Outstanding work strengthening & enriching China by Trump: "President Xi Jinping’s export engine has proved unstoppable during five months of sky-high US tariffs, sending China toward a record $1.2 trillion trade surplus." (gift link)

Nothing says “land of the free” like armed agents of the state saying “show me your papers if you want your daughter back” bsky.app/profile/nbcb...

Notice how Trump just blamed women for Autism?

As the brother of an autistic American, as a person who worked on US scientific integrity policy at the White House, and as human being, I'm boiling at the RFK idiocy. And though I have little to offer beyond surpassing rage and national shame, I did smile at this statement from NYU's Arthur Caplan:

BREAKING: A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to restore $500 million in UCLA medical research grants. The grants were suspended over allegations of campus antisemitism, use of race in admissions, and recognition of transgender identities.

I'm happy to have been a free-rider off the thousands(?) of people who canceled their Disney/Hulu subscriptions, many of whom will soon resubscribe, so I didn't have to go to the hassle. Tip of my hat to you all! Job well done!

I've had a bit of a headache today. What should I do?

The @washingtonpost.com story on Tylenol & autism leaves out a MAJOR 2.5M sibling-controlled study of children in Denmark, which "found no evidence that acetaminophen use during pregnancy was associated with children’s risk of autism, ADHD or intellectual disability." jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

NEW: Air Force jets are doing ICE flights to Africa with transponders turned off, making them nearly un-trackable. This includes the third-country removal to Ghana and another secret flight. We figured out where it landed. From me for @rollingstone.com: www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

The Charlie Kirk memorial is a combined Evangelical mega-church service and Trump rally. Never has Christian nationalism had such a defining and legitimizing stage. This event amplifies evangelic beliefs as an American value like I've never seen before.

Step 1: Cut funding for food stamps Step 2: Stop measuring hunger Step 3: There's no evidence cuts to food stamps led to a rise in hunger www.wsj.com/economy/trum...

“What fascisms old and new have in common is they tend to look to women to fill in the gaps that the state misses." And, I'd add, they get women to fill these gaps by making patriarchy's coattails the only way means by which women can achieve security or esteem. www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...

genuinely believe that a large number of political, economic and media elites do not realize that nearly half the voting public did not vote for trump

It’s almost like political leaders who are into creepy, nationalist, forced admiration have something in common.

Impressive. Via xcancel.com/The_x_Truth/...

Keep in mind that this is taken from a Disney production, one that just this week won an Emmy. It may sound vaguely apropos. youtu.be/KYnE2Mxayco?...

It’s been sad this year watching how the White House press corps refuses to back each other up. Here a female journalist is insulted and denigrated and the next male reporter just moves on to a new question. You’re all in this together, folks. Time & again, they won’t stand up for their colleagues.

Lemme spell it out. Trump's only leverage over Jimmy Kimmel and ABC came from FCC regulation. His direct power over H1-B visas gives him similar leverage over tech, higher ed, and others.

EPA is going to have a hard time getting tenure. www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...

A (very) little silver lining this Saturday morning, as the US slides further toward the authoritarian end of the spectrum: The one thing that consistently seems to increase people’s interest in living in democratic systems is living in non-democratic systems. ✅

You get what you pay for.

“The way to guard against [authoritarianism] isn’t to change the way audiences think. It’s to change the way leaders lead.” Jon Stewart has done the readings.

London is doing a better job protesting Trump because they have a distinct focal point right now during Trump’s state visit. Meanwhile, America is overwhelmed with 18 firehoses of destruction everyday.

Spot on, from @pkrugman.bsky.social - American men have lost opportunity due to systemic economic shifts. The MAGA movement is exploiting their grievance and offering false hope that feeds vitriol. These are real problems that need real solutions. open.substack.com/pub/paulkrug...

Perhaps one of the reasons elites like ABC are conceding so quickly to regime demands is because they are “too big to fail.” The cost of booting Kimmel is lower than cost of fighting back bc Kimmel revenue is a small part of ABC’s empire. [Narrator: It’s the income inequality.]

