Under RFK Jr., the CDC made state reporting of Cyclosporiasis optional. The CDC itself was recently reported to be “running on fumes”. The result is a huge and growing outbreak across 29 states. For context, Michigan usually has around 50 cases per year. This year, they have 1250.

Incredible.

I don't think the government of a democracy should have masked secret police that roam the country murdering people, with their actions treated as totally outside the law.

ICE is engaged in a very large escalation nationwide, with the agency claiming to be hitting record arrest numbers amid the return of quotas. This has gotten very little attention from the media because ICE learned lessons from the chaotic disasters of Kristi Noem’s tenure. Keep a watch.

EXACTLY

Keep fighting. Please.

So excited to be featured in this spectacular new edited volume! Many thanks to @profkarpo.bsky.social & Jeremy Pope for putting this together, and of course to my co-authors @lilymasonphd.bsky.social and @juliewronski.bsky.social ! 😊

There continues to be no plan for how to maintain R1 universities’ operations without foreign students & federal funding, but the public continues to not realize this, because our leaders - with about 4-5 exceptions - have been totally absent from the National Conversation™️

In retrospect, it taught us to deal with not getting everything we wanted all the time. Sometimes things go wrong and it’s disappointing. Best bet is to read the synopsis in readers digest and move on.

Abolishing the NIH has always been this admin’s plan. They told us in Project 2025. They’ve SHOWN us with their actions over the past 18 months. This is why a heads down approach will not work. The scientific community has 2 options: oppose this with all we’ve got, or let them carry out their plan.

Those allegations did tremendous damage — to our reputations, to grant funding for work in our field, to the broader discourse about what "free speech" means and whose speech is protected. The team who did this work at Stanford was dissolved. Our funding took a big hit. But our work at UW continues.

But I lost my job bc of their lies & smears. The judge in this case, Terry Doughty, was the Murthy v Missouri judge. He made up a fake quote & attributed it to me in a dramatic opinion in that case on July 4th 2023. Today he had to acknowledge that America First Legal’s case was built on lies.

Today we beat Stephen Miller’s lawsuit mill in court! For 3 years I’ve been a defendant in a case filed by America First Legal on behalf of Gateway Pundit & a random antivaxxer we’d never heard of until she sued us. The plaintiffs claimed we “censored” them. It was a lie. They just lost.

The lazy response, “we think censorship is bad no matter what” both elides the issue (students expressing dismay at things vs. administrations breaking the law to punish faculty) and creates a defensive structure for more right wing censorship. Both-sides journalism helps the right, not the left.

Generally people do not have coherent policy ideas because they are never induced to consider contradictions or feasibility or whatever. Philip Converse's work on this in the 1960s is seminal. Weirdly everyone in politics pretends like political scientists didn't figure this out 60+ years ago.

Glad to see this story and coverage of an important paper. www.statnews.com/2026/06/17/n... 1/16

additionally, if there is ANY possible non racist motive for an explicitly racist action, Alito says you must accept it as the actual motivation. meanwhile, ANY use of race consciousness to prevent or alleviate discrimination is unconstitutional under “equal protection”

Proposed rules in Office of Management and Budget (OMB) will hit all federal grant programs. Universities will be hammered, but also local government, Medicaid, rural communities.

There needs to be an "I was denied tenure and I'm still mad about it" disclaimer on every article that proposes ending academia

The Trump Administration is blatantly saying that, if they don't like some aspect of reality, they have the right to stop funding anyone who studies it.

HALF of all federally funded clinical trials would be “illegal” under the new OMB rule. LEAVE YOUR PUBLIC COMMENT AND YELL AT YOUR CONGRESS CRITTERS.

I am once again reviewing an article that was either written by AI or by a person who doesn't understand anything they've read/cited.

This is like the terribly awkward conference dinner where somebody invites the elderly scholar known mostly for sexually harassing female grad students

Our department has three calls for tenure track positions. IE is a fast growing group of scholars doing top-notch work, which offers very attractive conditions in a great European city. If you are looking for an academic job in Europe, definitely do consider applying.

