the way this makes sense for RFK is that "healthy people" and "sick people" are ontological categories.

It’s a settled point that housing and a bit of basic income is cheaper than punishment but the US thinks it’s being soft on crime to help people, and there are people who make money on prisons and punishment

Burchett is right: the most DC thing ever *is* a member of Congress blaming the city for something he and his colleagues did themselves.

You're going to be hearing a lot about the massive economic impact of the NFL Draft. New study from Frank Stephenson finds this isn't the case. Also examines a few other events, including Taylor Swift concerts, finding similarly small effects. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

The goal here is to shore up the American experiment. The Democrats are a means to that end, nothing more. Fostering fairer democratic representation—for the sake of restoring Congress to health as a deliberative body—first requires pushing a GOP that opposes pluralistic democracy to the margins.

one of the ways the mid to late 20th century political world has distorted the historical memories of even sophisticated observers is in the idea that you can achieve major transformations of american political life through something like bipartisan consensus

In both foreign policy and economic policy, the core belief of Trumpism is that there is some button one can press to instantly and easily solve any problem, and every political leader this country has ever had was simply too cowardly to press it. That’s it.

20/ Principle Three: Once you've gathered data about what problems there are, let the experts work on them--and give them cover to do so. Yes, a small group of people will get mad at any proposed change. But you can and should ignore them, confident that they don't represent public opinion broadly.

13/ And that simulacrum can look kind of convincing, to an elected official who has no other sources of knowledge. In a city council district of 100,000 people, 70 people yelling at you might be the loudest signal you get, even if those people don't represent anyone but themselves.

12/ When you have a bunch of public meetings, you're essentially attempting to extract an opinion from an entity (the public) that largely does not have one. But that entity can produce the simulacrum of an opinion, if pressed. It can produce a room full of 70 cranks willing to give a two min speech

IMHO all of 4th street NE between T street and Michigan should be converted to curbside protected bike lanes, but this is a great down payment (along with a bunch of other sensible improvements for all users in this corner of Edgewood).

*whispers* we could peg the gas tax to inflation when this is over

Another way of saying this is that the regulations would have had a cost of zero. They would not have required the power sector to do anything it wasn't going to do already. Roberts said it would be the most expensive reg ever (because he heard that on Fox). But it cost nothing.

Learn whatever you want about "law," it doesn't matter because GOP Justices blew up the entire process of deciding cases based on chats with rich friends and stuff they watched on TV. That was the entire basis on which SCOTUS switched to the shadow docket.

Balls and strikes!

The same thing can and does happen to house prices, if only we let it happen: ggwash.org/view/99926/h...

Sure was nice of San Diego taxpayers to not only build the team a new stadium, but give the owner development rights to the surrounding area that was "emerging as San Diego’s most desirable real estate investment opportunity." doi.org/10.1177/1078...

And to follow up further, Cobb County officials are not reliable on the financials. They continue to report select figures in a way that makes it appear that the deal was a success, even though the numbers show the opposite. I explained in this Twitter thread. x.com/jc_bradbury/...

I cannot stress this enough: Vegas gave Musk millions to build us a supposed public transportation system. Instead he built basically an Uber tunnel for Teslas that only goes FROM ONE END OF A CONVENTION CENTER TO THE OTHER. Literally just gets you to the other side of a building.

It matters to remember the Confederates as unambiguous bad guys in American history because any nation's identity is in large part defined by the narrative of the villains we've defeated: monarchism in the Revolution, the Nazis in WWII, and alongside those, the white supremacist slave power.

A small, but important, win here in Cville — the fire department is moving towards smaller fire trucks. Small fire trucks opens up more possibilities for allocating the right of way in a more balanced approach that supports safety for all users: cyclists, pedestrians, scooters, and cars

Dallas doesn't have many tools available to encourage home ownership but it could remove the minimum lot size. ~90% of Dallas residential land is zoned for large lot detached homes (excluding SB840). Over 50% of Dallasites live in multi-family homes. That's 50% of people living on 10% of the land.

