My challenge to the New York Times is to say this over and over again on the front page of their newspaper and point out that it is also an authoritarian attack on the free press. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/16/b...

Blog: US Funding of International Organizations Has Collapsed With weeks left in FY, US has paid zero toward assessed (membership) contributions to WHO, WTO, FAO, ILO, UNESCO, NATO, OECD, WMO, WIPO & more. FY26 budget suggests paying dues to only 7 out of 46 organizations under the IO account.

I wrote a column responding to Ezra Klein’s eulogy for Charlie Kirk, and argued that democracy depends not just on civil disagreement, but on the civic equality that Kirk passionately opposed. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

New, from me: It was a terrible week, one that inspired some truly awful takes. The worst was the effort by Bari Weiss and The Free Press to smear universities as "the biggest culprits" to blame American political violence, with faculty training "jihadis." donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-worst-...

The political economy of Turning Point USA and its sister organizations (written a couple of years ago) crookedtimber.org/2023/03/06/c...

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Political violence is bad. It usually begets more political violence. Celebrating political violence is bad. It usually encourages more political violence, against various targets. Campus shootings are bad. They make everyone on campus less safe. It's bad that what I wrote here is controversial.

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Multilateralism is not necessarily fading! There is still civilian support for it in different parts of the world. Using two sets of independent conjoint experiments, we show that civilians in Liberia prefer multilateral actors (the UN) to oversee (not rebuild) security sector reforms

The de minimis rule that allowed small packages worth less than $800 to be exempt from tariffs ended on Friday, Aug. 29, 2025.

Academic authors, here's a peek into the black box of journal publishing from an journal editor if you can bear it:

if i had the opportunity to ask a question of anyone in the administration, given this "war in chicago" messaging, i would ask them how many americans the president intends to kill in his war

I really resent my tax dollars being spent on this

it is always worth remembering that vance made a conscious decision to be a person of low character. he has eagerly contorted himself into evil for the sake of what amounts to a whiff of power.

“Transactional agreements.” Sure @NYTimes. If someone says they’ll smash your kneecaps, unless you give them money, we can call that a transaction agreement as well. Or you could use the easier word: extortion, or more colloquially, a shakedown . www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

***Attention Historians*** Tenure-track job postings in History and History-adjacent fields for September 2025. A thread. I will update the thread over the course of the month. 1/

This is important. The first 24 hours of press coverage fumbled the ball. But the US just murdered 11 people in international waters. Analogies to the US’s (highly suspect, morally and legally) targeted killings of suspect terrorists don’t work. This crossed their own lines, and they know it.

AAUP-HARVARD, AAUP, & UAW WON THE HARVARD CASE!!!! storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

A1 above the fold in the @nytimes.com. The message is getting through. Keep pushing everyone. We can save the #CDC, save the #NIH from the clutches of #RussellVought #StephenMiller and #DonaldTrump. Keep the pressure up on your members of Congress and the media (letters to editors, op-eds).

NEW: Tenure-track position in History at UC Berkeley in the GLOBAL HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY. We are casting a wide net here: *all* periods, places, and fields are under consideration. I'm on the search committee, so do let me know if you have questions.

"IU was a gem in Indiana. The state legislature and the IU Board of Trustees appear to have hired Whitten to fulfill an ultraconservative and Christian nationalist agenda... Sadly, they are destroying all that made IU great in the process." Scathing but spot-on. www.idsnews.com/article/2025...

NEW: The trump administration attempted to remove 600 terrified unaccompanied minors to Guatemala in the middle of the night on a holiday weekend. Judge Sooknanan stopped it. My latest: www.muellershewrote.com/p/the-sookna...

Good morning New York, while you were sleeping this was one of our most read stories. on.ft.com/4p6SUtu

9 CDC Directors going back to 1977 speak out. What RFK Jr has done to our nation’s public health system "should alarm every American." It "is unlike anything we have ever seen at the agency, and unlike anything our country has ever experienced." www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/o...

1/DC occupation/Trump policies causing a sudden stop to regional economy. These policies are not creating a sense of safety but far reaching harm to families, workers, and the nation. www.dcnewsnow.com/news/local-n...