“Out of touch” brand is up for grabs

Your reminder that fairy tales are full of stepmothers because women once routinely died in childbirth, from postpartum sepsis, or from other infectious diseases and left behind housefuls of motherless children. Stable nuclear families are made possible by vaccines, antibiotics, and safe abortions.

Hypothesis 1: “You can go ahead and torment your base's perceived enemies and make life miserable for those they hate, but you have to do something that rewards their loyalty. Pig-headedness and naked misogyny and fake masculinity can only go so far.”

If Democrats were polling like this among men, Ezra Douthglesias would be having a field day on his podcasts & in his op-eds & on X The Everything App about the Fierce Urgency of Doing An Abundance of Moderate Popularism. But since The Narrative™️ cannot fail (it can only be failed), it's 🦗

Mountainhead wasn’t dark enough

screworm outbreak is another good opportunity to remind americans that government is what protects us from things like this and not the magical free market. want safe food? government, bitch.

Striking to me how little reporting there is on this rule proposal, which is maybe the biggest change to American governance in almost a century. And this reporting is … weak. www.npr.org/2026/06/03/n...

Congratulations to everyone who said it would get this bad. Your prize is watching everyone who disagreed now claim no one could have predicted it would get this bad.

Holden Thorp is an institutionalist. He's been a university chancellor, provost, now EiC of Science. When institutionalists pull the fire alarm, we listen, because the call to action he issued this week exposes the dire nature of the threat we are facing. 1/ www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

This is excellent from @jamellebouie.net. The Trump administration is not conservative in any meaningful sense of the word. They are revolutionaries undermining the constitutional order. Any competent response from Democrats needs to face this reality squarely.

the trump official — who led the siege & occupation of Minneapolis — admitting to having an ongoing dialogue/rapport with Martin Sellner, a straight-up Nazi who influenced the Christchurch shooter, while speaking at a conference about remigration (read: ethnic cleansing) is a pretty big deal!

👋 Happening in 1 week: my data visualization seminar with @instats.bsky.social. If you or your students use Stata and want to up your graph game, this is designed for you. June 8 and 9, 10am-2pm Eastern. Link 👇

In this newsletter I outline important actions to take. 1. Submit a comment opposing the rule change. 2. Contact state legislators to ensure states are engaged with the impact at the state and local level. 3. Contact members of Congress. 4. Spread awareness. This rundown is a great source:

one might ask why a free speech org is scrutinizing the small dollar political donations of private citizens

Two days left to apply! The APSA Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant program provides support to enhance and improve the conduct of doctoral dissertation #research in #polisky. Learn more and submit #DDRIG applications here:

Horowitz openly declared that his goal was to use the rhetoric of multiculturalism, pluralism, and diversity, which had become much more prominent in the 1990s, and turn it into a weapon against the liberalization of American society – starting with the universities.

Vanilla Ice did a show at Princeton in 1999 and yelled “ain’t no party like a Princeton party cause a Princeton party don’t stop!” He’ll do literally anything.

Reporters don't talk enough about how Republicans do not consider Democratic voters to be fully American.

President of MIT not mincing words today in @statnews.com www.statnews.com/2026/05/27/s...

There is this new thing where high school students cold email professors in search of research opportunities and I really don’t like it. I don’t think credentialing needs to start at 14. Please go to some kind of fun camp where you will learn a random skill instead, if at all possible.

🎶 He's a creep He's a vegan He wants to mutilate children He thinks God's nonbinary He's eating eggs and cheese 🎶

Fantastic visuals. The case for California's billionaire wealth tax www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

“use AI” is just “underpants gnomes”

I’d argue governors being denied access to federal law enforcement facilities in their state is part of what I call slow civil war.

Another reminder: if there exists *any* class of people who don't have due process rights, then *nobody* actually has due process rights because the government can always just say you're in that class.