Did you know gov shutdowns aren’t in the Constitution, any law, or Court ruling? They exist because of a 1980 OLC memo—a lawyer’s opinion that everyone just went along with. Before 1980, funding gaps didn’t cause shutdowns. What one memo created, another can undo. How the next D admin can undo it:

Myths about our ancestors' meaty diets animate modern politics and culture wars about food and identity. But the history of human diets tells a different story about food's past and lets us be more rational about its future. @gnrosenberg.bsky.social & I for @vox.com www.vox.com/future-perfe...

Reading Umberto Eco’s “How to write a thesis” in my undergraduate honors seminar. Eco is a big believer in using index cards to catalog research, which prompted me to dig out my PhD notes from 30 years ago. Passed them around with my students like a sacred artifact from an analog past.

For a long time, Congress linked farm subsidies and food stamps when it passed a multi-year farm bill. That coalition is now effectively dead, but it is still worth noting which counties depend on farm subsidies, SNAP, or both.

Was curious about the relationship between congressional district politics and SNAP recipients. While there are more households receiving SNAP in Harris-voting districts, there are more vulnerable people (kids, disabled and elderly) receiving them in Trump-voting ones. www.pbump.net/o/breaking-d...

It’s not a dissertation, but there is a growing field of ethnography focused on how organizations accept outsider advice

Shot : Chaser

Would you start a massive reno of your home if you were planning to move in three years? I didn't think so.

Congratulations, you're department chair.

Re-upping this post from February showing location of fed employees by House district. The pain of a shutdown reaches far and wide.

"It wanted to signal strength. Instead, it’s revealing its weakness. The administration’s need to break the academy is forcing it to make a desperately risky gamble." www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/o...

According to the USDA, 17.9% of households with children experienced food insecurity in 2023. Yesterday, the USDA said it was cancelling its annual food insecurity report. Today, they placed the economists responsible for the survey on indefinite leave.

NEW SPECIAL ISSUE: The Politics and Governance of Migration Guest editors: Tiziana Caponio, Maria Schiller, & Cathrine Talleraas #Pasky #Policysky #Polisky onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/toc/10.1...

Hey friends, recently someone posted a very nice in-class worksheet for discussing assigned readings. If that was you, or you have something similar, please share.

I wrote this short reflection back in May and decided to share it now as we embark on another semester. For my political science colleagues gearing up to teach an intro course in U.S. politics, keep the faith.

A few scattered thoughts on BLS: Trump would have done better to install a loyalist before the jobs numbers started looking like trouble. The post-revision tantrum and sacking will make it, if anything, harder rather than easier to cook the books without anyone taking notice (1/x)

This is amazing, entirely justified and just makes me love Tom Lehrer even more.

Boston remains THE WORST. "The largest increase was 292 percent in Boston and the second highest was a 289 percent increase in San Diego." immresearch.org/publications...

Been a busy year in the data mines.📊 Just published my mid-year roundup: 29 data visualizations on the state of US democracy, tracking everything from judicial resistance to billionaire influence to why Dems have a mobilization crisis, not a moderation problem. All charts free to use:

The new platform from @wiley.com is an unmitigated disaster. The journal I co-edit (@govjournal.bsky.social) receives more than 80 submissions per month. Since the transition on July 1, we've received only 9 new papers. The new platform has half the functionality of the old one. #enshittification

Here's a similar figure for SNAP recipients

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60% of jobs in advanced economies face AI disruption. We're sleepwalking into a future where a handful of billionaires own all the AI infrastructure while millions lose their livelihoods. But what if everyone received a monthly dividend funded by the engine driving AI? Meet The AI Dividend 🧵

I've spent much of my career studying the legal institution known as "the posse comitatus" as well as "The Posse Comitatus Act." Here's a quick thread. Cites at the end. Posse comitatus is Latin for "power of the county," or temporarily deputized people obligated to assist law enforcers.

My friends, it's not just happening in a galaxy far, far away.

From my undergraduate lecture notes on the Weimar Republic's collapse

GOP fixation with work requirements in Medicaid and SNAP is based on a logical fallacy at the heart of US social policy: If you work hard, you will succeed If you are lazy, you are undeserving If you do not succeed, you are lazy and undeserving.