The dream: AI boosts productivity so much we all get 4-day workweeks. The reality: AI productivity gains are an excuse for companies to cut staff or ask why you need a hire at all. No one’s handing out Fridays off because your job got easier, just more pressure to justify your existence

Some thoughts on anti-transgender politics, mass shootings, and the urge to blame anyone but ourselves

🧵 Authoritarianism, Democratization, and Coalition Politics. The consensus around here is, more or less, that the United States is currently a consolidating authoritarian regime controlled by a mix of reactionary populists and fascists.

I think another reason so many people are beclowning themselves right now is that they are mistaking Donald Trump for the first leader of a vigorous new order, and not the final leader of an increasingly exhausted period of Republican dominance that began in 1980 and is finally sputtering out.

We've compiled all the instances we can find of academics standing up for higher education and democracy, as well as attacks, at WeAreHigherEd.org. Please visit, and sign our letter and/or others (bit.ly/DemocracyAndHigherEd - 13k people have signed one or more statements).

I have an op-ed at @inquirer.com today. All of us who care about democracy need to decide how we'll respond as we see our institutions, our work, and our communities being attacked. Many of us in academia are standing up for our values and our students. www.inquirer.com/opinion/comm...

Gift link to my op-ed ( @wearehighered.bsky.social ) share.inquirer.com/M8nPzg

"She did not die defending the Constitution. She died trying to overturn it. She was not protecting lives at a gate in Iraq; she was forcing her way through windows in the Capitol to stop the peaceful transfer of power." New from @markhertling.bsky.social:

“…I am infuriated that the Air Force plans to grant military funeral honors to Ashli Babbitt. She did not die defending the Constitution. She died trying to overturn it.” My latest in @thebulwark.com www.thebulwark.com/p/honoring-a...

The cruelty, the white nationalist ideology, the unprecedented self-sabotage, the outrageous ridiculousness: The defining characteristics of this government and the inhuman, destructive policies it is pursuing, all captured perfectly here. America is now ruled by cruel, authoritarian clowns.

Governments can change policies, and politicians could shift narratives. But I don't know if it's possible to put the gleeful hate and cruelty that has emerged this summer, back in the tube

Just saw a video of Bill Maher calling Mamdani a “straight up communist” and I continue to be struck by the depiction of policies associated with the New Deal Order as far-left extremism, which goes along with a refusal to depict Trump’s unprecedented authoritarian actions as far-right extremism.

Human Rights Watch is hiring a senior researcher for its U.S. immigrant rights program. Not many non-newsroom jobs are this similar to the day to day work of journalism. If you’re a journalist and considering getting out, seriously take a look. job-boards.greenhouse.io/humanrightsw...

Tick tock. Tick tock. RFK Jr.'s time is running out. Today, Senators Cassidy and Sanders both challenge RFK Jr's reign of (t)error at HHS. Call your Senators and Representatives. U.S. Capitol Switchboard: (202) 224-3121

I have never seen so many public servants protest the mismanagement of a government. Trumpists will point to this as proof of the deep state, but the reality is that these are professionals who are desperately trying to get the public to understand how bad things are.

@glkkn.bsky.social www.cleveland.com/open/2025/08...

I know there's a lot happening today, but this is sneaking in under the radar. This proposed new rule would absolutely crush foreign PhD students, potentially making it impossible for them to enroll with any certainty of their ability to finish www.politico.com/news/2025/08...

📣 We are searching for a tenure-line assistant or associate professor with a focus on the intersection of technology and global and public affairs @josefkorbelschool.bsky.social — please share across your networks. #polisky #psjobs #poliscijobs Apply by September 15. jobs.du.edu/en-us/job/49...

📣 The @josefkorbelschool.bsky.social is searching for a tenure-line assistant or associate professor with a focus on the intersection of technology and global and public affairs — please share widely! jobs.du.edu/en-us/job/49...

Beginning to get emails like this from small overseas businesses I've ordered products from in the past. I guess this is freedom.

“What they’re offering people is not health insurance or economic security,” Stanley says. “They’re offering them delight in the torture of others.” www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

If a president wanted to become effectively a dictator, he’d likely: 1. Purge govt of non loyalists 2. Weaponize law against opponents 3. Use military to police opposition strongholds 4. Threaten media, schools, businesses w penalties to get them to heel 5. Change election rules in his favor.