The data you depend on – about jobs, weather, health, water and more – is quietly vanishing from federal sites. Here’s how it’s happening and how you can join efforts to help save it: buff.ly/I5YFwzR

New Book Announcement! THE HIDDEN FACE OF LOCAL POWER: APPOINTED BOARDS AND THE LIMITS OF DEMOCRACY by Mirya R. Holman, develops a framework for understanding how cities use appointed boards and commissions, and what this means for local democracy.

As the strike ends, I want to give extreme kudos to Sean Walsh, one of half of our City Hall bureau, who covered the hell out of this thing. (I particularly loved his media analysis below.) 24 bylines this month so far! www.inquirer.com/politics/phi...

"Citizens in the City-Regions: Political Orientations Across Municipal Borders" by Anders Lidström, UAR 49(2), 2012. journals.sagepub.com/share/UV5G93...

When I was 9 years old there was a roller skate store just off South Street (Philadelphia), “Born to Roll.” I recently looked to see if I could find any information about the store and found this 1980 Inquirer article. The store’s owner, Jyl Rebold, had previously been a CIA horticulturalist?!

This is a new thing we’re doing: Posting articles from UAR that are temporarily ungated. We’re attempting to do this with every article published since 1965.

"Venue Shopping and the Politics of Urban Development: Lessons from Chicago and Seattle" by Joshua Sapotichne and James M. Smith, UAR 48(1), 2012.

***Online First Special Issue Release of Urban Affairs Review – The Local Politics of Public Health*** Open Access coming soon! journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Was grateful for @richardsondilworth.bsky.social's invite to write this commentary on a fantastic symposium edited by @charleywillison.bsky.social, whose introductory essay is here: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/....

This article builds off research I recently published in the journal @urbanaffairsreview.bsky.social:

Even established authoritarian regimes consider arresting defiant judges an extreme tactic—a serious escalation usually reserved for after one-party rule is firmly entrenched. Seeing a judge arrested in the US today should alarm everyone who values democratic governance. This cannot be allowed. 🧵

Just renewed my Philly Inquirer subscription (even though I live in CA and have never lived in PA) bc @willbunch.bsky.social and the PI refuse to capitulate like so much of the MSM. Also, another great piece from Bunch. We fight on. Don’t stop.

This is the kind of in-depth gun violence reporting that requires deep sourcing, trust building, newsroom resources, and straight up empathy. Which is why so few people do it like @ellierushing.bsky.social: share.inquirer.com/49QJcN

NEW 🧵 Is human intelligence starting to decline? Recent results from major international tests show that the average person’s capacity to process information, use reasoning and solve novel problems has been falling since around the mid 2010s What should we make of this? www.ft.com/content/a801...

🎧 NEW episode of UAR Remixed is now live! From @templeuniversity.bsky.social + @richardsondilworth.bsky.social, another installment of "Political Lessons from American Cities," on Philadelphia + reform politics. Listen wherever you get your podcasts shows.acast.com/urbanaffairs...

The publishing/authorship situation isn’t this dire in the humanities (yet!) but what applies across the board is the administrative push for ways to evaluate scholarship that don’t require actual reading 😒

Want to go visit the national parks this year? Sorry. The reservation system is shut down, EMT personnel are gone, so don't get hurt or lost. No one can clean the bathrooms or cabins, so they'll be closed. Rangers are fired. www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/arti...

NPR coverage this morning: "it's kind of...unusual that a court ruling is being ignored" but "we don't know the intention here" and also "the Marshals Service would probably not enforce it".

The CFPB is a great return on investment for Americans: it’s turned over $20 billion to the public from companies committing abusive & illegal business practices, far outpacing its operating costs.

The American Bar Association has just called upon every attorney, regardless of their political views, to join them & stand up for the rule of law & at minimum insist that our government "follow the law." Every lawyer has an ethical responsibility to do so. www.americanbar.org/news/abanews...

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is carrying up to $1.2 million in credit card debt, according to recent financial disclosures. www.cnbc.com/2025/02/07/w...

