Another friend put it to me like this: "ICE has made the classic Nazi mistake. They've invaded a winter people in the winter."

Stellar act

I do agree Trump has a grand strategy. But it's not what this piece outlines. If "consolidation" involves "working to renovate underlying structural factors," why is the US antagonizing and extorting allies? Gutting FP institutions at home? foreignpolicy.com/2026/01/14/t...

Thread on incredible mobilizational will and capacity of Minneapolis residents in the face of ICE brutality. It's still a horrifying scene, as she notes. But the neighborhood resilience - "it's ICE that can't handle [the cold]" - is heartening. Proud to be born in Minneapolis.

Calling all the PhDs I know to make monumental annoyances of themselves (and honestly, who better)

So many horrific images. I know they are important to document ICE's violent crimes, to raise awareness. But I also worry about Rebecca Stein's argument. Her book Screen Shots counters the idea that if we just get enough footage of state violence, we can shift the terms of power and get justice.

This is such a cool initiative for student-produced content

Happy to announce the 1st ever @isanet.bsky.social conference in South Asia in August 2026. Hosted in Colombo, Sri Lanka, we welcome proposals from scholars based in and/or studying South Asian politics & international relations, but also broader global themes ofc www.isanet.org/Conferences/...

The long rambling may be mental decline, but Trump has always been a narcissist who hogs the media spotlight. Who uses it to inflame, intimidate, and get even more attention. He's now on the stages he craved, aided by a team of climbers. Could have used a Davos interruption this time. Yeter artık

Definitely an important time to be studying middle powers. What's concerning is the extent to which, like the US, populist-led middle powers also use extortionist tactics to revise the current international order in their favor. And to translate international "wins" into continued rule at home.

"Trump displays a lot of the characteristics of a populist leader that really revels in the politics of spectacle... He's a deal maker, but he's also a TV producer. TV is so ingrained in how he thinks about the world." My comments in NYT on Trump's media politics. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/20/u...

Deadline for @apsamena.bsky.social award nominations and self-nominations is Feb 1. Time for some good news in our feeds. apsamena.org/awards/apsa-...

The Nobel Prize has long been a driving force for Trump. As is “getting the oil.” As are map changes. Simple heuristics for “winning” in IR. From my Psych and FPDM course, Trump is a sky-high narcissist. He needs to be a “winner.” He surrounds himself with shiny things with his name on them.

Trump/US is clearly an extreme example. In terms of 1) psychological factors driving him, 2) degree of personalization of leadership, and 3) US relative power re: coercion. But Trump’s overarching approach to the international arena is one we’ve see from other populists: Erdoğan, Modi, Orban

Populist grand strategy at work. Personalistic autocrats engage in extortionist revisionism - grandiose, coercive, civilizationalist gambits on the world stage - for material gain, while also enabling the leader to claim greatness back home to try to secure durability.

An intra-NATO tripwire is wild.

I think about this a lot. Trump likes to acquire/build big things and stamp his name on them. It sounds petty, but this is a guy who extorted someone else’s Nobel Prize for himself. At this point it wouldn’t surprise me if the US annexed Greenland and renamed it Trumpland.

Just when you’re thinking everything’s horrible. Via @danaelkurd.bsky.social, whose humor and heart also make things a lot less horrible.

I could listen to Jesse Ventura say “Constitution” for hours.

portland city council confirms that two portland residents have been shot by federal agents. at this time, the city council has been told that both victims are alive.

US government rhetoric is textbook authoritarian. During the Gezi protests, Turkish police shot 14-year-old Berkin Elvan in the head with a teargas canister while he was out buying bread. He died after a months-long coma. TR officials called his family terrorists and his mourners necrophiles.

Authoritarians use naming, blaming, and framing to discredit peaceful protesters + justify violence against them. Naming: labeling with criminalizing terms like “terrorist” Blaming: fabricating acts of protest violence Framing: placing protesters in nefarious networks pomeps.org/adding-insul...

2026 is already insane. And getting back to work after the break is tough anyway. My MENA writing solidarity Zoom group is in Week 141. More than 150 grad students/scholars have joined at least one session. 17 joined today. If you’re interested, or have students who might benefit, please email me!

If the DEA had killed 80 innocent Americans in the course of apprehending one drug dealer, there would be riots. But we are so ghoulishly indifferent to the lives and humanity of people abroad that it's barely even part of the conversation.

