A summary of key findings from our recent @strathplacelab.bsky.social & @parliview.bsky.social findings on the use and perceptions of AI for learning about politics in the recent Scottish elections @strathpolir.bsky.social @connectedpol.bsky.social

The NJ Bike Walk Coalition is organizing a rally at the statehouse in Trenton this Thursday, May 21, to try to get New Jersey's terrible e-bike law repealed or replaced with something better. Details are here, would be great if we could get a turnout at it... bit.ly/ride-rally

If members of Congress cannot maintain political support independent of the president, then Congress is not an independent and coequal branch of government.

This is insane. The terms of DOJ's slush fund appear to transfer control of $1.8 billion beyond US government entirely. Unless I'm misreading this, that would circumvent Congress *entirely* and put the money outside of *any* constitutional and/or legal constraints ofany kind. Straight up theft.

I'm seeing a lot of dunking on this; but this type of analysis is useful for several reasons. 1/4

“He’s dealing with a personal heath condition, and he’ll be back soon,” Mr. Scharfenberger said in an interview. When pressed on the nature of the health condition and why Mr. Kean had not been seen in New Jersey or in Washington, Mr. Scharfenberger said, “There’s no cameras where Tom is.”

I would totally try this.

New paper in Nature. The more a government controls its domestic media, the more it dominates AI training data, the more pro-regime outputs we get from AI. By scraping the open web, LLMs are unwittingly laundering state-coordinated narratives into seemingly objective answers.

Georgia's governor signs a comically transparent law. It makes local elections in 5 big blue counties nonpartisan, to give GOP candidates a chance to win without a party label in places like Atlanta. And it doesn't change anything in the rest of the state, for red counties to know who's GOP.

All this is to say, we know how this movie ends, and it ain't a feel good story. Southern authoritarianism is bad morally, politically, and economically, and we absolutely cannot let the Southern model of governance go national. The masks are off. We know what we're dealing with. It cannot succeed.

FWIW, I don’t think the major problem in my field, or related ones, is that people need to move faster & produce more. I read a lot of papers as part of the job, and I’m increasingly convinced we’d benefit from fewer papers and better ones, not more mediocre work produced ever more “efficiently.”

A perverse incentive of Callais: the more racist a party is, the more its gerrymander is insulated from any VRA challenge. boltsmag.org/scotus-calla...

I am unspeakably angry about this turnout gap figure, and it gives insight into the whole ballgame for gutting the VRA. Alito points out that Black turnout exceeded White turnout twice in 5 elections. The argument is garbage 1/x

Florida has a new congressional map thehill.com/homenews/cam...

Thrilled to announce my paper with @dianamejordan.bsky.social & sky-less Trent Ollerenshaw is now published open-access at @apsrjournal.bsky.social. In a (very) large replication & extension, we show that design effects of repeated measure experiments are nonzero but typically small. Thread:

In which I cite @twallack.bsky.social's excellent WaPo piece on higher ed from this weekend. "The bachelor's degree is now multiple products that share a name. The hackers priced the cheapest ones first."

Apparently both LaTeX and Typst now support accessible pdfs for screen readers, which is great news. For folks writing in Quarto, check out this handy guide for making your pdfs accessible with just a quick argument in the file YAML. quarto.org/docs/blog/po...

LET IT FALL

🚨 I have an article out at APR titled “Educational Polarization in American Politics: More than Just a Diploma Divide” in which i look at how educational attainment shapes public opinion and political behavior across the entire education spectrum, not just the across the degree/no degree binary 1/x

The plan was for Iran to capitulate in response to threats, or quickly fold in the face of airstrikes and assassinations, empowering new leaders who then capitulate. There is no backup plan. Never was. Their whole worldview is that strength gets you whatever you want and bluster equals strength.

Brutal.

They were trying and failing to get people to subscribe at $20/mo and each 60 second video was costing the company $15-18 in costs to make. That’s it, everybody, right there. That’s the Economics of AI. Visionary stuff.

