An incredibly shameful action — all the more so given that every major Jewish movement has long condemned the death penalty, and that Israel itself used to assert that the only justification for putting someone to death was for crimes against humanity.

The elite attack on universities has already substantially eroded academic freedom and free speech. People should be hired based on merit. We should avoid any procedure that punishes applicants or faculty based on political views. And no ideological quotas or monitoring of faculty.

Extremely important. Having applied and been on admissions committees, it’s so clear to me that many VERY qualified people aren’t admitted for reasons that have nothing to do with their qualifications. # of spaces, advisor fit, committee makeup, and sheer dumb luck all play a role.

Terrifying numbers in latest annual survey of federal workers from @ourpublicservice.bsky.social. For example, DoD workers' trust in Hegseth is in the toilet. Only 11.5% of Army employees say their dept's political leaders "maintain high levels of integrity." Similar numbers for Navy, Air Force

Just out: the new @vdeminstitute.bsky.social is clear: "The speed with which American democracy is currently dismantled is unprecedented in modern history" V-dem uses a global dataset on democracy with over 32 million data points for 202 countries, from 1789 to 2025. www.v-dem.net/documents/75...

These betting markets pose a threat not only to journalists who refuse to comply with bettors' demands, but also to democracy, from journalists who alter what they report in response to bettors' promise to share a portion of the winnings.

Important and correct by @polphilpod.bsky.social Toby Buckle at @liberalcurrents.com Liberal Currents. The "all conservatism was always already Trumpist and fascist" line is ultimately a way to normalize Trump, and should be resisted. www.liberalcurrents.com/it-wasnt-fas...

that they have kept their relationship intensely private to the point that this is how we find out is probably the best sign they might actually make it anyway, rules are rules, here is the exact moment she fell in love

In this case, strong agree - but I’m not sure one could say the same about the Dalai Lama.

Almost certainly true, and another opportunity to remember that Netanyahu would willingly trade away the safety of every Jew on earth to save his own political career and avoid going to prison for his crimes.

Erin's reporting is, as always, impeccable. What many may not know, however, is that once a license is issued, the holder has a property interest in that license that is protected by the 14th Amendment. This goes back to Bell v Burson (1972). For more, keep reading... 🧵

New w/@scottclifford.bsky.social. Lots of work uses agree-disagree scales, and a lit review shows these are 1) frequently just measured in one direction (agree = higher trait) and 2) correlated with each other. This has potentially big issues for conclusions. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

This is a simply incredible decision from Judge Brasel. Stunning. In that you will be stunned. She captures perfectly the experience of trying to locate and help clients disappeared by ICE. And the stories of detainee’s experience while ICE plays hide-and-seek with their lawyers are soul crushing.

So many to choose from: The poll vault Figures skating Scailing Data diving Box(plot)ing

Not a new conclusion, but another solid piece of evidence that social desirability bias is rare & possibly nonexistent in online surveys. Across the lit, evidence that people sometimes lie to themselves & report that, scant evidence that they lie to look good. But the theory just won’t die.

A lot of people seem to be freaking out about this and the flock integration, which are both big privacy risks. But, right now in the app, you can opt out of both of those (and may be opted out by default). Strongly recommend opting out—a much lower bar for most people than replacing systems.

Absolute hell: Irishman with valid US work permit held by ICE since September Seamus Culleton has been in a detention facility in Texas for five months despite having no criminal record Originally from Glenmore, Co Kilkenny, wife Tiffany Smyth is a US citizen www.irishtimes.com/world/us/202...

And so it appears that Democrats are finally willing to play Calvin Ball in response. This guy obviously needs a national position in the current moment.

Swear to god, ICE could just announce they're leaving a city but not leave and the media will just stop covering that city completely even though ICE never left. It's what ICE and the media did with LA and they're doing it with Minneapolis too

The US was supposed to be more resilient to autocracy because its Constitution, administrative state, and civil society (mostly business) decentralized authority. But this decentralization may have actually made civil society institutions easier to extort one by one.

“You guys cover the news — I’ve got Jack Benny to make money for me” - CBS founder William S Paley. Oh, how far we have fallen. (Note, article is from 2002, but rings even truer now).