I’m organizing (late) a panel on gender and political parties in southern Europe for the upcoming ECPR general conference. Please contact me if you would like to be included. Deadline is Friday, so pls contact me asap. Thanks!

Agreed, for Trump. I think “oil” is also a heuristic for Trump. A shortcut for what the “big guys” do. Trump 1.0 initially moved to pull US troops from Syria/SDF support, then insisted troops remain because “we’re keeping the oil.”

What in the Gestapo is going on in Grand Rapids? Watch this activist get arrested *mid-interview* for speaking out against U.S. action in Venezuela.

Excellent thread on US FP from @profsaunders.bsky.social. Spot-on sources include her own article on transformative vs non-transformative interventions direct.mit.edu/isec/article... I teach it in my Psych and FPDM course and have been trying since Sat to figure out which type Venezuela will be.

Apropos of nothing other than I need something that is both ridiculous and not-doom-laden right now. Someone just used the phrase “okey dokey artichokey” and I was transported to the grad school moment I realized it sounded like “oki doki artık çok iyi.” Turkish for “ok, now everything’s great.”

oh my god he posted so many action shots from the makeshift mar a lago situation room and they were just looking at tweets together on a gigantic screen

The same editorial board described Seattle’s mayor raising taxes to pay for childcare as a totalitarian power grab

Trump’s capture of the media, really.

The whole @profsaunders.bsky.social thread is excellent, but this is worth emphasizing. I'm going to do that via shameless self-promotion. @cooleyoneurasia.bsky.social and I first formulated the book that became Exit from Hegemony in the '00s, but we wrote the bulk of the actual text in 2018. 🧵

Why I study authoritarianism, populism, and foreign policy through a media lens. Who needs a cover letter when you’ve got this clip?

Excellent thread from one of the best scholars of US FP, and FPDM in general. Trump’s actions in Venezuela and Iran didn’t surprise me, but I think it’s because I study FP in a case with a longer history of authoritarian populist leadership than the US has. But I also can’t say I predicted this.

Ok, let’s go DC.

Just a regular Tuesday on my DC block.

Clear call to pay attention to media as a site of power consolidation. We study it in other autocratizing regimes like Turkey and Hungary. Media capture is shaping US politics in ways those who believed in “strong institutions” didn’t anticipate.

Pretty much everyone I meet struggles to pronounce my name. I’m lucky to be friends with kids this creative. Yes, my name sounds like easel.

It’s pure hubris to imagine you/we/they can counter the right by engaging on any digital platform. It’s also a naive misunderstanding of how social media is designed to work.

The Vanity Fair photographer from the Susie Wiles story. Holy. Shit. www.washingtonpost.com/style/power/...

Sharing a new resource for studying/teaching/using interpretive methods. As part of my new role on the APSA IMM ExComm, I wanted to create a quarterly research digest. Check out our first issue, and please get in touch with submissions! www.interpretivemethods.com/research-dig...

Turkey’s S-400 missile defense system is back in the news. Again. With David Banks, we offered a symbolic politics explanation of why the Russian-made purchase would repeatedly pop up as a foreign policy stumbling block. AND not cover Turkey’s air defense gap. www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1...

“Reality.” “In my opinion.” With defensive posturing attempting swagger. Sums up the ethos, standards, and appeal of so many media outlets that flourish under far-right populism. And that bring it to power in the first place.

Objection to this project overlapped with a year of protests against corruption+authoritarianism in the wake of a deadly train roof collapse. Even bits of regional knowledge and a cursory understanding of nationalism could predict this. Maybe it's time to renew funding for regional studies?

Even the use of capital letters for "Designated Terrorist Organization" in this celebration of illegality is enraging. It makes the answer to the "how possible" question so obvious. Who can end this? Not a rhetorical question.

Fresh hell unlocked.

Yes. Public policing of women’s behavior is a central element of authoritarianism. My work on gender edutainment unpacks autocrats’ vernacular strategies of modeling Us and othering Them. Cooking shows (and trad wives!) “teach” a whole lot more than dinner prep. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

I talked a lot about Maduro as a cosplaying fan of Turkish historical TV dramas (and of Salt Bae), but that didn't make it in print. Next time.

One year after toppling of Bashar Assad's regime, we've got a variety of insights on prospects for Syria's future. Check out the 7-piece symposium on Syria co-edited by @rbkhoury.bsky.social and Sefa Seçen in our latest APSA MENA Politics Newsletter. apsamena.org/mena-politic...