L’shanah tova! 🍎 🍯

“What we’re seeing is an unprecedented attempt to silence disfavored speech by the government,” said Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth College. “Donald Trump is trying to dictate what Americans can say.” https://to.pbs.org/46AYg7U

Two things to add to this: 1) I am much more concerned with party elites and leaders encouraging and stoking violence than shifts in the public from vaguely worded questions. 2) These public shifts in support for violence are almost always downstream of elite rhetoric and narratives.

These estimates of public support for violence (from www.nytimes.com/2025/09/16/o...) are inflated - *much* higher than what we and others have found using question wording that reduces acquiescence bias: brightlinewatch.org/accelerated-... The vast majority of Americans reject political violence.

Thanks to the folks at APSA for organizing a great conference, and Vancouver for being a great host city! cc @janzilinsky.bsky.social

Some thoughts on trends in political violence and where we are headed in the U.S. First, violence has been part of U.S. politics since the beginning.

Credit where credit is due. This Politico symposium on political violence is good.

For folks who are Hungary-dooming, (a) Orban was genuinely popular, and (b) very far from a done deal, but "was" has been the operative adjective for some while - www.reuters.com/world/hungar...

"Scholars who study these processes around the world have really been taken aback by how quickly this has proceeded," says @brendannyhan.bsky.social. newrepublic.substack.com/p/democratic...

Had my first classes of the semester: 1) Psychology of Political Violence and Terrorism 2) Ideology, Extremism, and Violence Students in both classes were as engaged as I’ve seen in my 10+ years teaching. #TheKidsAreAlright

We're hiring! The @au-spa.bsky.social is hiring an assistant professor specializing in political violence and terrorism. Deadline: September 22nd. Feel free to reach out if you have questions! See below for the job ad and application. american.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/AU/job/Main-...

I'm a cautious optimist by nature, so here's a few things I tell myself that I believe are true: 1) He's unpopular 2) It's a personalist regime and movement built around a charismatic leader which makes it brittle 3) They aren't that patient, they're more interested in breaking things

Spotted on the Beltway in DC— it’s a relatively new car, and a new bumper sticker.

Super important point buried in the 14th and 15th paragraphs: Right-wing extremist groups have been relatively quiet because the Trump administration is carrying out much of their agenda. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/23/u...

I'm not a fan of structural explanations—and recent events are no exception. America's authoritarian turn is happening during a period of no major foreign war, no widespread unrest, no pandemic, and relatively good economic conditions. There are an awful lot of *choices* being made.

Also, I’ve found that some of the clearest reporting on America’s authoritarian turn isn’t coming from U.S. outlets but from foreign journalists and media.

It’s been dismaying to watch many U.S. civic leaders sleepwalk through the authoritarian turn in our politics. Yes, coordination problems are hard. But also most Americans don’t have memories of authoritarian rule to draw on. We don’t have the civic antibodies like Brazil or Ukraine.

As the U.S. under Trump does everything it can to stop EVs, China is racing ahead www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

Fascinating paper by @haasvioleta.bsky.social and colleagues. Using a field experiment around climate protests, they find that protests don't durable change bystander norms or attitudes, but they do change their immediate behavior. osf.io/preprints/os...

If you want to understand the timing of Trump’s authoritarian political theater around DC policing, check out @janzilinsky.bsky.social in @goodauth.bsky.social. He shows how critical coverage of Trump and Epstein spiked with both liberal & conservative media goodauthority.org/news/the-eps...

Nothing good can come out of this meeting, especially for Ukraine www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

People’s tendency to underestimate how much others support climate action is recurrent finding in empirical studies of climate policy support, and is a huge sore point for political climate action.

About to get positively Argentinian up in here

We're hiring! The @au-spa.bsky.social is hiring an assistant professor specializing in political violence and terrorism. Deadline: September 22nd. Feel free to reach out if you have questions! See below for the job ad and application. american.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/AU/job/Main-...

One thing Trump II has made clear to me: we’re all living in @gabelenz.bsky.social's world now. Most voters don’t choose candidates based on issues. They choose candidates first, then adjust their issue positions to match. press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo... h/t @brendannyhan.bsky.social

My book, Stop the Machines, is out today (July 28 in the US). As AI advances and global crises intensify, a countercurrent is emerging: groups that want to dismantle the technological system, rather than merely critique or regulate it. tinyurl.com/ynaus6y2

Thrilled to share the cover of my upcoming book, out February 2026 from @oxfordacademic.bsky.social NO OPTION BUT SABOTAGE The Radical Environmental Movement and the Climate Crisis global.oup.com/academic/pro...