There is no possible way to be an honest academician if you don’t start with the premise that absolutely all of your beliefs have some possibility of being wrong. If you get so convinced by your own theory that you no longer assign any probability to the opposite being true, it’s time to resign.

My hot take on this is that if professors actually were at all decent at Parliamentary procedure we could make so many of our meetings go so much quicker. The magic words are: “I move to delegate this issue to the executive committee”

There is a case to be made that any board of a university that signed an agreement that required paying a fee has breached their fiduciary duty and I think somebody should explore it

"No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law" Article 1, Section 9

Hearing ICE targeted the parents at bus stops as they waited for their kids to arrive in -10 cold.

No one should be surprised that people who advocate “every man for himself” policy and think that society is a fixed pie with winners and losers are utterly unable to understand altruism. “Nobody but a professional would be up for donating a $30 Costco box of handwarmers to the cause!”

Literally EVERYTHING else aside: Officers involved in shootings - even shootings that everybody agrees were justified - always take time off to emotionally process their experience, go to therapy, process it. Sending somebody right back out says "this is an everyday part of your job, expect it."

I agree with Jon and Tom on this point. Key challenge: focusing only on entrenched state fascism means identification is only possible in retrospect—hence the need to identify emergent (not yet entrenched) ideological fascism. For social science categories to have meaning, they must be predictive.

There’s a lot of discussion about what is meant to distract from what in the current news environment. This is the wrong way to think about things; Donald Trump’s modus has always been to constantly redirect attention so that nothing becomes “the big story.” That was the big lesson of our book.

The statement is accurate, but not in the way Bondi intended. Our country was founded on the determination that overly aggressive “law enforcement” is intolerable. “He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.”

FWIW this is close to my long held belief about the reddest lines in terms of the Rubicon

Having the constitutional text and American traditions on your side is an advantage, but it does not guarantee victory, of course. There are no guarantees, certainly not here. But advocates of republican government would be at a much greater disadvantage if the Constitution were not on our side.

Paul Musgrave on the end of unipolarity: short, eloquent, and devastating. open.substack.com/pub/musgrave...

At a time of unprecedented daily scandals, this this whistleblower complaint, and the memo it reveals for the first time, breaks through for me as beyond the pale. It's the federal government conspiring in secret to subvert the Fourth Amendment. Read it here: s3.documentcloud.org/documents/26...

Today is a particularly good day for journalists to ask members of Congress and members of the administration what they think the lessons from the civil rights movement and Holocaust were.

This is, in fact, a key weakness of the movement. It's very easy for the opposition to use traditional American/republican aesthetics, and things like the Declaration of Independence and other famous texts of our republican civic religion, against them.

They couldn’t possibly object to: “One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.” or “Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.”

The one paper we should all be showing to ICE. And why yes, I do have printed copies by my door and in my car.

When we say "explicitly neo-Nazi" we mean channels that fly swastikas and praise Hitler. That's the zone of internet where DHS is apparently finding inspiration for their X posts. It's ultra unlikely they would have ever encountered that song if they weren't in that space, imo.

Covid-19 and cancers connected to September 11 account for 75 percent of the deaths in ICE’s history. No ICE agent has ever been killed by an immigrant. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

Because someone has to post a single positive news story for the day - and those of you from Michigan can help support the project by filling out the survey - www.mlive.com/life/2026/01...

From the sworn testimony of Special Counsel Jack Smith 2 weeks ago.

I’m legitimately confused about how the US can charge a representative of a foreign government with having a machine gun in their own country, “out of the jurisdiction of any particular State or district of the United States”

Political scientists today

Hot take: Ben Shapiro is actually on Coates’ side of a key point in the Coates-Klein divide — that there has to be a clear line where you won’t platform folks whatever happens to the overton window.

This message should never come from the government. This message is both un-American and unconstitutional. The Department of Homeland Security should be sued. Immediately.

Part of the big problem here is that the organization of knowledge is actually knowledge in and of of itself - and it’s some of the very knowledge that systems like AI and search use. So this whole process has a potential to feed model collapse.

Amazing results - but feels like the “is it a coup or an autogolpe?” discussion when we’re calling it “politicized bureaucracy” instead of straight up corruption. I understand, saving it as a question for the discussion section, but it’s really sad that the word “corruption” does not appear at all.