Hello from Budapest, where the right wing expats are feeling glum www.nytimes.com/2026/04/11/o...

🚨 NSF is already quietly eliminating the SBE Directorate, despite Congress’ mandate that NSF support the behavioral & social sciences. Steps to counter this are in motion. If you - have an SBE proposal under review - serve on an SBE grant panel You can help! Fill out this form: shorturl.at/xuKw2

Here’s a key reason why it’s very bad that we keep losing big, well-funded media outlets that publish real journalism: Only those organizations have the money and heft to protect reporters from inevitable legal battles with powerful people (like, say, sex offender politicians and tech CEOs).

I haven’t been paying close attention but I swear to God if California whiffs this governor’s race.

The Edge of Space-Time Debut Week: Chanda in Wonderland I am really stunned by the reception the book has received and thankful to all the readers, indie bookstores, and my convo partners Camonghne Felix, Deboleena Roy, Airea Matthews, and Roxane Gay ♥️ www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/746817...

Orbán better lose

ProPublica journalists walk off the job in first U.S. newsroom strike over AI On the picket line in New York, union leaders said they expect “more concentrated conflicts” over AI in the news industry. www.niemanlab.org/2026/04/prop...

Yeah, don't hold your breath: During Biden's term, I tried to volunteer as a policy advisor on how to stem the tide of elite tax avoidance/evasion; I'd just spent yrs doing that with the EU Parliament & helped change intl law with my research on offshore finance. The WH response (istg): "Call NATO."

No Catholic President is quite literally a talking point of the second Klan.

There's a reason I highlighted Texas A&M in my column series on the Red Scares. Yet, they remain a member of the AAU in good standing. Sharing with the text of the resignation letter in the alt

Let’s go.

Put together a reading list from the books and articles mentioned in the Algorithmic Agnotology speech by @alondra.bsky.social tr.ee/Ojj4J3q85f

A white supremacist international.

Look at what came in the mail! @chanda.blacksky.app

Why yes this should be added to the stack of reasons he should be impeached and removed. @juliaazari.bsky.social on impeachment: goodpoliticsbadpolitics.substack.com/p/what-makes... - *always* read Julia on impeachment. Me on impeachment '27: goodpoliticsbadpolitics.substack.com/p/impeachmen...

Just got news that my book is going into its fourth printing. It has been out for three days

The Overseer Class will launch at @strandbooks.com on May 19, the birthday of Malcolm X, Grace Jones & Lorraine Hansberry. Join @samhita.bsky.social @reetamac.bsky.social Una Ostao @afeefness.bsky.social & me for a celebration you won't forget. Tickets at www.strandbooks.com/steven-w-thr...

The Supreme Court has favored segregation for most of its history. Just happens that many of us were born in short outlier period.

The conservatives on the court are segregationists.

There's a humanist bent in the social sciences where people assume all the problems are just misunderstandings and we just need to listen and empathize more and reasonable views will win out, and that thinking otherwise is just cognitive biases, and so much of my life is just shouting 'no' to that

6/6 and the tour winds up in DC at @politicsprose.bsky.social (Conn Ave) with @victorerikray.bsky.social politics-prose.com/steven-thras...

5/6 On May 27, I'll be at @redemmas.org in Baltimore with @lisasnowden.bsky.social of @baltimorebeat.bsky.social redemmas.org/events/steve...

4/6 On May 21, I'll be with @ahjohnson.bsky.social (HOW TO SELL A GENOCIDE) at @pilsencommbooks.bsky.social pilsencommunitybooks.com/events/49852

1/6 Hey y'all, we're going on tour! Catch The Overeer Class & friends in New York, Atlanta, Chicago, Baltimore and DC! @amistadbooks.bsky.social @harpercollins.bsky.social Tickets at steventhrasher.com/overseertour/

Anti-vaxxers are so effective in part because they deliberately target pregnant and early mothers with medically poor but EMOTIONALLY resonant messaging. And yet health desks just keep handing it to them ammunition.

this is 10000000% correct

Academia and nonpartisan journalism center the importance of persuasion (or, euphemistically, "education") as a means to forgo outright conflict, and unfortunately IRL necessitates conflict, because institutional norms don't hold if participants don't respect the institution

I’m on a plane for a panel on structural racism tomorrow at the University of Michigan. One of the questions is how do we communicate with people who might be hostile to social science on race? My answer is some folks are hopeless, and we write them off while convincing those we can.

