New, from me: The NYT reporter who specializes in profiles of beleaguered right-wingers on campus went to New College...and found out that things were going ok! So let me explain some pretty massive errors of omission: 🧵 donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-nyt-re...

Massive comms challenge for people who care about voting rights and 2026: make sure people understand these new voter suppression laws re: the timing of mail in voting so that their votes won't be lost — esp. difficult because the laws vary across states, creating ambiguity that can be exploited.

Incredible social science & data use here. The immediate story is about how the opioid epidemic (pushed by pharma in high cancer areas), resulted in major opioid death & economic hardship which - through various media/political channels - resulted in a sustained rise in support for the Republicans

Really useful report here from PPI on how state / local government actions can curtail mass deportations. This only captures only the role of local noncooperation policies at blocking ICE access to jails etc (and not the power of community defense). But significant nonetheless.

<Taps sign> www.sup.org/books/sociol...

Check out the special issue in the Future of Federalism published by Publius. Thrilled to be in excellent company #federalism

This is very bad.

Can't wait to read this 👇

It has been a bracing moment for American federalism, with both unprecedented efforts to extend executive control over state and local govts, novel forms of subnational resistance. Where is federalism going? Paul Nolette and I have edited a new issue of Publius on that question. Short thread:

"We envision a resistance that is...a repudiation of the efficiencies that automated algorithmic education falsely promises: a resistance comprising the collective force of small acts of friction." "How to Resist AI in Education" by me & @cnygren.bsky.social www.publicbooks.org/four-frictio...

The Wisconsin component of the analysis here is revealing. Evidence is consistent with DOGE strategically delaying contract terminations in WI until after the 2025 state Supreme Court elections to mitigate electoral risk.

A matter of tradition: youtu.be/4ZZ8m8I2kE4?...

The scale of elite support for this terrible book is interesting information about public health politics

Anecdotal, but not a single student complained about blue books or about my tech ban in class. They understood why I was doing it and some even explicitly appreciated it.

ICYMI during the shutdown, here’s the announcement for the governors public health alliance (GPHA?)

Christmas is M.R. James season. Not only because his stories define the “ghost story for Xmas” genre but also because they contain so many important lessons for academics, including “beware reacting someone from a conference when they are in league w/ demons”. gutenberg.ca/ebooks/james...

Justice Alito seems to have missed that the government's account of the Marimar Martinez shooting has been completely discredited.

BREAKING: by an apparent vote of 7–2, the Supreme Court has *denied* President Trump‘s plea to deploy National Guard troops in Chicago

The full spiked 60 Minutes CECOT package, clean & subtitled. 1/5

One of the more important stock-taking moments to watch a bootlegged news program censored in your country.

I highly recommend watching this segment, not just because the CBS News execs and the White House didn’t want you to, but because these men were tortured and they deserved to have their voices heard.

All of these links went to promotion of this story earlier today. All these links are dead now — that's how thoroughly they've scrubbed this.

Seeing the way in which AI’s apologists embarrass themselves is a good reminder that the best way to contend with this technology is to make explicit the values it contains and is tailor-made to disguise. Most importantly, AI’s embedded values are utterly incompatible with democracy.

Five seconds’ reflection reveals that what this really means is “every student should have access to an education that is about nothing and changes every five seconds at the whim of rich airheads”

The New School owns about a billion dollars worth of art, most of which is not on display. They could sell the two Warhols they own and raise $100 million tomorrow. But they’d rather close academic departments.

My latest digs into whether the federal government can force states to hand over your voter data 👇

This proposal from @econmarshall.bsky.social, @higheredlabor.bsky.social and others to overhaul higher education is really compelling. Worth reading in full. marshallsteinbaum.org/wp-content/u...

Crafting a new hoagie each night, in a Proustian fashion.

Hearing about more and more restaurants that are community institutions on the verge of closing. A growing sense of local conditions worsening faster than indicators can catch up with: www.wpr.org/news/milwauk...

State lawmakers of both parties said they plan to keep passing laws regulating artificial intelligence despite President Donald Trump’s efforts to stop them ohiocapitaljournal.com/2025/12/16/r...

Charts! Starting with the unemployment rate, which rose to 4.6 percent, its highest level in more than four years.

2017 trapped in amber readsludge.com/2025/12/15/k...

In new work @urbaninstitute.bsky.social, we detail how states & provinces are developing mandates for localities to plan for—and allow the construction of—transit-oriented development (TOD). This comprehensive accounting of state/provincial laws shows how they can take preemptive action on TOD.

Malibu of the Midwest

I recently read a global review of policy proposals that would be able to deal with the cancer that is private equity. It concluded, among other things, that few if any frameworks actually made regulating the industry a priority. Those that did were often not implemented. No time like the present.

This is mislabeled. Actually, it’s a map of where scientific discoveries, biomedical research, cancer treatments, and drug discovery come from. Also economic growth.

If we accede to the demand that political appointees can decide what is worthwhile to study and what isn't, we've lost universities as institutions of knowledge, innovation, and progress. This is why academic freedom and tenure are so important.

*The Constitution* says presidential pardons do not apply to state charges.

This should be the biggest story in the country right now. The sitting US President was extorting state lawmakers from his own party by threatening to withhold public money if they didn’t gerrymander for him. I don’t know how else to say it…

Plainly unenforceable. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/11/t...

As @jen-nelles.bsky.social, Jay Rickabaugh and I recently put it in our @washingtonmonthly.com piece “the long-standing, stable partnership among local, state, and federal governments is dead.” washingtonmonthly.com/2025/11/27/t...

Seems like a lot of voters might be interested in Trump's position on birthright citizenship, stated here, which would logically extend retroactively to strip millions of people of their US citizenship

I’ll attempt to live-skeet the Trump v. Slaughter oral arguments at 10 am. I might be considered biased b/c I filed amicus briefs in Slaughter & Cook, with particular historical interpretations. Or I might be considered well-informed. You can judge for yourself. See the summary below & a thread…

Medicaid “spend down” — how we force individuals to impoverish themselves to qualify for Medicaid coverage of long-term care — is one of the most messed up things I’ve learned about the US health care system In a new paper, we look at how often spend-down happens in nursing homes specifically

As Kagan notes, SCOTUS has given states a cheat code to enact illegally racist voting laws: just pass them close enough to an election that the Purcell principle will bar judicial review! Under this logic, courts couldn’t block actual Jim Crow laws within a year of an election. It can’t be right.

This is at once my personal nightmare and also a sign — their bench is *shallow.* They are not sophisticated shock troops, they’re a small group of podcasters and professional idiots who are tripping over their own feet in actual power. Should be relatively easy to sabotage them imho