I think this reflects a real feature of the Democratic Party, an Obama era hangover from the ‘08 and ‘12 elections that led to the fetishization of data analytics as the lens through which all strategic questions should be answered. A very specific consultant ecosystem evolved as a result.

This is exactly the position our university leadership needs to adopt right now. Higher education is under attack, not because of what it does wrong, but because of what it does that is right: seek truth, expand opportunity, and promote the values of a free society.

American politics scholars to comparative politics colleagues: 2017: What should I read on democratic backsliding? 2025: What should I read on democratic transitions?

This how the regime consolidates power. Cruelty and corruption. Supplicants will be spared. At this point, little can be done to stop further entrenchment absent a large, pro-democracy movement on the scale of the civil rights or abolition movements.

Too bad Elon isn’t here, I found a bloated federal bureaucracy that wastes billions of taxpayer dollars paying off politically connected businessmen. I wrote about it in the @nytimes.com, someone tell DOGE! www.nytimes.com/2025/03/07/o...

I’m begging a member of the press to ask Speaker Mike Johnson how his caucus feels about adding a 51st state with a congressional delegation the size and political orientation of California. Expose the absurdity.

A musical montage tribute to the Bond franchise like it’s 1987

Worth remembering that in April of 2024, a majority of House Republicans voted against the Ukraine Security Supplemental Appropriations Act. The bill passed 311-112 on a cross-party coalition (Dems: 210-0; GOP: 101-112). Voteview ideological breakdown.

JD Vance is the authoritarian personality in action: displays of unquestioning obedience to authority so that he can exercise unlimited domination over others.

Worth remembering that in Kathy Cramer’s Politics of Resentment many of her respondents did not feel bad for teachers, state workers targeted by Scott Walker because they saw public sector as privileged group relative to them. Maybe Medicaid cuts will hit differently.

New book review on Early View: Patronage at Work: Public Jobs and Political Services in Argentina, by @viroliveros.bsky.social From @sarahbrierley.bsky.social onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... #Pasky #Policysky #Polisky

Lots of GOP House members have large numbers of federal employees in their districts. Yes, DC metro is hardest hit by DOGE, but the pain from cuts will be felt across the country. crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/...

Lots of GOP House members have large numbers of federal employees in their districts. Yes, DC metro is hardest hit by DOGE, but the pain from cuts will be felt across the country. crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/...

"Efficiency" has a specific meaning, which is the ratio of inputs to outputs. You can't calculate efficiency without measuring outputs. I can save money by not putting gas in my car, but I'm not going anywhere. DOGE is not just cutting inputs, it's cutting outputs, which is a Congressional issue.

Trump & Musk have given Democrats a mission they can’t duck: Defending constitutional democracy & the rule of law and fighting oligarchy Would appreciate your sharing Read my latest essay without hitting the paywall for 14 days using this link. All you need to do is put in your email wapo.st/3CITxpy

I'm running a film series on Demagogues and Democracy as part of my intro course this semester. First up: Gabriel Over the White House (1933). A few observations (spoilers)

For Americanists puzzling over the disappearance of Congress, now is a good time to read Ivan Ermakoff's brilliant "Ruling Oneself Out: A Theory of Collective Abdications". Ermakoff explores passage of the Enabling Act in 1933 and transfer of full powers to Pétain in 1940.

Missing from the literature in political science on the growth of presidential power is an accounting of the technological developments in public administration--digital platforms, automation, data analytics--that allow a twenty-something to upend the Constitution with a few lines of code.

For every program the administration attempts to dismantle, there is a network of organizations, states, and local governments who form a potential defense constituency. Attempting to destroy the submerged state only reveals its benefits and expands the conflict. And yet…(1/2)

What I'd like to discuss is the consequences. As I wrote last month, accepting inherent presidential authority to impound is akin to shifting the balance of power between legislature and executive to something that resembles 16th century England. 8/ t.co/Q4VuJRtjw2

Very much enjoyed being part of this great conversation about Ag policy and the future of the farm bill.

Political time is a useful lens for analyzing presidents and American political development. However, the mainspring of our constitutional time piece is out of synch, the gears are misaligned. I've written a short piece on why it's getting harder to tell what time it is. 🧵.