“In DOGE’s published list of canceled contracts and grants, the 13 largest were all incorrect.” www.nytimes.com/2025/12/23/u...

1 - the exec branch can't decline to spend $ Congress appropriated 2- the fed govt can't use federal $ to extort states over policy/political disagreements 3-the fed govt can't use federal $ to impose conditions unrelated to the funding program 4-the fed govt can't use federal $ to coerce states

It is true that school transportation is in a sorry state in a lot of places, and so many parents have no choice to chauffeur their kids. I think that's bad. I *also* think it's bad when parents opt into the chauffeur life in cases when there are other safe, reasonably convenient options.

This feels like an underappreciated problem: "Of more than 700 locations sampled, 61% exceeded aquatic life thresholds set by the EPA...60% of samples blew past the accepted healthy drinking water standard."

On Bluesky, you often see commentary on and jokes about clips from White House Daily Briefings--but have you considered *why* the White House does them? And to what end? I (with @benjaminsnoble.bsky.social and Erin Rossiter) investigate in a new paper 1/N www.davidryanmiller.com/files/Presid...

Trump administration lawyers admitted in court filings that they specifically targeted blue states for energy grant cuts during the government shutdown

The current administration is taking steps to systematically destroy American scientific capability. Earlier this week, NSF was forced from their headquarters. Now another premier climate science institute, NCAR will be dismantled. NASA GISS and Princeton GFDL have already been hobbled or shut. 🧪

Sounds about right.

The Constitution guarantees your right to follow, record, protest, and notify others about the agents and what you see. These are core First Amendment rights, and DHS has clearly ordered its agents to threaten and violate those rights. cato.org/blog/dhs-pol...

For the second year in a row, the wealth gains for the 100 richest Americans exceeded what ALL American households spent on groceries combined. ~$995B for billionaires vs ~$775B in total grocery spending. We have an oligarchy and inequality problem masquerading as an affordability crisis.

In a highly unusual move, the EPA is revising an assessment of the health dangers posed by formaldehyde, a widespread pollutant that causes far more cancer than any other chemical in the air. By @fastlerner.bsky.social

Sen. Jack Reed: "I must remind everyone that we follow the law of war, and because of that, we expect other countries. So that when our service members are in distress, they're not shot up in the water or if they're wounded, left to die. If we don't do it, then we can't expect other countries."

Birthright citizenship under the common law, a thread: I have done this many times on social media, in print, and in media interviews, but not to be accused of taking others’ not seriously enough, by plainly stating the law and history of birthright citizenship, I’m taking the time here:

LOL... Pentagon released a new AI military chatbot and it immediately pointed out that Pete Hegseth is a war criminal. abovethelaw.com/2025/12/pent...

This should be the biggest story in the country right now. The sitting US President was extorting state lawmakers from his own party by threatening to withhold public money if they didn’t gerrymander for him. I don’t know how else to say it…

unreal (but very real, of course)

MINNEAPOLIS: “All I did was step outside as a Somali American citizen, and I got chased by a masked person, assaulted, kidnapped. It was inhumane. If this is what’s happening to a 🇺🇸 citizen on camera, imagine what could happen to your loved ones.”

NSF - Forced reorg - POs down ~ 40% (DRP, most rotators not renewed, retirements) - Forced move (and we have to pack and clean) to a building with no furniture, little to no conference space for panels, inadequate 🛜, …) I personally love the boxes they gave us for packing. “Details matter” 🙃

😔 federalnewsnetwork.com/congress/202...

Days after FIFA awarded Trump a fake peace prize, DOJ moves to drop charges in FIFA corruption case www.nytimes.com/2025/12/10/n...

Reviewers and editors: please don't allow general statements about the effect of chatbots based on studies of one single chatbot. Generalizability 101.

Wow... NYC's congestion pricing has led to big drops in PM2.5 and real improvements in local air quality.

Okay so can we exempt non seniors from Medicare and Social Security taxes?

there is no available evidence that donald trump understands what a tariff is, what a trade deficit is, and what the national debt is.

we all got cowed into avoiding "virtue signaling" as if the public affirmation of socially agreed upon ethical principles was somehow cringey instead of a significant part of what a "society" even is. now all there's left is vice signaling, and it's reshaping society.

