The Epstein files document what many women researchers have long experienced but rarely seen laid bare so starkly: exclusion operating behind closed doors, shaping who gets funded, invited, mentored, and taken seriously. How many of these networks, norms, and gatekeepers remain in place?

A former Deutsche Bank compliance officer told the FBI she was fired in 2018 after flagging suspicious activity in accounts linked to Jeffrey Epstein and Jared Kushner, offering yet another example of how they operated above the law.

Can feed algorithms shape what people think about politics? Our paper "The Political Effects of X's Feed Algorithm" is out today in Nature and answers "Yes." www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Tax avoidance by the superwealthy is an economic issue as well as a political one. on.wsj.com/4cFXA5s

A colleague and I were talking about the need to stress to students that LLMs cannot replace the thinking and analysis done through writing so I thought I’d reshare this editorial in case it’s helpful in the classroom: www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Column: The mortgage delinquency rates for lower-income households are surging. Meanwhile, folks in the highest-income areas are doing just fine. It’s another reminder that the U.S. economy is largely benefiting people with means.

Remember last week how Dr. Oz called AI the best solution for rural healthcare shortages? Well, a new study finds that when patients turn to chatbots for health advice, they end up taking the wrong steps and getting the wrong diagnosis more than half the time. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/09/w...

Washington state has assistance for families affected by the flooding and severe weather. Get more info below. ⬇️ www.dshs.wa.gov/alert/food-b...

Mass firings, buyouts and heightened uncertainty led to an exodus of federal workers in 2025. More than 300,000 employees will be out of the government by the end of December.

If you know someone who is thinking about doing a PhD and who is interested in health then please share this advert with them. It is an ESRC funded PhD working on trade unions and health as part of a collaboration with me and the @tuc.org.uk @lsesociology.bsky.social www.lse.ac.uk/study-at-lse...

Do you teach theory? Help us build a community syllabus database by sharing yours. Find our email in the bio.

Most of these people are deeply trained, or at least highly educated, in humanities. Knowing isn’t being.

CEO-to-worker pay ratio in 1965: 20-1 CEO-to-worker pay ratio in 1990: 75-1 CEO-to-worker pay ratio today: 280-to-1 Trickle-down economics was always a sham. Nothing has ever trickled down.

there’s a lot of talk about big tech and corporations but so many international academic colleagues are also on H1Bs. no university is going to pay 100k extra a year to keep them. if this holds, it would essentially mean the end of foreigners on tenure track jobs at US universities.

Congratulations to Vivian Shaw @vivianshaw.bsky.social (2018-19) and Kanoko Kamata (2017-18) on their co-authored article, "Compartmentalizing Intersectionality: Feminist Translations in Anti-Racist and Anti-Rape Activism in Japan," in Gender & Society. doi.org/10.1177/0891...

Hedged Out featured in @wsj.com in a piece by Matt Wirz on how private-managers influence the U.S. economy and politics in alarming ways that should concern us all—and especially students, workers, and retirees. www.wsj.com/finance/inve...

Breaking News: Harvard rejected the Trump administration’s demands, including that it submit to monitoring and reduce the power of faculty and students.

More than 350,000 noncitizen healthcare workers keep our system afloat—many serving in underserved areas. Yet they now face possible deportation. These workers aren’t just essential—they’re irreplaceable. Let’s protect and uplift those who protect our health. www.medpagetoday.com/publichealth...

In 2017, the Trump administration tried to kill >$200 million in federal grants for teen pregnancy programs bc it wanted to prioritize abstinence-first approaches. The courts prevented them from terminating w/o cause, so the admin inserted the “effectuates” language into OMB guidance on grants.

My new paper is “The Autumn of the White Patriarch: Identity and Inequality in American Capitalism.” This is the key chart. It shows how white men’s share of national income has fallen since the 1960s. Imho, this is why we have such identity politics on the US right today. 1/11

This is the most controversial graph from my new paper. It suggests that Piketty’s “golden age of social democracy” after World War II only really existed in the United States if you were white and male. 1/5

Some good news that may have gotten lost amid the headlines: Costco is raising the average hourly wage to over $30 after negotiations with their workers’ union. www.reuters.com/business/ret...

"The mythology of founders and Silicon Valley too often obscures the indispensable role of American taxpayers in the innovation economy"—my recent remarks to @bloomberg.com about the critical importance of federally funded research. www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...

Trump's budget will starve the poor to feed the rich. The Republican Party are creating a true oligarchy. To fight it and build wealth and power for working-class communities, we need economic democracy. Read the op-ed I wrote with Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib for The Guardian.

