Canceling flights right before holidays is a GREAT way to raise your polling numbers.

The Times interviewed dozens of migrant men sent to a prison in El Salvador by the Trump administration. Independent forensic analysts called the testimony credible and consistent and said the treatment met the U.N.’s definition of torture. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/08/w...

The book is real! To celebrate, I will give out five copies to interested early career folks. DM if you’d like one.

He has now erased fully 10% of the term to which Grijalva was elected.

We really need to stop treating betting odds (even if you call them "prediction markets") as politically meaningful data. They're not assessments of what people think (that's polls), they're assessments of what some bettors (many seemingly with more money than sense) think that people will think.

The mayor of Fort Worth (the nation's 11th largest city) makes $29,000. Our city councilors only make $25,000. Voters (wrongly) keep rejecting pay raises in charter amendments, most recently in 2022.

The AP tracked down details of some of the people killed in President Trump's military strikes on drug smugglers he describes as narco-terrorists. They were, with one exception, not high-level criminals. One was a fisherman. One was a bus driver; another a taxi driver. apnews.com/article/trum...

You know you’ve been really sick this week when your spouse compliments you for being “vertical.”

Cities are amazing accomplishments of humankind.

We have a great children’s book on Clara Luper: a.co/d/9z1bDec

I guess Taylor Swift is in her silent era.

White Power by @gauthamrao.bsky.social - the inaugural book in our new W. Hodding Carter III trade imprint! A brutal, brilliant history showing how America’s slave-policing system never really ended--just evolved. uncpress.org/978146969484...

Who ruins the world? Girls.

Flying Squirrel Loves It Every Time

“There’s a particular kind of despair that comes from watching an institution abandon its principles in real time…What’s the political cost of supporting our own people versus the cost of quietly surrendering?” Powerful words from a TCU colleague. www.texasobserver.org/tcu-eliminat...

“When universities abandon faculty under attack, when they violate their own governance procedures, when they tell contradictory stories about their motivations, when they refuse basic transparency about their decision-making—they’re not protecting their institutions. They’re hollowing them out.”

Congress used to pass bipartisan immigration laws. What the heck happened? The end of the Cold War created cracks in the parties, and 9/11 amplified them, laying the foundation for our current immigration predicament. My new piece at Good Authority. goodauthority.org/news/congres...

Sheriff ideology is a fascinating thing. This candidate was an independent who lost last night to Republican incumbent in Virginia. peacemakersheriff.org/about/

The local Republicans here in TX call him a “race communist.”

Sure, but I think it is a smart move to do some reclaiming of American history. Particularly in this moment when the youth are being denied access to this history.

Listened to Mamdani talk on GMA about he wants to be a mayor of all New Yorkers and not just those who voted for him - how his goal is not to remake City Hall in his image but so that struggling New Yorkers see their place in it and his administration.

Bucks County’s ICE-Loving, MAGA Sheriff Fred Harran Got What He Deserved: A Pink Slip From Voters | Sheriff-elect Danny Ceisler, a 33-year-old Democrat from Bristol Borough, was in many ways the crest of the Blue Wave that washed away local GOP office holders, writes Editor @cmychalejko.bsky.social.

The Mamdani campaign really stands in contrast to the way (some) Americans typically embrace their immigrant past while rejecting contemporary immigrants.

Do other places do the “on line” thing or is just a New York thing?

History made.

The only local race on my ballot was Texas State Senate seat for District 9. There’s 2 Republicans and a Democrat on the ballot. Early voting had the Democrats slightly ahead in the race. The district is part red/purple-y areas of Fort Worth and red suburbs. Will be interesting to see tonight.

Thermostatic politics of Public Service Commissioners.

Did my civic duty alongside a few other 100 people (because we vote too often in Texas).

If Mamdani wins, I might dust off the whole “local politics is the best politics” line.

Boy Mamdani's race is really a vivid reminder that anti-Islamic bigotry is 100% accepted in US public discourse. People don't even bother dog whistling, it's just right out in the open.

Our last local election had like 6% turnout so I’m looking at NYC with some democracy jealousy. Off cycle, nonpartisan, uncompetitive elections will do that though.

Does the carceral state discourage or mobilize voters? Krishnamurthy's piece in our October issue on California's Proposition 47 finds that high incarceration rate communities were associated w/ increased voter turnout & higher support for the criminal justice reform measure. doi.org/10.1111/pops...

I love hearing about what other people are teaching. We should share this more.

I’ve got both birthday and Christmas to shop for a soon to be 8 year old. Parents of 8+ kids - what gifts were big hits and got used at this age?

When they say they’d never support Fuentes, ask them about what they used to say about Trump. This is from a now deleted piece on The Blaze from Matt Walsh

No matter what, we can make any event about sheriffs

Heard the news that Cheney died so I went to find and read the sheriff’s report of the quail hunting shooting back in 2006, like any normal person would be doing while drinking coffee…

It is too dark outside, I’m going to have to put up my Christmas tree.

I love this data essay by some of my @pewresearch.org colleagues looking at how the ways that the U.S. Census has measured race and ethnicity have changed over the country's history and how they're poised to change again in 2030.

Kavanaugh owes this woman coffee and some constitutional rights.

I hate this.

I’ve got both birthday and Christmas to shop for a soon to be 8 year old. Parents of 8+ kids - what gifts were big hits and got used at this age?

My kid LOVES your books, @shannonhale.bsky.social. I'm sorry you are dealing with this.

I hope LEGO never updates their model of the White House.

Me: “The fixation on causal estimates is not the appropriate direction social science…What descriptive analysis provides us with are facts. Facts are nouns. Causal analysis gives us contextual estimates. They are adjectives. In the grammar of social science, we should prefer nouns to adjectives.”

Meanwhile, try to negotiate a few extra thousand dollars out of the university for the new hires this year just to keep salaries up for inflation, and they’ll act like you are robbing their piggy bank.

Stealing from @mirya.bsky.social, and asking what are we eating this week? I’m doing crispy gnocchi with burst tomatoes (end of our summer garden), black bean and cheese tamales, hamburger soup, and I don’t know what else. cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1022...

People get so unnecessarily defensive when you point out that giving money directly > can food drives for feeding people.

Got to meet the newest family member!

She took a nap on their walking pad. ❤️