I published a book on American democracy almost a year ago now. This is the conclusion.

good call sir. the 70% of Americans (and climbing) who are skeptical of data centers mustn't be protected, or compensated, or even persuaded - but *defeated*

Guaranteed: 1) Black girls will be harassed and demanded to be tested over and over again regardless of how competitive they are. 2) Winners from public schools will be relentlessly hounded by the parents and coaches of losers at private schools, with the goal of making them quit the sport.

fun internet discovery: cotta coffee, a SW portland coffee shop run out of someone’s garage. how is that possible? because the owner owns a rare single family home on a CM1 zoned lot, which allows low rise mixed commercial and residential uses

The thing you need to understand is that there are 2 (TWO) different method for amending the constitution 1) The process laid out in the constititon itself (conventions, or 2/3's of both houses followed by 3/4 of states ratifying) OR 2) find five votes on the Supreme Court.

Four justices don’t believe the reconstruction amendments are part of the Constitution, simple as

With this ruling, the birthright issue is not going away. The right hasn't really begun *organizing* around getting rid of the citizenship clause. Like Roe, this will be their fight for a generation. And if the Democrats just say "we won" and ignore it, like Roe, the Republicans will eventually win.

There's no sugar-coating Slaughter. It's an enormously important ruling (far more important than the other three decisions #SCOTUS handed down today). It's a huge win for Trump/the executive. And it's going to have massive ramifications for the functioning of the government long after Trump is gone.

Michael Cembalest is out with his annual energy report for JP Morgan and it's full of fascinating stuff, but this graph jumps out: Trump is succeeding in stifling America's clean energy boom. Absolutely ceding the field to China.

Musk says not a single person has died due to him axing USAID. Sadly, part of my job involves tracking aid spending. So here’s a thread with just some of the people who lost their lives because of USAID cuts

We regret that our event on Extreme Heat: Improving governance and strengthening action around the world has been cancelled due to the red extreme heat warning issued by the UK Met Office. Our apologies to everyone who was planning to attend the event.

New paper from me and @jaredb-econ.bsky.social on the debt and our fiscal outlook! Before we dig into the paper, I think we should be frank about how we got here. At the beginning of the century, debt was on track to be stable indefinitely. Then Congress enacted enormous tax cuts. Now it's not.

"At least 12 states break down program participation by age, and of the 1,670,011 people who are no longer receiving benefits in those states, 776,134, or 46%, were children." @nicolesantacruz.bsky.social reports for @propublica.org

If you live in a higher latitude you’re likely acutely aware of how much solar energy is pouring down on this planet. It moves around, night & day, summer & winter, but we already know how to move it around as electricity or synthetic hydrocarbons. A renewable industrial civilization is a choice.

117th Congress cooked with this one

The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 included, for the first time, a tax credit to make energy storage cheaper, which also made it cheaper to deploy solar and storage together. The IRA also had credits or loan guarantees for manufacturing and deploying energy storage in America. IRA made line go up.

While his mountain of horrible personal conduct could fill multiple books, one fact in particular stands out: A year ago, Musk’s actions directly led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. He did it knowingly. And, worse — gleefully. Read more: www.theverge.com/tech/949259/...

Remember this scene the next time a corporate reporter tries to insist that a rural diner full of white men in their 60s is somehow a more authentically "American" place, somehow more representative of who we are as a nation.

New Yorkers singing Empire State of Mind

we have solar. i just looked, my bill this month is on track to be about $8. i live in virginia and this includes charging an EV.

30 years ago this weekend marked the beginning of the Tibet Freedom Concerts for the Milarepa Foundation, first in San Francisco and then every summer for the next several years. R.E.M. played at the 3rd Tibet Freedom show, at RFK Stadium in Washington, DC…

Balogun is exactly the kind of person Elon Musk has been agitating to denaturalize and deport

Most corrupt administration in US history

EPA and Justice Department officials were looking into potential criminal violations by the vast coal empire owned by Sen. Jim Justice. Then the Office of the Deputy Attorney General told them “pencils down.”

