Jason McDaniel

Reminder on the anniversary: the best social science evidence we have suggests Florida Republicans stole the 2000 election.

"Did Illegal Overseas Absentee Ballots Decide the 2000 U.S. Presidential Election?" Kosuke Imai and Gary King
gking.harvard.edu/files/ballot...

Federalism can cause a guy to need a drink!

New from Michael Miller and me at @thejop.bsky.social: Evidence that, in most areas that were affected by the decision, the Supreme Court decision gutting the Voting Rights Act in 2013 (Shelby County v Holder) increased the racial turnout gap. A thread...
www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

This is good. Enough with the Wilsonian crap that there's a single national will and that the president has some mystical connection to it. The Framers were wiser than that, and the Constitution they wrote makes no sense unless we accept that.

The Myth of the Constitutional Sheriff How Richard Mack led the rise off the constitutional sheriff movement, one of the most serious threats to American democracy since the Civil War.

"The Myth of the Constitutional Sheriff"
While ICE is the face of Trump's lawlessness masquerading as law, ICE isn't the key to how got here.
Sheriffs are.
Sheriffs empowered by myths.
3 Experts help unravel their deep roots & bitter fruits. 1/
barnraisingmedia.com/the-myth-of-...

Money Doesn't Buy Elections. It Does Something Worse. Campaign ads barely move the needle. The real influence is hiding in plain sight.

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:

A version of the Simpsons "Lionel Hutz" newspaper ad modified to use the words in Keith's post. So bright red punctuation modifies otherwise grey text from "KILL THEM ALL" to "KILL THEM ALL?" and from "NO SURVIVORS" to "NO, SURVIVORS!"

This would have to be the single biggest partisan shift in democratic history that didn't involve a civil war or the equivalent, right?

Just stunning.

I suppose Whig Party in the US comes closest? But it was more a shift, and wasn't in power at its collapse. And was part of prelude to civil war.

Major decision. In D.C., ICE/CBP can no longer arrest immigrants without a warrant unless they find individualized probable cause of a flight risk.

"Viewing all immigrants potentially subject to removal as criminals is, as a legal matter, plain wrong." www.documentcloud.org/documents/26...

Downzoning was used by cities around the world to preserve neighborhood aesthetics & protect property values.

New evidence from Chicago in @findingspress.org ⏬ shows downzoning's effects over several decades:
—Massive drop in housing construction
—Higher home prices
—Increased racial segregation

A faded photo of Shasta Resevoir

"At the very least, many residents feel that there are de facto two
Californias."

From our upcoming Security issue, Nevin Kallepalli probes political resentment: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-secessionists-of-shasta-county/

Chart with Turnout on the Y axis & election year (2016, 2020, and 2024) on the X axis. 6 lines, 3 for White, Black, and Hispanic in households making over $100k/year, 3 for the same groups in households making under $30k/year. Overall you can see turnout increasing among higher-income people in all three racial groups, and declining (White and Black) or staying flat (Hispanic) among low-income people; the turnout gap by income is much larger in 2024 than in 2020 or 2016. from 2016 -> 2024: - White $100k turnout goes from 65% to 78% while white under $30k turnout goes from 55% to 49% - Black over $100k turnout goes from 51% to 64% while Black under $30k turnout goes from 48% to 33% - Hispanic over $100k turnout goes from 52% to 67% while Hispanic under $30k turnout stays flat at about 36% (higher in 2020 at 42%). Caption: "Our analysis, Cooperative Election Survey Data, Validated Votes."

image of a report cover, with a US flag in the background, and the text "The Political Disconnect: Working-Class and Low-Income People on What Politics Means to Them and How They Might be Mobilized”

Lower-income people are less likely to vote than higher-income people, across racial groups - and that gap has been growing.

That’s a real problem for the future of US democracy.

It’s not apathy or ignorance - for many, it’s a sense that politics is not for or about them.

In a report out in Jan +

Today is the official publication day of "Everyday Democracy"!
🧵

How a 1940 electoral system reform in Cambridge made its 2025 housing breakthrough possible   - CommonWealth Beacon This is more than just a housing “win.” It’s a triumph for Cambridge’s unique brand of representative democracy—one that balances citywide priorities with fair representation for diverse communities.

Interesting article on the proportional representation/housing policy nexus: commonwealthbeacon.org/opinion/how-...

Patti Smith’s Family Secrets Nearing 80, the punk poet reflects on the twists in her story that have surprised even her.

Patti Smith spoke with @amyweissmeyer.bsky.social over matcha lattes about her new memoir, “Bread of Angels.” In the book, Smith reflects on her lifetime of reinvention—and the twists in her story that have surprised even her. Read more from their conversation:

What happens when you downzone?

