David Dagan

Joining the Black Friday Amazon boycott this weekend led me to rediscover @kanopy.com! Double-win! @awscloud.bsky.social

You don't have to be a genius to understand why DOGE was a disaster. But even serious people can get government reform badly wrong. To do it right, we need to study the pitfalls - and I'm jazzed about this Hypertext issue doing just that.

Read the whole thing!

They should be subject to protest and boycott because they're selling all of us out. And there should be a civil society effort to provide them with all the cover they need to fight back. These are actors over which there may be more levers of influence than the government itself at this point. 2/2

ABC has joined the slackjaw club, dismayed at being called on its proclaimed principles, incapable of retort. It joins law firms, broadcasters, and Fortune 500 corporations that have all been exposed as suffering from an advanced stage of moral rot. Trump sensed that spinelessness and pushed. 1/2

That is true. But it's being open to challenges nonetheless, and the big question is whether this mode can be harnessed to a democratic politics. Because it's not going away, I think?

One of the most baffling points in the @ezraklein.bsky.social piece on Kirk: "We can live with losing an election because we believe in the promise of the next election." But Kirk didn't! And yet Ezra concludes: "We were on the same side on the continued possibility of American politics."

No, Charlie Kirk was not practicing politics the right way His assassination deserves full condemnation; his full impact should not be sidestepped.

I mourn Kirk's killing. I admire his charisma, organizing genius, & commitment to debate. THAT was right about his way. I also believe he used his talents to promote lies that damaged our democracy and bigotry that divides us. THAT was wrong about his way. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

Pritzker had at least one statement along these lines in the last few days - he gets it.

It can be a trap if you make it a trap. It's a gift if you make it a gift. The line is: We have a big crime problem and we'd love more cops to help solve it. But Trump is cutting money for cops and sending troops because he isn't coming after criminals - he's coming after democracy.

Varieties of Abundance - Niskanen Center We will know that abundance has succeeded when there is a proliferation of “abundances,” different governing projects attached to previously existing ideologies, interests, and parties.

Big new paper from Steve Teles
@niskanencenter.bsky.social
today niskanencenter.org/abundance-va.... Steve outlines six types of “abundance” thinking he predicts will shape US politics. As in the Progressive Era, broad principles will attach to distinct cultural and political economic projects.

Trump’s FBI Raid of John Bolton’s Home Looks Like a “Five Alarm Fire” Thus far little is known about Friday’s law enforcement action against a top Trump critic. But we’re seeing an escalation of authoritarian power on many fronts that has grown unmistakable.

This is getting very bad:

*FBI raids top Trump critic's home
*Trump loyalist gins up "mortgage fraud" pretexts for DOJ probes of Schiff, Letitia James, Lisa Cook
*Bannon says ICE will monitor 2026 voting
*DHS memo vows LA operations "for years to come"

New from me:
newrepublic.com/article/1994...

I spent a lot of time trying to level-set on how we reached the point of starvation in Gaza. First of several posts: daviddagan.substack.com/p/why-are-ga...

Some racial profiling was happening from the start, but the operation was supercharged in mid-May when the White House ordered ICE to stop using warrants, targeted operations, and just "go out on the streets" and arrest people. These arrests shot from 500/week to 1,500/week

The BLS firing is one of Trump's most chilling moves yet. He is demanding that we be lied to about the most material facts of most Americans' lives - how they earn a living. And it will come at the expense of that living, because it destroys the foundations for investing in the United States.

YIMBYism started as a single-issue movement. It's time to think bigger. New research shows that voters who like cities back denser housing. To make cities more likeable, YIMBYs need to act more like a party.

I want to enthusiastically endorse this piece from @cselmendorf.bsky.social & @profschleich.bsky.social. Thus far YIMBY has been almost entirely focused on More Housing, but ultimately, if you want people to accept density, you have to make it *nice*, and that means more than just housing.

If R's are going to be the working-class party, they'll need to do better than ruinous debt and tariffs. There is a subtle way of thinking about growth that we have lost, this piece shows. 2/2

The great @henrymjtonks.bsky.social cranked up his time machine and came up with really critical lessons for Democrats. But not only Democrats. 1/2 hypertext.niskanencenter.org/p/lessons-fr...

But local and even state politics are much more fluid, which is also why political reform probably needs to start at the bottom. 2/2

When lobbyists have to pick a side Partisan polarization has sucked in the special interests that long kept Congress pragmatic.

As @mattyglesias.bsky.social notes today, certain interest groups certainly built the polarization machine deliberately, but @jmcrosson.bsky.social wrote this great piece for us about how many just got sucked into it, even as single-issue orgs. 1/2 hypertext.niskanencenter.org/p/when-lobby...

Punchcard society. Show your card, get a punch.

YIMBYism needs to become more party-like, @cselmendorf.bsky.social and David Schleicher argue in today's Hypertext. Here's why. Shoutout to @dbroockman.bsky.social & @jkalla.bsky.social.

Hypertext—Niskanen’s intellectual journal—is turning two!

We launched it to tackle one big question: How do we make America’s institutions work for the 21st century?

Now we’re sharpening that mission 🧵

Iran is interesting because there is a hard decision that will commit Trump, period. If the bomb is dropped, it doesn't come back. If two weeks in it is not dropped, it probably won't be. Most of these other areas lack such an obvious focal point so far.

I would not assume they will "chicken out" on any major piece of this. I would assume they are going to carefully evaluate just how hard each constraint actually is and have some kind of negotiation on which one to try and blow through.

Tons of major initiatives are in limbo as other players show Trump their mettle and he (and his court) mulls over/fights over whether to apply more brute force or not. They tried to warp us into a new domestic and political universe and are hitting turbulence in the warp zone.

But since then he has hit some hard constraints that require political tradeoffs even in his narrow authoritarian conception of what it means to hold power. Markets crashed, courts repudiated him, the public got activated, efforts on Israel-Iran-Gaza/Ukraine got stuck, Congress started dealing.

In his first 3-4 months Trump was hyperaggressive on almost every front. He blew through some quasi-law in the form of bedrock norms (think "the presumption of regularity" in court and relations with Congress) as well as a meaningful amount of hard law.

The "TACO" shorthand for thinking about Trump is not just annoying as an acronym - I also think it misreads the moment. I think it grows out of confusion that comes with being in what I'm thinking of as The Warp Zone.

Iraq and Afghanistan from the beginning were conceived as regime-change invasions involving ground troops. A war goal of destroying Fordow aerially is limited and (I think!) achievable. Whether we should do it hinges on nonpublic intel IMO - but that's the question on the table.