Do not overlook what happened in Redlands, California, a pleasant town that I know well. This was an attack on a Jewish family’s home, apparently because the family dared put up publicly viewable indications that they celebrate Hanukkah. www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/r...

It feels especially like an act of defiance this year, after how the festival started on the other side of the world. But then our continued existence is itself an act of defiance. We will stay strong as a community and do our part at being the light that prevails over darkness.

Now they said no and he doesn't or can't stop federal funding, it's clear it's an empty threat from a diminished old man. See folks, it’s simply not that hard to tell this guy to pound sand. cc: university presidents.

Oh by the way also Trump lost one in the House today - 20 Republicans voted with the Dems to pass a bill to restore federal worker union rights Trump tried to remove with an exec order. Came to the House floor via a discharge petition.

Taagepera (1972)

There's an inconvenient truth for public health leaders who insisted COVID doesn't spread in schools. I mean, not too inconvenient. It's not like there are any standards of professional conduct. Is killing people out of sheer incompetence embarrassing? Or is it too normalized now?

A great many impeachments resolutions that have been filed in the House over the years, but this might be the first one explicitly for murder.

Really interesting observation here, within a thread describing a case of legislature-driven malapportionment.

Good overview of how proportional representation has balanced citywide and local interests in Cambridge, Mass, housing policy reforms. (Also see Jack’s caveat in the follow-on post.)

Germany will deploy Israel’s Arrow 3 missile defense system this week, its first use outside Israel, aimed at intercepting long-range ballistic missiles. www.jpost.com/israel-news/...

We're recruiting! Please do spread the news far and wide. We're excited by the prospect of being joined by another great new colleague!

Yep, it's very real. People who don't realize I'm Jewish have said all kinds of bizarre things to me. One recently "confided" in me his theory that the Jews killed JFK to prevent him from stopping the building of the Dimona nuclear program in Israel.

This isn't a foreign psy-op, and it's not the product of social media bots. It's a homegrown menace, and it's getting worse. www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...

Comparative politics question of the day: Is there another country where ministers lead protest rallies outside meetings of the cabinet of which they are a part? www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_ent...

I’m endlessly fascinated by the things legislators do. And by California’s stupid electoral system. fruitsandvotes.wordpress.com/2025/11/19/a...

An exploration of a question raised by a reader. fruitsandvotes.wordpress.com/2025/11/16/i...

This is entirely what we should expect given the very recent (and not so recent) history. And it’s also important to recognize that no matter what “the rest of the world” might want, Israeli public opinion has a veto here. Those who want the prospects for “peace” to improve need to grapple with that

One of the President's top advisers: reminding the military and the intelligence community to follow the law and the Constitution is "calling for insurrection"

The media reaction to Joe Biden not doing enough press conferences was orders of magnitude stronger & more negative to what Trump does on a daily basis to denigrate & threaten freedom of the press. Two wildly different standards. Happy week everyone.

Happy to learn I received the Michael Wallerstein prize in political economy for this article on the political consequences of technological change in agriculture in the US: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

I will probably get excommunicated from Bsky for saying that, but I can see a case for ending the shutdown now. - Millions of civil servants did not get a salary for over a month, and millions are losing SNAP going into the holiday season. - But, just as important...

John K. and I summarized political science on the fragmentation myth here: manhattan.institute/article/refo... MSS, ML, and I reflected on the presidentialism issue here: protectdemocracy.org/work/toward-...

With PR in the discourse again, we’re likely to hear things about incompatibility with presidentialism and a tendency to produce fragmentation. These views tend to come from a certain corner of American Politics. I reflected on that dynamic last month: open.substack.com/pub/jacksant... 1/2

NEW: How did Tuesday's elections affect how you vote, and the rules of democracy? You know about Prop 50, surely. But there's a lot more: Here is our round-up at Bolts!

If it's true that RealClearPolitics removed their polling average of the VA Attorney General race because it was wrong, that should really be the nail in the coffin for them. It's GOP polling propaganda that hasn't been rigorous or transparent in a long time (www.gelliottmorris.com/p/the-pollin...)

Why is there any doubt about this

Research finding! “Prosecuting a former president or prime minister is a normal and healthy thing for advanced democracies to do.”