Most of the world’s brightest minds are hard at work developing new ways for you to get depression from a computer

Received a letter from POTUS today purporting to remove me as Commissioner and Chair of the FEC. There's a legal way to replace FEC commissioners-this isn't it. I've been so fortunate to serve the American people and stir up some good trouble along the way. That's not changing anytime soon.

I linked DOGE staffer Marko Elez to a deleted X account that advocated repealing the Civil Rights Act, backed a “eugenic immigration policy,” and wrote, “You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity." He just resigned. www.wsj.com/tech/doge-st...

I'm a former OMB official and this is absolutely true. And let's also not forget that these illegal actions have direct, harmful consequences for actual people. New moms won't get help feeding their infants. Small businesses won't make payroll. People could lose their jobs, their homes.

“I was treated like a celebrity for having stormed the Capitol building. Not just from the inmates, but from the staff as well. The first thing a correctional officer said to me when I reported in the booking was, 'Let's go, Brandon.'“

Hi! Climate reporter here at Bloomberg News tracking all the news about FEMA. If you're at FEMA or work with FEMA, and want to talk about what changes are already or may be coming down the line and what it means for disaster response/recovery -- you can reach me securely on signal at zhirji.51.

Really thankful to all of the scientists who made themselves available to talk to me about the unprecedented situation at NIH. I've never had so many people reach out to me for a story like this. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

The owner told CBS News that his manager tried to show his veteran’s card, but the [ICE] agents did not accept it. “A couple of the guys couldn’t show their identification,” the owner said. “Twenty-six years in business, I never seen anything like this.” www.nj.com/essex/2025/0...

More from inside NIH: Per a source with knowledge, for all internal research (of which there is like $10 billion worth or so), ALL purchasing shut down as of yesterday. That means gloves, reagents, anything involved with lab work, which means a lot of that work will stop.

"As the number of bills they introduced fell in recent years, Council members found another way to pass the time: passing many, many resolutions."

Wow. www.idahostatesman.com/news/local/c...

With @today.yougov.com, we surveyed 550 Democratic & 550 Republican activists on their support for various policy changes (12/16/24-1/5/25). It's not that 1 party is always advantaged on social issues--it hinges on the issue. Varying support for different elements of GOP agenda.

Super excited to see my wonderful colleague Steve McGovern’s new book is out. Fantastic study of grassroots politics in Philly! Was pleasure to be on a panel with him and others last September. @akirarodriguez.bsky.social @richardsondilworth.bsky.social @pennpress.blsky.social #solidaritycities

After all of that… The 76ers have struck a deal with Comcast Spectacor to stay in South Philly and abandon plans for a Center City arena www.inquirer.com/news/philade...

Just a big possum trying to get some sleep on a second story windowsill.

I have a new paper out in @urbanaffairsreview.bsky.social, examining the factors driving climate policy in mid-sized American cities. At their invitation, I've also written a blog post outlining the most prominent lessons (1/n) www.urbanaffairsreview.com/uar-archive/...

this is legitimately a big deal. zillow now putting climate risk on their website.

Excited about this upcoming talk on November 29th by Simon Otjes (@simonotjes.bsky.social) in the Canadian Municipal Barometer’s Online Research Workshop series. Discussant is Daniel Béland (@danielbeland.bsky.social). Send me an email if you’d like to attend, and we’ll share a link!

“In a bitter lesson for liberal technocrats’ ambitions, the ambition to make electoral hay out of well-designed policy alone must be counted as a failure”. Must read from @daschloz.bsky.social and @samrosenfeld.bsky.social

For the next few years I’ll be documenting efforts to protect official statistics, including and especially population statistics, from political threats. For more on how this happened between 2016 and 2020, see my forthcoming book: kansaspress.ku.edu/978070063875...

Coming soon.

Just to be clear: the incoming Trump administration is going to war against their own Republican senate majority and the constitution's advice and consent provision so they can make a man investigated for ***sex trafficking a minor*** into the most powerful law enforcement officer in the country.

There’s only one surviving document signed by the first four US presidents (Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison) and it’s a 1793 subscription list, now at the American Philosophical Society, raising funds for André Michaux’s botanical expedition—remarkable proof of early US support of science

Really cool essay from 2019 about the Trump Organization and "platform capitalism" by Jeff Broxmeyer: publicseminar.org/essays/polit...