Our new open-access research paper in @findingspress.org investigates effects of decades of downzoning in Chicago.

Findings:
—Downzoned areas added 1/7th of the new units as comparable non-downzoned areas;
—Downzoned areas became more white & were more expensive.

Really excited to share my new article published in @electoralstudies.bsky.social!

1/7

🚨 LSE Assistant Professor in Political Science 🚨

We’re hiring a tenure-track assistant professor - any area of empirical political science - to join our wonderful Government Dept @lsegovernment.bsky.social

Any questions, please reach out to me

📣 Please share! 📣

jobs.lse.ac.uk/Vacancies/W/...

Three things about the Witkoff tapes:

1) It appears Western intelligence services have decided to let Witkoff (and Trump) know they have recordings of their traitorous conversations w/Russia.

2) This Ukraine "deal" was all Witkoff's idea.

3) Congressional leaders should demand he be fired.

Congress Can Toughen Existing Laws to Expose Trump’s Pardon-for-Sale Racket The Supreme Court’s immunity ruling gave presidents a free pass for corruption, but Congress can still demand transparency

Good breakdown from @kimwehle.bsky.social on what to do about the pardon power within the limits of its constitutional hard-coding. @theunpopulist.net

Nvidia’s ‘I’m Not Enron’ memo has people asking a lot of questions already answered by that memo The Streisand Effect strikes again

I mean I did have other things to do today but fine www.theverge.com/business/828...

Congrats, Rand Paul, you’ve invented health insurance companies.

Title page) Title page with centered serif text reading “Close Race: Harnessing Multiracialism to Reduce Racial Prejudice*”. Below is the author name “Jasmine English†” and below that the date “October 31, 2025”, all centered with white background.

Screenshot of the paper’s abstract in serif font. The text explains that multiracial populations are the fastest growing in the U.S., and the paper examines how learning about African Americans with Irish ancestry influences racial attitudes among white Irish Americans. It reports experimental findings showing that such information reduces racial prejudice, especially among Republicans and those with higher baseline prejudice, and suggests multiracialism may reduce perceived racial distance.

Figure 1: Racial Resentment) Coefficient plot titled “Treatment Effects: Racial Resentment.” The x-axis is Coefficient Estimate with a dashed vertical zero line. Four rows correspond to Treat, TreatLinked, TreatClose, and Treat*Important. The interaction terms show larger negative estimates (around −0.05 to −0.18) than in Figure 2, indicating stronger reductions in racial resentment. Model estimates are color-coded and labeled in a legend at bottom left.

Table 7: Reduced Racial Essentialism “I was actually very surprised, it’s a much larger percentage than I realized. I guess I’ve been raised that white people are much more likely to be Irish.” “I was really surprised. I honestly had no idea and just thought, like me, Irish is basically white.” “I am surprised, as I think of typical Irish Americans to be very white.” “I was surprised - I had no idea. Usually when I think “Irish” I think of very fair skin, red hair, and blue eyes (like my mom)” “I was surprised! The term African American makes me think their lineage would be purely African, but I suppose no one really has ancestry tied to one place and one place only.” “I was surprised as I believed that Irish people were overwhelmingly White. It makes me more course to know about how such a high percentage of African Americans came to have Irish ancestry.” “That is surprising to me. I always picture people with more fair skin being Irish.” “I was surprised, but once I thought about it made sense. Eventually all of us will have a little bit of all ancestries in us.” Notes: Open-ended responses that illustrate a shift away from racial essentialism among treated respondents.

“Experimental data from largest online survey of Irish Americans reveal learning about African Americans with Irish ancestry reduces prejudice among white Irish Americans who identify with Irish American identity, and effects are mostly driven by Republicans…” www.jasmineenglish.net/uploads/1/4/...

Turns out Originalism didn’t start as a reaction to the Warren Court or Brown but as a tool to argue the 15th Amendment was either invalid or didn’t apply to the states. Here’s the real birth story of the doctrine (discovered by a real historian): www.dorfonlaw.org/2025/11/orig...

Followed by appointing his horse to replace Senator Kelly

A Roadmap for Success or a Troubled Experiment? A look at what national observers are saying about Portland’s charter reform

rosecityreform.substack.com/p/a-roadmap-...

🚨We analyzed 138 million geocoded property tax records to quantify how municipal boundaries spatially overlap onto economic segregation in every US metro area—creating disparities in localities’ ability to fund public goods. And we made an interactive map of our results! [1/16]

Growing Racial Disparities in Voter Turnout, 2008–2022 The gap is increasing nationwide, especially in counties that had been subject to federal oversight until the Supreme Court invalidated preclearance in 2013.

We also have a non-academic version of the paper written up over here at the @brennancenter.org:
www.brennancenter.org/our-work/res...