Since taking office, Ken Paxton has become a multi-millionaire while our pay has stagnated. He owns 11 homes while most Texans can’t afford one. He trades favors with rich donors while blocking overtime pay for workers. Paxton doesn’t serve us — he serves himself.

It's hard to be excited about the Artemis III mission announcements when the CEO of the company making one of the mission's rockets has spent his week inciting racial violence via his personal social media platform.

A problem with authoritarianism and media conglomeration is that the owners of these media companies don't care if they are profitable so they use them rather to send signals to the authoritarian who wields control over their profit-making businesses.

New Upjohn Institute research finds incentives for most large-scale clean energy projects are expected to generate positive economic returns for state residents. But whether residents benefit — and by how much — depends heavily on how deals are designed. Read more: buff.ly/jOUuSl1 #econsky,

WOW - Trump crashes out & cuts his interview w/ Welker short as she presses him on his lack of evidence for claiming elections are rigged "You're either crooked or you're stupid. I've had enough. Thank you darling," he tells her" "I traveled all the way to Wisconsin for this interview," she pleads

Mangroves, vital for protecting coastlines and storing carbon, are making an unexpected comeback due to increased legal protections and public awareness of their importance. Since 2010, the rate of mangrove loss has slowed down, with more forests being restored than destroyed.

another day, another story about the administration's war on knowledge itself, all in service of allow its corporate patrons free rein to rob us blind and poison our world www.nytimes.com/2026/06/01/c...

Scoop: NSF has been quietly blocking new funds and grants to four top universities: Duke, Harvard, Princeton, and Yale. Dozens of proposals from PIs at these universities—and their collaborators—have been stuck at the Office of Award Management awaiting finalization for months.

Pope Leo XIV called for robust regulation of artificial intelligence and for its developers to work for the common good rather than profit, issuing a sweeping manifesto on safeguarding humankind as the technology impacts everything from work to war.

Let’s ride

listen up graduates

Free, Easy, Dead: The difficult birth and predictable death of IRS Direct File defector.com/free-easy-de...

We should be really careful about taking developers at their word here. This sounds to me like: * complaining about OB3A red tape and FEOC risk (very extremely fair) * trying to level the playing field in a hostile political climate * signal market confidence www.spglobal.com/market-intel...

“.. What we are talking about is nothing short of the sitting president of the United States looting from the Treasury for his own gain,” she said. @financialtimes.com www.ft.com/content/5733...

I say without hyperbole that this is the most brazenly corrupt action in US Presidential history. That it does not immediately lead to impeachment is a dangerous sign of how far the rule of law has declined.

People prefer drugs that get them high vs. those that don't.

Staggering corruption.

This is when I started to feel my spirit leave my body.

"A person familiar with the Pentagon’s thinking said EDU had not been aware of any Trump Jr. stake at the time of the [Vulcan Elements] deal because it was too small to surface in the vetting process." This is a lie. Everyone knew about Jr.'s stake in the company. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

An extremely courageous person who meant a lot to so many people.

After finally seeing some reversal of grave losses in recent months, manufacturing employment ticked down again in April. Since January 2025 when Trump took office, the manufacturing sector has lost 77,000 jobs. #EconSky #NumbersDay

as per melissa's thread, it is really important to understand that a major goal of this administration is the resegregation of key institutions of american society

You do not hate the DOGE people enough. Boys with toys breaking things they were too arrogant and lazy to understand.

Floating offshore wind unlocks really remarkable scale and capacity factor. Average land-based wind turbine installed in the US is in the 3-5 MW range. This guy is 4 times that and cranking ~60% of the time.

Breaking: Tennessee Republicans pass new 9-0 gerrymander after SCOTUS destruction of Voting Rights Act eliminating state’s only majority-Black district & last Democratic seat. Splits Memphis, which is 63% Black, into 3 districts to disenfranchise Black voters. Quite literally a return to Jim Crow