The “worst-case scenario of famine” is currently taking place in the Gaza Strip, according to an alert issued by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a United Nations-backed initiative.

Young people are experiencing significant emotional distress regarding climate change. For many, though, disagreeing with an item like "people have failed to take care of the planet" could feel equivalent to dismissing environmental problems entirely, creating social pressure to affirm it.

A long-term puzzle for political scientists: Why did voters in the richest country in the world—during a period of objectively strong economic conditions—choose radical regime change in 2024?

This @elanaklein.bsky.social @wired.com piece about a digital detox camp is both fascinating and disturbing. I tend to be skeptical of “tech is what’s wrong with everything in society”— but man is tech a big part of the socialization of kids and teens today. www.wired.com/story/teen-s...

Really cool and important post by @kwcollins.bsky.social and the team at Survey 160 on the promise and pitfalls of using “silicon samples” (LLM -generated simulated survey responses) for polling and public opinion research. www.survey160.com/methodologic...

SPA Prof. @zeitzoff.bsky.social spoke to @franceinter.fr about the surge of political violence since Trump’s 1st term, his pardons & rhetoric empowering extremists & undermining democratic values. "It's very, very, very concerning." (in French, 02:43) bit.ly/40TJXZK #SPAintheMedia

New paper finds a ‘climate activist’s dilemma’: “study participants perceived climate activists engaging in extreme protests to be more immoral and supported movement less. However, extreme protests also heightened climate concern and intention to take action.” www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Embrace @zeitzoff.bsky.social thought! (link: bsky.app/profile/zeit...)

“In 1946 amid persistent racial divisions, popular radio series Adventures of Superman launched Operation Intolerance, a sequence of new episodes promoting equality, rejecting racial discrimination and exposing the KKK’s bigotry. We find lasting impacts…” dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn...

New paper. What happens when a presidential candidate steps way out of line, not only with the public, but even with his own voters? And on a highly salient issue? Candidates typically don’t do that—they’re too strategic. But Trump isn’t. He’s good for social science. 🧵

I used to get more media interview requests from U.S. domestic media outlets than foreign media outlets. But in the past few months it’s flipped. I’ve talked with way more foreign journalists trying “to understand what is going on in the U.S.”

As someone who studies political violence, here’s what scares me about the new Trump’s bill: It’s not just the resources it gives to ICE which is already a human rights disaster. It’s the signal it sends to ICE supervisors and agents.

"One of the most important, and most overlooked, functions of protest is to prevent the dreaded 'spiral of silence,' which can begin when people wrongly believe that their own point of view is not widely shared," Betsy Levy Paluck writes:

Want to easily scrape data from news media sites? There's an R package for that! paperboy "paperboy offers writers of web scrap[ers] a clear path to publish their code & earn co-authorship on the package, while deliver[ing] news media data from many websites in a consistent format."

On Friday at 17:00 (1A.10) I'll present "The Logic of Connective Faction: How Far-Right Media and Digitally-Networked Elites Radicalize Politics" (co-authored w/@curdknupfer.bsky.social & @yunkangyang.bsky.social) on panel "Politics, Media, and Radicalization" #EPSA2025 Paper: tinyurl.com/38czxhh6

Wow. I really didn't think he'd be foolish enough to do it. Some initial thoughts, as writing them down will help me not scream 🧵

Trump’s domestic politics have been awful, but the tail risk from his foreign policy is what keeps me up at night.

Is it possible to treat psychopathy before it starts? Fascinating article on new therapies and approaches. www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-i...

Never thought I’d be saying this, but a part of me yearns for the Wall Street “Masters of the Universe” elite of the 1980s-early 2000s. The Tech Bro Oligarchy we have now is worse on all dimension. www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty-rese...

I wrote about how the 2020 protests hurt Trump politically. I also wrote about how counternarratives about left-wing violence are just spin — and wildly at odds with the reality of extremist violence. Gift link: wapo.st/3SOEv6e

A lot of people exercising their 1st amendment right in suburban Maryland today—great turnout too!

Highly recommend “More Everything Forever” by @adambecker.bsky.social Does a good job explaining narratives and philosophy of the bizarro politics of Silicon Valley elite—and how they have infected our politics. www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/adam-...

A few observations about where we are right now: The Trump administration is clearly targeting Democratic politicians through arrests and repression. This rightfully scares academics like myself who have seen this movie play out in other countries (Ukraine, Turkey, etc.). It doesn’t end well.