Honestly it is narcissistic for folks to be so enamored with their own rationality that they think ppl will just abandon their own egos and deeply held believes for their superior reasoning. I have empathy for a lot irrational ppl but I’m not above defeating them rather than trying to save them.

This seems relevant to my belief that calling out hypocrisy is still important. Not because it will dissuade the rank hypocrites themselves, but it may peel away some of their political support among people who do care about integrity.

This is why this chart is useful, in my opinion. It matters that DEI is the *only* issue that was met positively as it was clear what he was doing from the executive orders issued his first day in office.

This has now stopped. New law in Florida which allows a DeSantis official to label groups as terrorists "specifically targets student organizations at public universities in the state, which risk being dissolved or losing state funding if they receive this designation." thehill.com/homenews/sta...

Students were told for a decade about how incredibly important free speech on campus was. And then it wasn't. What lessons did we teach students over the last year? If you are a student today, do you feel confident that the government, media and university will support your speech rights?

The obvious answer here is that the student protest movement was broadly smeared as anti-semitic and aligned with terrorists, and a variety of institutions from government, media and the universities acted as if that smear was true, threatening, suspending, expelling and even deporting students.

Quite literally laying out the proposition in an explicit manner. Affirmative action has been struck down, thousands of Black workers have been fired, and we’re exclusively admitting white refugees unless otherwise forced. This has been met with either enthusiastic support or muted acceptance.

Say it with me, a politics of white reconciliation on the basis of anti-blackness.

This is something that I tell less experienced local advocates. "The truth will set you free" is a myth. Some of the folks I volunteer with are scientists and engineers, very educated, and this is a tough lesson. You need good data to persuade some, but to win, you MUST have political power.

One year after our original Guardian essay, Naomi Klein and I are excited to reveal the North American cover of our forthcoming book END TIMES FASCISM - and the Fight for the Living World. It will be on bookshelves on September 15th and is available for pre-order. More details below. bit.ly/4cbLfEr

See: Mitch McConnell honoring Muhammad Ali on the Senate floor upon his death

vance is so personally off putting that even foreign electorates want nothing to do with him

"[Admissions officers at university in the study] noted that the policy was only reversed due to pressure from the institution’s board, who wanted to follow the Ivy League’s lead." Article on a new test optional report I co-authored www.insidehighered.com/news/admissi...

BOSTON, come to the 21ST ANNUAL Black Policy Conference on Saturday, which features Black leaders in policy, business, and academia. This year's lineup includes Josh Doss, @atimaomara.bsky.social, @andreperryedu.bsky.social, @darrickhamilton.bsky.social, and more! www.blackpolicyconference.com

Sweet Christmas, make it stop

Ten years ago today, in April 2016, the Boston Globe printed a satirical front page imagining a future Trump administration. The page was called "alarmist," "hyperbolic," "dystopian." But we’ve put up with so much since then it now looks like . . . a slow Thursday?

Americans like their morally righteous heroes when they are safely dead and no longer a threat to existing power structures.

Happy Appomattox Day to all that celebrate

I realize this is about science and vaccines, and it makes a ton of sense. But this line "...there is a portion of the population who are anti-knowledge and will deny any evidence that threatens their identity." also aligns with the sports fandom community.

One of the most important things I learned in grad school was that there is a portion of the population who are anti-knowledge and will deny any evidence that threatens their identity. We should have kept these folks as far away from any public policy position as possible.