If you've been to any decently-old cemetery you'll have noticed the dozens of tiny gravestones marking the graves of dead babies. There's a reason modern cemeteries don't have those, and we're just throwing it away.

New from APPAM: The Journal of Policy Implementation & Evaluation (JPIE)! JPIE will publish short, peer-reviewed articles with timely, real-world insights on policy design, implementation & evaluation. Learn more: https://ow.ly/TPNW50YmzVr

New, from me: Trump finalized his Schedule F policy, allowing him to remove job protections from career civil servants. The new rule is dishonest and unmoored from reality in its effort to formalize the politicization of the federal government 🧵 donmoynihan.substack.com/p/trumps-sch...

Two of the most counterproductive political system choices you can make, which increase corruption but sound good, are: 1) low salaries for elected office holders and bureaucrats 2) term limits for legislators

It’s hard to believe but there was a cartoon about an immigrant mouse and it was seen as totally fine and not controversial and not woke because it was an aspirational and nice thing about America that people could come here and find a better life

If there exists a category of people who don't have due process rights, then either there's a process for determining who fits in that category or there isn't. In the first case due process is still being observed for everyone, and in the second it can be denied to anyone. There are no other options

So many echoes from this article for US politics....

Think of an economy as like baking a cake. H1-B visas exist so that if you're out of a specific ingredient, you can Instacart it and keep baking. Add a $100k delivery charge and you'll choose to: 1. Quit baking; or 2. Use an inferior recipe; or 3. Import cake instead of making it

NEW: Hours before a new entry ban is supposed to go into effect, the federal government officially acknowledges for the first time that the restrictions do NOT apply to people who currently have H-1B visas. Link: www.uscis.gov/sites/defaul...

This H1B thing is a DISASTER for the USA. Phone your representative and senator NOW and demand action to protect America. This is an attack on the American economy and American technological and scientific advancement. Not to mention a truly awful thing to do to half a million people.

From Princeton Professor of Politics and International Affairs, @jshapiro.bsky.social.

Come to SPIA at the University of Pittsburgh for your MPA and you too can become like Jessica Chastain

Not sure whose fault it is primarily that most people don't seem to know that the president is basically a manager whose job is to carry out the will of Congress, and not The Country's Boss

New, from me: America is no longer a functioning democracy. It is a competitive authoritarian system, hurtling rapidly toward authoritarianism. This was a hard piece to write but we can't move forward if we don’t acknowledge where we are. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-author...

Our constitutional republic does not have any provision which allows a president to enact a criminal statute by executive order that would put people in prison. bsky.app/profile/atru...

I know this won’t reach folks who don’t already know it but just in case: If you are a parent and your kid is going to college, there’s no time when you reaching out to their professors, choosing their classes, or doing their assignments is helping them. Go get a hobby.

a university is not for generating profit, it provides cultural enrichment via weird little gremlin people who love visigoths or haikus, and very occasionally a scientist who figures out faster than light travel

In 1949, Superman told schoolchildren “our country is made up of Americans of MANY different races, religions and national origins. So… “…if YOU hear anybody talk against anyone else because of his religion, race or national origin — don’t wait: tell him THAT KIND OF TALK IS UN-AMERICAN.”

The annoying spam texts destroying the Democratic brand: $678M raised through those spam tactics $282M to one consulting firm: Mothership Strategies. $11M to actual campaigns (1.6%) The party isn’t just treating donors like marks—it’s being fleeced itself yet continues to back Mothership.

Brown's capitulation to the state is as great a threat to academic freedom in America as Columbia's cowardice. Anonymous student course evaluations have been potentially weaponized to punish speech that might anger students in the classroom. A serious chilling effect. www.brown.edu/sites/defaul...

Can someone smarter than the New York Times explain to me what exactly the $200M fine that Columbia is paying is *for*? Because in my naiveté and with $400M in grant funding canceled, this is indistinguishable from a protection racket. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/23/n...

Columbia’s leadership has managed to make the wrong decision at every single point here

Disagree. This is the United States of America and we categorically reject the idea of the Divine Right of Kings.

I am once again pitching my romantic comedy: - two academics start dating - discover they are each other's terrible reviewer - hijinks ensue Working title: Love is Double-Blind

New motto for dealing with reviewers.

New, from me: Quick explainer on why the Supreme Court (likely) decision to overturn Humphrey's Executor and move toward unitary executive theory will undermine any future efforts to rebuild state capacity. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/why-the-su...

Excellent piece on Miller on habeas. Far superior to the surprisingly both-sides-ish coverage by some media. What Miller is claiming the power to do isn’t questionable or dubious. It would be anti-constitutional usurpation. www.stevevladeck.com/p/148-suspen...

My wife just bought me a gerrymandered chocolate bar. How funny is that

Ben Franklin on inoculation, after his son died from smallpox. “In 1736, I lost one of my sons, a fine boy of four years old, by the small-pox, taken in the common way. I long regretted bitterly, and still regret that I had not given it to him by inoculation”.

"Vote for the guy who would help me take over your country" is an incredible closing message

From February 2025 - Does the Presence or Absence of Elections Remove Gender Differences in Ambition for Public Service? - cup.org/41lAmeU - @hjghassell.bsky.social, @gholliba.bsky.social & Matthew R. Miles #OpenAccess

People don’t need to “learn to use AI”. They need to learn how to think and make connections themselves and thus will facilitate their efficient use of whatever technology comes along. Crafting the right prompt for AI doesn’t take AI training, it takes liberal arts training.

I don't know how I'm going to make it through the next four years being in a job where I have to pay attention to all of this.

Today marks the 250th anniversary of the battles of Lexington and Concord, which began the American Revolution. Our nation was founded on resistance to arbitrary authority and monarchical power. We built a democracy in the face of impossible odds. We must continue to protect it.

INCREDIBLE opinion by Wilkinson refusing to stay Judge Xinis's orders in the Abrego Garcia case, condemning DOJ's arguments as "shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear." storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Not only is this not accurate—many autistic people do all those things every day—it’s utterly dehumanizing. He’s basically calling people useless eaters. I really don’t like making direct comparisons to Nazism, but this feels hard to separate this from the rhetoric behind T4.

Rochester! Proud to be an alum.

My autistic daughter wouldn't be caught dead playing baseball because she thinks it's boring as hell but she's about to finish her junior year in college and has already held multiple jobs and internships in her chosen field. What I'm trying to say is, RFK Jr. can fuck off all the way into the sun.

Where we are as a country. What Trump is doing to us.

Seems like so much of today’s world could be righted with the general acceptance that people different than you should be treated fairly and with dignity

republicans are disappearing people under the guise of fighting antisemitism and can’t even pretend to give a fuck when a jewish governor’s house gets firebombed on passover

I am not sure that I have ever seen a post that so fundamentally misunderstands the motivations and skill set of federal employees. Set aside the meaning of "productivity." The federal employees that the Trump administration has sought to remove are not going into manufacturing.

Exiling people beyond the protection of US law without due process is not only unconstitutional, it's a rejection of the entire American revolutionary project. Sending people "beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences" is one of the grievances enumerated in the Declaration of Independence.

This exciting resolution from Rutgers University Senate is exactly the kind of model I think higher ed needs: a mutual defense pact of, in this case, Big 10 schools. They call for member institutions to create a joint defense fund and make resources available to any member institution under attack.

New publication in @polbehavior.bsky.social, co-authored with @hjghassell.bsky.social & Matt Miles! We find that the same personality traits predict who’s drawn to public service—elected or not. Check it out! #PoliSky doi.org/10.1007/s111...