Anne Applebaum explains Trump

Basically Dante's fourth circle of hell

#DR26 The U.S. democracy is currently in a much faster deterioration process than any other democracy in modern times. Within only one year, the USA’s score on the V-Dem Liberal Democracy index (LDI) has declined by 24 %, from 0.75 in 2024 to 0.57 in 2025. 🧵1(4) #Polisky #PoliSciSky #PolDataSky

friend, this is Marcus Junius Brutus CAESAR has declared himself DICTATOR FOR LIFE and MUST BE STOPPED can you rush a donation of ten denarii today to show that you STAND WITH THE REPUBLIC?

Jürgen Habermas, whose work on communication, rationality and sociology made him one of the world’s most influential philosophers and a key intellectual figure in his native Germany, has died. He was 96.

My 2 cents: this is random noise plus very cold weather plus long term trend of NYC becoming a playground for the rich and pricing out the poor.

A short history of the end times/rapture in the American military. Cold war: Forces were seen as the defense against godless communism, but also as a rich environment for missionary outreach. 1959 - National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) estimated 50% of those in service were not affiliated

The Trump administration has such an impoverished view of power. Power only for domination, never service. Power only to cause fear, never love or inspiration or admiration. That type of power can be successful - for a time. It is the power of empire. But it is also self-defeating in the long-term

An administration wielding lawless, performative violence—violence for the sake of spectacle—both at home and abroad.

This is so good

context: transgender Americans are moving to other states at at least triple the rate of all American adults.

The fact that there’s a secret network of doulas going around Minneapolis to help with home births for parents afraid of ICE should be front-page news. These children, born in secrecy, are American citizens.

Interested in learning more advanced approaches to text analysis, machine learning or network analysis this summer? The University of Strathclyde @strathpolir.bsky.social is offering successive methods classes this June.

Did you present a paper at an academic conference during 2025 on state politics or policy? Consider nominating it for a best paper award! The State Politics and Policy Section of APSA has 2 separate awards; one for papers written by and/or with faculty and one just for graduate students.

The Zebra Sarasa has no business being as good as it is.

What an amazing thing to be said about you: "He was many things, but the attribute that appears so often is: He was kind. In a world where you can choose to be so many things, he chose to be kind."

‘One officer told me that I "had no chance of returning to Minnesota" and that "the best thing for (me] is self-deportation." … She offered me $2600 to self-deport. I refused. I wanted to talk to my attorney. They didn't tell me the judge had already ordered my release and return to Minnesota.’

Have you wondered why exactly it is that single-family zoning leads to racial segregation? I wrote this little article to figure it out. I use an agent based model to show it is a combination of race-based wealth inequality, homophily, & clustering of housing types in zoning maps.

On the “talking filibuster.” blog.mattglassman.net/the-talking-...

This didn't pass my gut check of something that is _actually_ happening _now_ and guess what: >In its proposal for the grant, Alabama said it hoped to provide “telerobotic ultrasound systems” as part of its maternal and fetal health initiative. www.al.com/news/2026/01...

This reasoning is deeply embedded into conservative evangelicalism. Moral teachings of Jesus and the NT writers? Clearly those are written to individuals and churches, not governments, so not applicable. Prophetic writings from Hebrew Scriptures? Written uniquely to Israel, so not applicable to us.

Thrilled to share that my paper with @judgelord.bsky.social and Justin Grimmer:"How shifting priorities and capacity affect policy work and constituency service: Evidence from a census of legislator requests to U.S. federal agencies" is out at the AJPS!

People hate societal disruption and there is no way to deport a lot of people without ripping apart society at the seams. It is really that simple. Immigration is an abstract idea for most people until the reality is laid bare. Thermostatic public opinion is thermostatic for a reason.

A community organizer’s guide to Signal group chats www.theverge.com/tech/872493/...

1. Trump certainly wants to fully rig elections. 2. He has no actual plausible plan to do so. 3. We should absolutely take the threat very seriously and actively do what's possible to protect elections and democracy. 4. What's actually likely is success or failure at the margins; every bit counts.

We don't have to believe this will work in order to take it seriously. But "the states control elections & he doesn't have enough goons to make it happen & the Constitution says ______" isn't a plan. 1/6/21 & getting away with it to become POTUS again also were illegal. bsky.app/profile/mcop...