Really good. Also, ouch! “Cheney’s work put him at the forefront of the quantitative wave in political science that transformed the field from a sleepy and largely useless compilation of descriptive facts … into a research enterprise that occasionally has something useful to say about the world.”

I see Dick Cheney's death has been pushed lower on the NYT page by a new top story about a GOP president deciding which half-assed plan to use for regime change in Venezuela and what a nice tribute to him really. Justifying it based on a drug that Venezuela doesn't traffic in is a great touch.

Out now! I look at the size of municipal and local assemblies in EU/OECD countries and find that in addition to an effect of municipality population, more autonomous local councils are larger www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

In my paper the other day in @liberalcurrents.com I spent some time on our very weird candidate selection & non-membership based political parties because I don't think Americans know just how strange it is: www.liberalcurrents.com/the-american...

Hey #lawsky, with H5N1 incoming there's going to be a *ton* of money in the #PersonalInjury space. Worth reading up on how we got here, #failuretowarn, and why the COIs around major medical errors made wrt COVID mean reasonable steps to mitigate infectious aerosol hazards are rejected. Also:

Excellent overview about how the structural problem of presidentialization, plus non-hierarchical parties, renders it insufficient to implore Democrats (or Republicans for that matter) to just develop better messaging and improve their reputation.

Anyone out there happen to know details of the electoral system of #Senegal after 2012? Datasets I am working with disagree on some features and Wikipedia isn’t clear.

The more I think about all of this, the more I become convinced that democratic reform is the answer, not organizing and messaging. Ezra Klein is Looking for Change in the Wrong Places – Outside the Beltway outsidethebeltway.com/ezra-klein-i...

Have you noticed plane turbulence is getting worse? It’s not your imagination. It’s climate change.

Wales is going to use a new closed-list PR system next May, replacing MMP. Already at least one Member of Senedd wants to change to STV. fruitsandvotes.wordpress.com/2025/10/24/w...

Why I’m voting yes on Prop 50 in California. fruitsandvotes.wordpress.com/2025/10/24/y...

I’ve devoted much of my career to comparative presidentialism. I’ll know I’ve succeeded only if journalists stop saying things like I just heard on France24: “the French presidency may be the strongest in the world.” If so, then why can’t he keep a cabinet in office?

So the Doha op might have failed DUE TO OVERLY PRECISE TARGETING. (Sorry for shouting but it’s important.)

This is a very important paper. The thread offers a nice overview.

Election nerds, can you help me? Here are data from 1000s of local elections in Austria, held under list-PR with D'Hondt allocation and no fixed electoral threshold (whoever wins 1 seat is in). The graph shows the vote share of parties centered around the threshold ...

UC Davis is recruiting in comparative politics! "We are especially interested in candidates working on regional and/or emerging-market powers, though the successful candidate may work in any area of Comparative Politics." Assistant level, tenure track. recruit.ucdavis.edu/JPF07299

I’m playing with ways to visualize state leg. size relative to population. Start with ratio. Tried normalization and robust scaling. Here, we have the factor by which a state’s value differs from the median. Left: houses; right: senates.

🧵 I have a new paper online @apsa-preprints.bsky.social where I try to answer a deceptively simple question: 𝘞𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦’𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 '𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘵' 𝘪𝘯 𝘧𝘪𝘳𝘴𝘵-𝘱𝘢𝘴𝘵-𝘵𝘩𝘦-𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘢𝘭 𝘴𝘺𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘮𝘴? Summary below 👇 preprints.apsanet.org/engage/apsa/...

Well, the campaign is underway. The bills to put this on the ballot passed the legislature only yesterday. But the opposition hasn’t been sitting around waiting. (My posting this is not an endorsement of any position.)

Many far-right groups in Europe today are linked to Russia in the same way many far-left groups were to the Soviet Union in the 1920s-1980s. Plus ça change...

All too plausible, and tremendously concerning. Who — in the room or outside it — will stop this?

And there was never any such norm; Bork was defeated in 1986 after three nominees had been defeated within the 20 previous years. Most of the demonization of Bork (which did happen, yes) and all of it that mattered was either absolutely true points by Dems or...