A majority of the days the government has ever been shut down, Donald Trump was president. www.howtoreadthisch.art/red-versus-b...

Women are dying of sepsis after being denied abortions. A conservative sect that wants to repeal women’s voting rights is growing and gaining national attention. *This* is the NYT’s contribution to conversations about women?

In front of OR INSIDE.

"Why American-style polarisation is spreading across the West" Two words: algorithms and incentives. Mostly incentives. Until we modify or eliminate incentives, all we can do is watch as the fabric of society is pulled apart, strand by strand. www.ft.com/content/5060...

The world’s first trillionaire initiated a move that has left more than half a million people dead, most of whom are children.

This short film is worth 20 minutes of your time today.

Hundreds of thousands of people, dead because of a decision made by the world's richest man

There had better be trials. And not just for the low-level thugs carrying out these orders, but for everyone up the chain of command. If we get past this, the solution isn’t to pretend it never happened and invite Stephen Miller to Harvard’s Institute of Politics. It’s trials w real punishments.

This is the kind of thing that should get a product recalled. I'm not joking. This should stop a thing being sold till it's tested fully.

Whenever secret police kidnap and disappear people, atrocities are happening behind the scenes.

Academic tip: sometimes you have to write "Importantly," to get a sentence started and then you can go back and delete it.

The govt defense counsel is incredible. “The Feds’ coercive action was meted out by compliance before the fact by the university. Therefore, you can’t sue the Feds; you must instead sue the university.” NB: the UCLA FA did sue UCLA.

as a thought exercise for everyone reading ross douthat's latest missive in the NYT, i want you to think about sending an email to your entire company with the subject line "Did Women Ruin the Workplace?", then think about the over/under on the number of minutes/hours you would still be employed

I’ll keep pushing this line of analysis because I’m increasingly convinced the clearest path out of this mess is for Dems to adopt a relentless anti-corruption, anti-inequality, anti-oligarchy, pro-democracy platform. The Dem leadership hasn’t realized it yet, but they’re now a reform party.

Change in Headline

I talked about this with my students. I think that basically very few people in NYC had latent attitudes on free buses but Mamdani puts it on the agenda, links it to other things people care about and makes it an issue. Candidates can shape opinion (which is why popularism makes me nuts)

Generally, when a party is trying to appeal to a new cohort of voters, they don’t send masked men to publicly kidnap and disappear thousands of members of that cohort.

"The results, then, are a marked contrast to the accommodation, capitulation and outright surrender of prominent individuals and institutions in the face of Trump’s demands." @jamellebouie.net this morning: [🎁]

NEW: Mississippi Democrats broke the Republican Party's supermajority in the state Senate tonight for the first time since 2011. It came as Democrats flipped 2 Senate seats and 1 House seat. “Mississippi just broke the supermajority—and the people have taken back their power,” the party says.

ah, perhaps instead of pumping millions into endless factional infighting Dem donors could invest in making local Dem organizations genuine civic spaces that can reach people during and between elections

i want to repeat this: mamdani and spanberger have run similar campaigns tailored to their respective electorates and it is maddening to watch political journalists attempt to create some broad contrast where none exist

Looking forward to learning all about how the right should move left to win elections tomorrow. They should maybe dye their hair pink, learn to love pronouns.

A more pertinent question: Why might one mayor in one city be a political liability for national Democrats, while the president, VP, various governors, and members of Congress are not for the national Republicans, let alone any GOP mayor? How did that come to be? Who makes that happen?

The job of a good message isn't to say what is popular. The job of a good message is to make popular what we need said. MAGA and Madison Avenue have known and exploited this. But it also very much applies to campaigns for good. www.weekendreading.net/p/bringing-a...

Yglesias looks at Republicans running (and winning) on *extremely unpopular & dangerous* policy and demands Democrats (running on popular & good policy) shift to more popular policy. What Yglesias willfully ignores: Republicans' 24/7/365/4 disinformation campaigns, unanswered by Democrats.

The problem with most of Yglesias’s advice for Democrats is that Republicans do the opposite and win all the time. So it’s either bad advice or evidence of an asymmetric playing field, which he never addresses.

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TD;DR economic populism is smart; channeling anti-establishment energy is smart. But if you are not willing to tell voters that book bannings are a violation of democratic principles or that robbing people of due process is a violation of human rights, I’m not sure you should be leading people rn.

ANES Data Release! electionstudies.org/data-center/... The 3-wave ANES panel is now available. It merges data from 3 election studies (2016-2020-2024), the first time the ANES has collected interviews of the same respondents across 3 presidential elections.

Ahead of the 1st shutdown of US food aid to hungry Americans in 60 years, some of the 200,000 Little Free Library locations are converting into food pantries. Thanks @littlefreelibrary.bsky.social

The vast majority of these policies mean nothing to voters. They mean so little that we can get voters to change their opinions by telling them their party supports/rejects the policy. They mean so little that they will respond differently the next time you ask them. We have data establishing this.

Republican policy positions are less popular than Democratic ones. Most people don't want religious oligarchy and this makes Republicans have fewer small- and large-dollar donors. So they stretch the money through advocacy media. Every piece of the Republican ecosystem reinforces each other.

We live in an episode of Veep

One year ago

This is identity politics over material interests btw but it’s white identity politics so it’s fine bsky.app/profile/pete...

NYT pushed its “Dems must go moderate” take again yesterday. In a new piece out today, @adambonica.bsky.social shows even more clearly why the data don’t support it. It also shows what a skilled empiricist and teacher Adam is. Very proud of my pal’s public work. open.substack.com/pub/data4dem...

Timothy Mellon of the famous Pittsburgh Mellon family is the one who provided $130 million to pay US military personnel. His views on social safety nets are that Democrats “buy” votes by providing government funds to pay for food for infants.

The most Republican guy is the guy who owns the used car dealership, a tanning salon, and a boat in a place that has been economically decimated by deindustrialization See, for instance:

Retired intelligence analysts confirm what the political scientists are telling us — and what the world outside is telling us — the goal of these people is the end of law, the end of democracy, and the end of a recognizable republic. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Read a free sample! It's enough for a citation for sure :)

The President is unlawfully demolishing the White House - a contrast in coverage.

It probably doesn’t matter but I would be flooding the zone with images of the White House destruction right now.

Now is a really good time to donate to food banks, and do food runs for mutual aid groups. Also, do menstrual product runs.

Exactly this part of the White House is gone.

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Trump does not believe in public goods. He views the federal treasury as his private purse; public employees are to be his personal advocates, or they get fired; public property (like the White House) his to do what he wants, even if it means gutting the East Wing without permission./1

@mikeajensen.bsky.social and I were perturbed at how a recent report on left wing terrorism and political violence is predictably being weaponized. So we dug into the analysis for @justsecurity.org www.justsecurity.org/122278/corre...

I find it amazing too that Republicans’ boycott of Washington isn’t the biggest story of them all. The shutdown can’t end if they refuse to show up for work.

Imagine if Obama demolished a portion of the White House