Our new study provides rare causal evidence about NYC’s speed camera program. We find large reductions in collisions (30%) and injuries (16%) near intersections with cameras. www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1... @astagoff.bsky.social ky.social @brendenbeck.bsky.social nbeck.bsky.social 🧪

If people can't answer this question without the partisan cue ("signed into law by Obama") they don't have an opinion of the ACA.

Aside from the existence of the President and VP, the only provision of the Constitution limiting Congress's authority to structure the civilian executive branch is the Appointments Clause. That's it. All the rest is made up.

“12 universities are on hook for a record $228M in buyouts to 15 fired football coaches, & much of this will be financed by tax-deductible donations from alumni. It’s unlikely that when Congress created charitable tax deduction a century ago it envisioned it as a tool to subsidize college football”

‼️ New working paper ‼️ We find bipartisan appeals credibly signal policymaking intentions—on an issue-by-issue basis We show how and why bipartisan lawmaking persists amid congressional conflict: progress often comes through issue-specific pathways rather than broad consensus between Ds and Rs 🧵👇

Study after study shows campaign ads barely move the needle. So where does money’s real power come from? I ranked the five ways money corrupts politics—from least to most corrosive. What I’ve learned from 15 years of tracking political money:

We should just use standardized test scores + grades to admit students into college. Everything else is way too easy to game, allowing the extremely rich to dominate access to prestigious colleges. www.nytimes.com/interactive/... I've been saying this for a long time, but the data makes it clear.

Indiana state House Republicans have passed a new congressional gerrymander intended to turn their 7-2 majority into 9-0. It’s unclear whether they have the votes to pass it in the Senate, where many Republican holdouts have been swatted or received bomb threats from Trump supporters

Great new resource for your experimental methods syllabi!

Saving this one next year’s syllabus

Yet another fun thing going into my Research Design course next year.

huge service lift, this.

Survey experiments' popularity in political science is getting attention. What is good and bad about them? How can one maximize their benefits and mitigate their downsides? Greg Huber and I wrote up our thoughts: Paywalled: doi.org/10.1016/bs.h... Free: m-graham.com/papers/Huber...

Agents in Key Largo, Florida ripped this woman wearing medical scrubs out of her car as she screamed she is a US citizen. Agents cuffed her and put her in one of their cars. She was eventually let go, per David Goodhue of the Miami Herald, who also took this footage:

Must read by @marknevitt.bsky.social on why killing survivors at sea is a moral & strategic disaster for all of us: "If America chooses a path where killing defenseless survivors becomes acceptable, American servicemembers will pay the price for that choice." www.justsecurity.org/125998/boat-...

Political scientists love their survey experiments.

After becoming a congressional leader, a politician’s stock portfolio beats out those of peers by 47 (!!!) percentage points a year through trades timed around bills and firms that later get government contracts www.nber.org/papers/w34524 via @florianederer.bsky.social

Full pardon for the convicted drug trafficker who helped move 400 tons of cocaine. Death by airstrike for the guys on the boat www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/1...

Kristi Noem: "Sir, you made it through hurricane season without a hurricane. You kept the hurricanes away. We appreciate that."

Other than the largest single day of protest in American history?

Especially enjoyed this passage from Julia Rohrer's (@dingdingpeng.the100.ci) 2021 post on multiverse analysis: www.the100.ci/2021/03/07/m...

WHOA. Trump says he will pardon Juan Orlando Hernandez, who once said that he wanted to “shove the drugs right up the noses of the gringos.” He had people killed as part of his narco-trafficking ring, which he at times operated directly out of his presidential office.

Reuters reached out to everyone that Trump or his subordinates singled out publicly for retribution, and reviewed hundreds of official orders, directives and public records. The result: the most comprehensive accounting yet of his campaign of payback. www.reuters.com/investigates...

Q: Do you plan to attend Sarah's funeral? TRUMP: I haven't thought about it yet, but it's certainly something I can conceive of. I love West Virginia. You know, I won West Virginia by one of the biggest margins of any president anywhere.