ABC has joined the slackjaw club, dismayed at being called on its proclaimed principles, incapable of retort. It joins law firms, broadcasters, and Fortune 500 corporations that have all been exposed as suffering from an advanced stage of moral rot. Trump sensed that spinelessness and pushed. 1/2

One of the most baffling points in the @ezraklein.bsky.social piece on Kirk: "We can live with losing an election because we believe in the promise of the next election." But Kirk didn't! And yet Ezra concludes: "We were on the same side on the continued possibility of American politics."

I mourn Kirk's killing. I admire his charisma, organizing genius, & commitment to debate. THAT was right about his way. I also believe he used his talents to promote lies that damaged our democracy and bigotry that divides us. THAT was wrong about his way. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

It can be a trap if you make it a trap. It's a gift if you make it a gift. The line is: We have a big crime problem and we'd love more cops to help solve it. But Trump is cutting money for cops and sending troops because he isn't coming after criminals - he's coming after democracy.

Big new paper from Steve Teles @niskanencenter.bsky.social today niskanencenter.org/abundance-va.... Steve outlines six types of “abundance” thinking he predicts will shape US politics. As in the Progressive Era, broad principles will attach to distinct cultural and political economic projects.

This is getting very bad: *FBI raids top Trump critic's home *Trump loyalist gins up "mortgage fraud" pretexts for DOJ probes of Schiff, Letitia James, Lisa Cook *Bannon says ICE will monitor 2026 voting *DHS memo vows LA operations "for years to come" New from me: newrepublic.com/article/1994...

I spent a lot of time trying to level-set on how we reached the point of starvation in Gaza. First of several posts: daviddagan.substack.com/p/why-are-ga...

Some racial profiling was happening from the start, but the operation was supercharged in mid-May when the White House ordered ICE to stop using warrants, targeted operations, and just "go out on the streets" and arrest people. These arrests shot from 500/week to 1,500/week

The BLS firing is one of Trump's most chilling moves yet. He is demanding that we be lied to about the most material facts of most Americans' lives - how they earn a living. And it will come at the expense of that living, because it destroys the foundations for investing in the United States.

I want to enthusiastically endorse this piece from @cselmendorf.bsky.social & @profschleich.bsky.social. Thus far YIMBY has been almost entirely focused on More Housing, but ultimately, if you want people to accept density, you have to make it *nice*, and that means more than just housing.

The great @henrymjtonks.bsky.social cranked up his time machine and came up with really critical lessons for Democrats. But not only Democrats. 1/2 hypertext.niskanencenter.org/p/lessons-fr...

As @mattyglesias.bsky.social notes today, certain interest groups certainly built the polarization machine deliberately, but @jmcrosson.bsky.social wrote this great piece for us about how many just got sucked into it, even as single-issue orgs. 1/2 hypertext.niskanencenter.org/p/when-lobby...

YIMBYism needs to become more party-like, @cselmendorf.bsky.social and David Schleicher argue in today's Hypertext. Here's why. Shoutout to @dbroockman.bsky.social & @jkalla.bsky.social.

Hypertext—Niskanen’s intellectual journal—is turning two! We launched it to tackle one big question: How do we make America’s institutions work for the 21st century? Now we’re sharpening that mission 🧵

The "TACO" shorthand for thinking about Trump is not just annoying as an acronym - I also think it misreads the moment. I think it grows out of confusion that comes with being in what I'm thinking of as The Warp Zone.

Iraq and Afghanistan from the beginning were conceived as regime-change invasions involving ground troops. A war goal of destroying Fordow aerially is limited and (I think!) achievable. Whether we should do it hinges on nonpublic intel IMO - but that's the question on the table.

MAGA's Massive Ordnance Penetrator - thoughts on the American crisis meeting war in the Middle East. daviddagan.substack.com/p/magas-mass...

Early in the war that began on Oct. 7, a friend said to me: “It’s like Covid, but with bombs.” That's more true than ever now that the fight is directly with Iran. But Israelis know why they are going through this. daviddagan.substack.com/p/what-israe...

My latest Israel-Gaza post - taking seriously the problem of Hamas diverting aid, and condemning the prolonged blockade that has driven Gazans to the brink. daviddagan.substack.com/p/the-blocka...

The Trump administration caved on the Abrego Garcia case because the courts did not cower. Now they are using their politicized DOJ to save face with hyperbolic criminal charges. This is at once a big win for the rule of law and a reminder of the danger we still face.

The travel ban for the administration is a convenient distraction from reconciliation and infighting, but still worth reflecting on. It's a measure of how far we've fallen that in Trump II, this wouldn't even make a top 10 list of abuses.

I think the smart version of this is not "too much constraint" but "the wrong constraint in the wrong places." But it's hard to be schematic about what those wrong places are - as the well-taken critique of Marc's schema higher in Sam's thread indicates.

This seems to be getting more traction over at The Bad Place but it really needs to resonate here. The usual story we tell about primaries being the source of our woes has looked deeply flawed for a while: Primary voters are not more "extreme" as a general matter. 1/2

"No president in living memory has attacked the sources of American strength and dynamism in the way that Trump already has done." www.nytimes.com/2025/05/20/o...