What America is going through is not unusual in historical terms. Plenty of examples like it today elsewhere in the world. What makes it unusual is the rapid collapse from a set of widely espoused norms and values that centered on liberty. It is the sacking of the shining city on hill that shocks.

Good reminder that public/private censorship of mass media was common in the 20th century. The Hays Code, the Comics Code, blacklisting; we have been here before and arguably more oppressive in the past. It took 75 years of 1A jurisprudence to make us all believe It Can’t Happen Here. But it did.

Trump says he’s designating “antifa” a terrorist group and launching a probe into finding of antifa activities. The FBI has long said antifa doesn’t really have a centralized structure or leadership.

I'm pleased to support the Scott D. McClurg Memorial Fund at SIU Carbondale. Scott was a friend, mentor, colleague, and awesome human being. If you knew him, please join me in supporting this fund in his name. @politicalnetworks.bsky.social @mpsa.bsky.social give.siu.edu/scott-mcclur...

Department Of Education Cancels $350M In HBCU Grants blackamericaweb.com/2025/09/14/d...

Feel free to continue arguing over the shooter's motives, but please understand that *it doesn't matter*. There's a organized political movement that plans to suppress, arrest, or kill its political opposition. It it seeking pretexts. Anything will do. If it's not this, it'll be something else.

Walter White meme reply contest. The prompt:

According to the “Global Terrorism Database (GTD)—arguably the most widely-used dataset in the study of political violence—anti-abortion activists constitute the single most common perpetrators of terrorist attacks in the United States.” Source: jkertzer.sites.fas.harvard.edu/Research_fil...

Congrats to our award winners!

"The labor participation rate for women with children younger than 5 had the biggest midyear drop in more than 40 years during the first six months of 2025."

My department @uwmadison.bsky.social is hiring an assistant professor with expertise in environmental politics. Send us your application. jobs.wisc.edu/jobs/assista...

All right, I wrote about it:

Watching all these centrist pundits stress the “civility” of Charlie Kirk’s style without addressing the ugliness of his substance is giving me a renewed appreciation of how the civil, polite White Citizens’ Councils conned the same crowd into thinking they were distinct from the cruder Klan.

At his @apsa.bsky.social presidential address, @taekulee.bsky.social says that now, as the US is autocratizing, the discipline should be focused on the politics of science, not the science of politics.

If you are at #APSA2025, come check out what should be a fascinating panel with @niloufersiddiqui.bsky.social, @lilymasonphd.bsky.social & Kate Krimmel marking the 75th anniversary of the 1950 @apsa.bsky.social Report!

To be clear, the reason a Democratic (Jewish) Governor would honor the life of his political advisory is because he wants to live in a democracy and he values pluralism over his personal beliefs.

No one wants this. Politically motivated violence makes everyone worse off. Do not let the actions of one define the cause or identity of any group, even if the group motivated the one.

As scary as this moment is, remember that support for political violence went DOWN after the July 2024 assassination attempt against Trump, not up www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1... We need to make the same thing happen this time.

It’s nice to see a judge acknowledge the regime’s bad faith, which really drives all of its legal attacks. More of this plz.

Hey Mason Nation! @georgemasonu.bsky.social Today is an Election Day! Mason sits in the VA-11th congressional district and there is an election to fill the vacancy left by Gerry Connolly (RIP). IF YOU LIVE ON CAMPUS (+ a citizen and 18) YOU ARE ELIGIBLE TO VOTE. Head to Merten Hall by 7pm.

I'm proud to support GMU President Dr. Gregory Washington, whom I ran into today outside the campus polling place on this special Election Day with MasonVotes student Voting Ambassadors. Doing the work of democracy. @gmupres.bsky.social @georgemasonu.bsky.social @scharschool.bsky.social

throughout the process of writing this paper I was inspired by @gregorykoger.bsky.social and @jenvictor.bsky.social's 2009 "Polarized Agents" in PS. Just a clean, sharp paper that establishes a useful empirical regularity that people need to account for in their theory building.

The people whipping up panics about "academic freedom" rarely speak up when academic freedom is actually imperiled. This is absolutely chilling.

This is censorship from an authoritarian regime that wants to project the illusion that they face no internal opposition or dissent. No other way to describe it.