Pew Research Center:

Very important piece by Cerin Lindgrensavage and @davidasuper.bsky.social. This behavior by the administration is not only illegal, it is anti-constitutional. thehill.com/opinion/cong...

"Road rage" is what they call murder when a car is involved. It waters down the reality of the violence and the crime. When someone murders a fellow human with a gun, it's rarely called anything other than what it is: murder.

Trump doesn't remember Homeland Security briefed him on China and the election in 2018. Shouldn't that be concerning?

ProPublica: Trump's FCC Chairman Brendan Carr and fellow Republican commissioner Olivia Trusty received pricey gifts valued at tens of thousands of dollars from Paramount while the company had deals pending before the commission.

Learn how eye tracking is used in survey research & how you can get started! Sign up for our free August 5 webinar: tinyurl.com/i-tracking

New voices join Good Authority in 2026! We welcome nine political scientists to our team of experts in our latest cohort of Good Authority fellows. Read their bios below and say hey in the comments! goodauthority.org/news/new-voi...

Does protesting authoritarianism alienate moderates? New working paper on 1960s West German student movement suggests protest was associated with modest *increase* in support for the center left, potentially by reshaping perceptions of the far right. osf.io/preprints/so...

This is the unlimited agricultural guest worker program that has existed for 40 years.

one of my unpopular (to americans) opinions is that primaries are a pretty flawed way of choosing candidates and only superficially have more democratic legitimacy than “smoke-filled rooms”

Investment accounts owned by President Trump engaged in more than 300 previously undisclosed stock purchases on April 8, 2025, one day before his surprise announcement that he would pause a number of his “Liberation Day” tariffs, his financial disclosure report says.

Just now at Mt. Rushmore: Trump renews calls to pass election overhaul, saying “if we do…we will not lose an election for 100 years.”

Ambivalence is an essential feature of public opinion. Few Americans outright support undemocratic practices but many more are ambivalent. Important new research: doi.org/10.1038/s415...

"Every serious legal mind must inevitably face a fundamental choice: Read the Constitution and apply its words as the bedrock laws of the land, or transcend its tired text and interpret the super-secret invisible version that tells you exactly what you want to hear."

Gross: Trump is now directly linking grants of disaster aid to states right to local GOP candidates in the midterms, giving them a boost. He's crediting *them* for his decisions. This is supposed to be a neutral process! On the pod, @stevebenen.com lays it all out: newrepublic.com/article/2126...

Insightful new-ish article journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

NEW: Most Supreme Court Rulings Are Secretive Votes With Little Justification ProPublica conducted a new analysis that shows the court is deciding more consequential rulings than ever before in largely unsigned orders with little to no explanation.

NEW STORY: “It is general knowledge in our practice that for $2 million, you can have a pardon,” a prominent defense attorney told me. Others said $1-2 million is the going rate, though clients were offering *many* times that amount for challenging cases. www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...

From 1925: a prediction that, as more people choose to drive to the countryside, cars will end up destroying the very beauty that people go to see.

Shorter JD Vance: We’re so much worse than Nixon

Lawmakers gave specific orders to Trump officials on foreign aid spending, but officials have refused to follow many of them — likely in violation of the law, experts say. In doing so, they’re escalating a constitutional crisis.

$2.5 BILLION. That’s how much the Trump Administration has now spent paying companies to cancel offshore wind projects that would have lowered your electric bill. Yes, you heard that right, they are PAYING to keep your energy bills high.

BREAKING: A federal judge has blocked the Trump admin from implementing a new system she says is "actively" and "haphazardy" purging "non-citizens" from voter rolls using inaccurate data. ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show...

Note: The US has no safety regs that limit vehicle blind zones. Federal car rules only protect those inside a vehicle. Others are ignored.

The reflection pool is a metaphor. Failure to engage experts No examination of root causes No bid contractors hastily chosen No accountability Magagop key achievements: Waste, Fraud, Abuse of our resources & reputation www.yahoo.com/news/politic... #voices4Victory #USDemocracy #DV1

Trump's TSA order was an interesting case of democratic erosion: supported by majorities of Democrats and Harris voters despite widespread knowledge of the constitutional principle it violated. osf.io/mdz7n_v1

Great post

Blame the Republican Party, who laid down and let DOGE and Trump completely demolish the one solution we had to the screwworm plague.

A shout-out in the piece for @amtrak.com:

I thought people were kidding, turns out Elon really did axe the screwworm containment program back in March 25. fucking imbecile www.agri-pulse.com/articles/226...

This is a devastating interview. Scott Pelley tells the NYT that Bari Weiss directly put a “thumb on the scale” for Trump over the killing of Renee Good. Here’s his explanation of exactly what happened.

We’ve spent decades told that if the economy grows, people’s lives will get better. Millions are working harder, paying more, and losing faith that institutions can deliver. Imagine an economy and democracy that actually make life better. That’s why today, we’re launching The #GoodLife Agenda. 🧵

Remember the current NIH director going on about protecting researchers from government censorship? Today his people called the police in to forcibly remove my colleagues from their own society meeting for sharing an editorial published in their flagship journal that was critical of him. Gift link

The Teapot Dome scandal involved $400,000 in 1923 dollars. Huge scandal, taught in every HS history book, almost the synonym for "corruption." In 2026 dollars, Teapot Dome was a hair under $8 *M*illion. With an M. Not a B. M. The scope of corruption under Trump 2--plus its nakedness--is epochal.

There’s been a lot of talk in this race about what makes a "real man." A man does what’s right when no one is watching. He upholds his commitments to his family and neighbors. He doesn’t lie, cheat, & steal his way through life. Real men serve others. Weak men serve themselves.

FDR understood something that much of modern economic policymaking forgot: the purpose of economic policy is not simply growth for its own sake. It is whether people can build stable, dignified lives for themselves and their families. That idea sits at the heart of The #GoodLife Agenda.

New study finds government-controlled media can shape AI responses, making models more likely to present governments positively when responding in the languages where that media dominates. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A great election night in New Jersey - and the surprising pleasure of finishing in third place. samwang.substack.com/p/a-great-el...

The regulatory state is more important to the smooth operation of society to which we’ve become accustomed than anyone in this administration realizes, and in a lot of ways, we’ve already run off the cliff and are just starting to look down

Scientists: We desperately need long, unbroken records of North Atlantic currents to see how close we are to a #climate tipping point. US government: sending ships to rip 900 deep-sea sensors out of the water. Congress voted twice to keep them funded. They're being pulled anyway.

It has the highest levels of toxic Pfas in drinking water in Scotland. But how did this remote island become awash with forever chemicals?

I think there's a connection there to how their worldview on industrial regulation went from "pro-industry, even if it's bad for the environment" to "anti-environment, even if it's bad for industry". (Case in point: Trump's war on water efficiency standards.) They're like Captain Planet villains.

The founders would have been astounded that the Constitution lasted as long as it did. It was a great achievement in the 1780s. Even if it were still operating as written, it would need an update based on 240 years of global experience with democracy.

The Arctic Ocean food chain is collapsing. Exposure to sunlight of vast shallow regions of the ocean previously covered by ice breaks down the nutrient nitrate and removes it from seawater, limiting plankton growth.