Today on Hypertext: the long history of American YIMBYism, and what we can learn from it. hypertext.niskanencenter.org/p/yimbyism-i...

My latest thoughts on the depressing Israel-Gaza situation - hard to put into a social media post, and titled "It's still complicated." daviddagan.substack.com/p/its-still-...

Inconvenient truth from @dolanecon.bsky.social : "There are no bright lines between “unwilling to work,” “willing and able to work, but not working” and “unable to work.”" Esp true for a gov that often struggles to execute on basic bureaucracy. Esp inconvenient for a party that harps on this fact.

This is a point rule-of-law Republicans should try to amplify as much as possible, as fast as possible: the Trump administration has officially committed to respecting Supreme Court decisions as universally binding. When/if they renege, this is important rhetorical cover for those who will oppose.

One justification for this Air Force One bribe is that we can't build the plane. Is that America First? That one of the premier symbols of US power and prestige needs to be a foreign gift? A humiliating flag of surrender raised on the most basic government functioning and on American know-how.

Take that jumbo outrage, @jacobtlevy.bsky.social argues, and channel it toward reform of the underlying, rotten system of presidential inaugural and library grift. www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202... And remember Shelley... 1/2

Today on Hypertext: The deep roots of the legal vetocracy that is snarling the supply side of the economy in housing, energy, healthcare, and elsewhere. hypertext.niskanencenter.org/p/abundance-...

OK, we've imagined the Abundance omelet. Now, which eggs should we break, and how? That analysis must begin with a grasp on how the law promotes scarcity and where legal tools can crack it. It also reveals the bigger-than-Democrats dimension to this. hypertext.niskanencenter.org/p/building-a...

Amid the 100 day takes, re-upping a historical view on how Trump compares to FDR. The size of the ambition is comparable. The methods and motives are more in the category of "contrast." www.persuasion.community/p/the-great-...

Three AUSA's who understand more about the law than nine BigLaw firms put together.

Nice use of Loper Bright from the excellent Wilkinson opinion

Can district courts order the executive branch to engage in specific acts of diplomatic negotiation? If SCOTUS doesn’t think so now, why did it let Matthew Kacsmaryk force U.S. diplomats to negotiate the revival of a Trump border policy in 2021 after Biden tried to end it? slate.com/news-and-pol...

Eviscerating one's ability to collect revenue is usually not recommended for a sovereign facing declining confidence in its debt.

Their parents sacrifice for our freedom. They remind us what it means to exercise that freedom. Hats off to DOD kids. www.military.com/daily-news/2...

One thing that seems under-theorized in modern liberalism is the real tension between a popularly elected executive and the imperative of apolitical administration. A quick thread on how I see this tension playing out in American political thought over time - super tentative/happy for critique.

Purim is long gone and Passover is coming, but I still wrote a reply to the @peterbeinart.bsky.social piece casting the Purim story as a troubling parallel to events in Gaza. I think he misreads Israel/Palestine - and the Purim story. daviddagan.substack.com/p/on-purim-a...

Reminder that we're still dealing with staggering tariffs. As @dolanecon.bsky.social v6explains, a myopic focus on the trade deficit will not magically reindustrialize America. To do that, you would need to invest. And guess where our investment money comes from? niskanencenter.org/why-a-war-on...

For one man, this has been history's most expensive macroeconomics lesson. For the rest of us, the purest distillation of authoritarian populism. Quick thread.

This is correct, but the tariffs are not just designed to extract domestic loyalty. They are also designed to destroy the liberal world order this administration loathes. There is some thinking to be done about how tradeoffs among these goals creates opportunities to crack the strategy.

It’s common to dunk on voters’ lack of knowledge and their knee-jerk backlash to whatever government does, but sometimes the good old thermostatic politics is the only thing that can save us from this insanity

This is the corporate version of the law firms' test. Business can bow and scrape for exemptions industry by industry, or it can try to revive the capacity for collective action. That's the conversation that should be happening in every boardroom. Save just your own skin, and it won't be worth much.

Great @jrdresden.bsky.social piece shows how anti-slavery forces used fusion voting and argues the strategy could today produce a different kind of party, one that could worry less about big money and focus on "building tight networks at the community level.” www.nationalaffairs.com/publications...

🚨This. Is. How. You. Do. It. 🚨

Working with an interdisciplinary team, we have developed a website to communicate how the White House's proposed cuts to health research would cause losses of $16B and 68,500 jobs. Find out how your community may be impacted. Explore more at SCIMaP: scienceimpacts.org a 🧵

Interest groups used to be a grubby and depolarizing force in our politics. They’re still grubby - but now, they’re also increasingly polarizing. Shed a tear for the lobbyist of yesteryear and read @jmcrosson.bsky.social important contribution to our forum on how Congress works now.

It's all there in one tidy story. The recklessness, the lawlessness, the incompetence. Dems and R's with courage must not let this one go. contrarian.substack.com/p/the-signal...