The U.S. economy favors billionaires over families. The GOP’s $4.5tn tax giveaway proves it—paid for by gutting Medicaid & more. @itsmccarthy.bsky.social & Rashida Tlaib on building a democratic economy that puts power in workers’ hands @theguardian.com ⤵️ www.theguardian.com/commentis...

What does it mean to make AI pro worker? “Give workers a seat at the table in that transition.”

Today’s episode of The Ezra Klein Show. The Biden Administration’s A.I. adviser Ben Buchanan discusses how the US Government is preparing for artificial general intelligence — and all the challenges that remain. open.spotify.com/episode/6u7l... youtu.be/Btos-LEYQ30?...

Musk’s billions are in heavily illiquid and indebted capital. He has long borrowed against his shares in SpaceX and Tesla, of which the declining stocks accounts for most of his wealth. Investors must be concerned. How long until this house of cards collapses? www.forbes.com/sites/johnhy...

Massive encroachment by Bezos into The Washington Post’s opinion section - makes clear dissenting views will not be published I still have not felt encroachment on my journalism on the news side, but if Bezos tries interfering with the news side I will be quitting immediately and letting you know

Ever find yourself wishing sociology books had more pictures in them? Or maybe you’ve recently found yourself spending more time…um…thinking about the hidden curriculum in US public schools? If so, check out Michael Messner’s newest book, The High School: Sports, Spirit, and Citizens!

I have been studying bureaucracy my entire career. Here are some insights from my research about the ongoing efforts to transform the US federal bureaucracy newsroom.haas.berkeley.edu/is-the-u-s-c...

Write to your Congress-critters and Senators today (especially in red states) and urge them to contact the White House and let them know your thoughts. Mine are that the purge yesterday likely did considerable damage to the US biomedical research and public health capacity. con'ted 3/n

Checking in with sources this morning... The total from NIH was apparently slightly more than 1500 people (out of 5200 HHS Department-wide) 1/n

Here’s a short interview I did about the hidden human labour behind AI. www.context.news/ai/eu-law-la...

Every professor should join the AAUP right now if you haven't. www.aaup.org Also join your local campus workers union, or any other union relevant to your work (they do different things!). If the government won't protect us, and our administrations won't protect us, we need to protect each other.

This is horrifying. And must be stopped.

A panel on the Treasury this Thursday, with the incredible @epopppp.bsky.social and @abenewman.bsky.social. This is not just for academics. Everyone needs to understand what's happening right now. Spread the word!

1. The state department has removed transgender people from its website and just reads "LGB Travelers," as reported by a number of journalists. However, on further investigation, it is also removing trans-specific directions for individual countries. Subscribe to support my journalism.

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I want to spell out the basic reason it’s so dangerous for Elon to have control of the U.S. payments system. It may seem like a technical matter, but the dynamics are simple. 1/x

Apropros of nothing, I’m reupping my @theemancipator.org article arguing that the so-called “anti-DEI movement” is a segregationist movement, and journalists should state this clearly. There is no need to help evil by adopting their language. theemancipator.org/2025/01/28/t...

DOJ Urges Staffers To Rat Out Civil Rights Supporters DOJ Attacks Civil Rights At Key Agencies DOJ Accused Of Bigotry In Attack On Civil Rights not DOJ Pursues Anti-DEI Agena DOJ Cracks Down On Woke, DEI DOJ Wants Snitches To Report On DEI Violations

The biggest tech and social media companies have consolidated behind Trump.

Pay attention to America's infrastructure of wealth, secrecy, and tax avoidance, and you might find yourself asking an uncomfortable question. “We talk all the time about Putin and his oligarchic friends," Bernie Sanders told us. “But for obvious reasons, we don’t talk about oligarchy in the US.”

(That's Mark in the back, holding the cake) www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

My latest from the Hamilton Project and @brookings.edu makes it clear that work requirements in safety net programs do not make sense given the reality of low-wage work in America.

Thank you Meg!! Yes, the H-1B and H-4 is one of the most egregious manifestation of U.S.’s gendered and racialized visa regime.

@pallavib.bsky.social wrote an award winning book about this—the gendered and radicalized implications of the dependent visa programs. Check out The Opportunity Trap @nyupress.bsky.social

I genuinely think we should start calling businesses and schools falling to the anti-DEI movement “segregationists” because they are re-segregating. And earlier rounds of segregationists *also* explained their preferred policy in race-neutral terms (“state’s rights” and “freedom of association”).

Braun et al. (2024). “Being Really Confidently Wrong”: Qualitative Researchers’ Experiences of Methodologically Incongruent Peer Review Feedback. psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/202...