitimately unclear what's happening at present. The fund could be ending, or it could be temporarily suspended per a court order awaiting appeal. www.axios.com/2026/06/01/t...

"Cywyddau" absolutely broke me

The criminal investigation into E. Jean Carroll is both sinister and preposterous — the signature combination of Trump's haphazard approach to attacking democracy www.vox.com/politics/490...

Hot take: AI as a technology is neither wholly good nor wholly bad. There are good use cases and bad ones, helpful ways to employ it and immoral ones.

"We find that conservative Americans in this cohort, who were about as healthy as liberals in the early 2010s, experienced worsening health through the 2010s and higher mortality in the early 2020s" www.nature.com/articles/s41...

One truly has to admire Rod Dreher's commitment to living exclusively under countries governed by authoritarian kleptocrats

Nothing is worse than rapping in kids‘ shows. NOTHING

The current government of Israel: releasing its Abu Ghraib tapes on purpose and viciously insulting the denomination that makes up a plurality of American Jews

My latest, on the deepest meaning of Trump's corruption www.vox.com/politics/489...

Trump's corruption is not mere theft. It is the tip of the spear in a kind of subtle regime change, an intentional effort to transform the operating logic of the US federal government www.vox.com/politics/489...

quote with a fictional band that is not spinal tap

Tina Peters is a criminal who attempted to suborn an American election. Jared Polis did not need to give her clemency, and there was no good reason to do so. A disaster. www.npr.org/2026/05/15/n...

Trump allies: How dare you call us authoritarians or fascists Trump administration: We have created a special FBI squad to imprison our enemies www.notus.org/trump-white-...

Many people have a vested interest in pretending otherwise, but the US research university is globally dominant to an almost unbelievable degree. The typical state university is a football team stapled to a R&D lab with a budget bigger than the entire nation of Belgium.

I interviewed Secretary Buttigieg at this conference, who had some very interesting things to say about how to deal with a reality where far-right politics simply isn't going away like Democrats once hoped www.vox.com/politics/488...

As @zackbeauchamp.bsky.social keeps saying, this perpetual chipping away at democratic fairness hacks the system w/ veneer of legitimacy, resulting in competitive authoritarianism. The spectacle of blue states redistricting by referendum and red states delaying elections to do so is an example.