Millions of American voters wanted to be villains. They came to believe it’s the key to success, while goodness is weak, woke, loser stuff, done only to signal. Offered the option of unvarnished villainy, they enthusiastically took it. Seeing others suffer more made them feel big. And here we are.

"Only 8% of "moderates" actually want moderation"

Racist NIMBYs won.

In English Canada, Montreal is analogous to people who go to Europe and come back raving about walkable cities, except we have an example right here at home that does pedestrianization spectacularly, and we ignore it because our cities equate mediocrity to progress

New buildings are MUCH more expensive than old ones. A slightly-larger new bldg can only exist if it's MUCH pricier; a much-larger new bldg can divide those fixed costs across many more sq ft.

When you think about it, there really can be no more perfect representative of today's GOP: * wildly entitled, yet ... * utterly dependent on & enriched by gov't policy that protects ... * their shitty, misery-producing, anti-social business model, and yet ... * endlessly whiny & resentful. 🎯

Lib women are just like, "yeah, orange man is bad, we're going to go out and patiently organize people to fight him" and the US media is all 🥱🥱🥱🥱🥱🥱🥱🥱🥱

Heather Cox Richardson has a larger audience than almost any dudefluencer. More informed. Better values & policy preferences. And yet there are no profiles, no elevation or lionization, because there's *nothing* US media is less interested in than middle-aged lib women. No diner interviews for them.

Vital to stress that the Tea Party "movement" was a Koch brothers astroturfing campaign that was orchestrated to achieve the corporate objectives of said Koch brothers.

there's also something so weird about this idea that what appeals to, say, someone in Baltimore won't appeal to say, someone in Detroit. like, every state has a few major cities, and those cities have more in common *with each other* than they do with their neighboring rural areas

i like to call this "electoral college brain," when politicians (or hell just regular people) confuse the fact that the electoral system privileges closely competitive interior states with some deeper, fundamental meaning

WABA: we’re gonna sue. NPS: oh yeah?? Well then, we’re doing open streets! So take that! WABA: ….ok.

Why do Republicans currently control the White House, Senate, and House? Did Democrats forget to do the fraud in 2024? Decide it wasn't worth it this time?

It is so on brand for Chicago that a driver hits and kills a child in a hit-and-run, hits ANOTHER child, and the media blames the child and their scooter. www.chicagotribune.com/2026/03/25/s...

Interesting stuff

I am sensing a theme here

I'm so glad we made a bespoke test for this one constitutional right for no apparent reason. and I'm even more glad that the test is like "compare the challenged law to the most nichely racist law you can find from 1307. If they look similar that's good for some reason"

You might say, "sure, but it buys time to implement real solutions." And yeah, that's the selling point. Except in actual fact it rarely does that, since by removing the signal you've also removed the political urgency.

Politically, the two biggest problems with the streetcar were named Bowser and Mendelson.

these guys basically pull out a half-baked libertarian national politics frame and slap it on local issues (when they even remember us) and it sits exactly as awkwardly as you would expect

Yep. See also: Antonin Scalia refusing to read WaPo or NYT because he preferred to cook his brain on rightwing talk radio

right?!? what do you mean “apparent outcome?!?“ if all the votes have not been counted, there hasn’t been an outcome! the implication of alito’s comment is that it undermines voter confidence when, like, urban precincts report later in the night. those votes change “the apparent outcome”

Something I've been thinking about is how safe streets advocates are treated as hysterical and dramatic for pointing out that drivers should stop killing us, yet the people fomenting a moral panic about e-bikes are treated as reasonable and their concerns are taken seriously.

Absolutely insane that the part of the new pedestrian connection between Crystal City and DCA over the National Park Service right-of-way is going to be uncovered and unprotected from the elements because NPS is worried about obstructing scenic views for *drivers* along the parkway.

the republican justices are as pickled in MAGA slop as any pardoned jan 6er

"Consensus" only ever works in one direction, and that direction favors cars and parking.

68% of households in Paris proper (population: 2 million) do not own a car.