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Alex Kerchner

@akerchner.bsky.social

PhD candidate in comparative/American politics @PUPolitics, alum @nyulaw, @uw. Text analysis, elections, democracy, R, baseball, transit

394 Followers  |  890 Following  |  48 Posts  |  Joined: 10.10.2023  |  2.1756

Latest posts by akerchner.bsky.social on Bluesky

The answer to ending the VRA has to be proportional representation, which is a better solution anyway

15.10.2025 19:11 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

When college kids publicly say "Israel's war on Gaza is bad" that is full-blown anti-Semitism that requires the federal government to crack down on all colleges.

When Young Republicans in their 20s and 30s privately praise Hitler and "joke" about the Holocaust, well, that's just freedom baby.

15.10.2025 18:53 β€” πŸ‘ 1255    πŸ” 303    πŸ’¬ 26    πŸ“Œ 9
Bari Weiss: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
YouTube video by LastWeekTonight Bari Weiss: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

In which John Oliver methodically unpacks how thin it is to claim you’re all about β€œthe truth” when you’re only running essays don’t get properly fact-checked β€” and don’t hold up to even basic reporting scrutiny www.youtube.com/watch?v=gieT...

13.10.2025 14:01 β€” πŸ‘ 3692    πŸ” 1025    πŸ’¬ 40    πŸ“Œ 50

They also cancelled government data collection about hunger to minimize evidence about their policies

13.10.2025 22:01 β€” πŸ‘ 964    πŸ” 401    πŸ’¬ 16    πŸ“Œ 6

The fact that protests now feature people who don’t normally have to worry about what might happen to them in an adverse encounter with security forces is a HUGE DEAL.

It means that the β€œreal” victims don’t have to suffer alone. It means that some people care about something more than themselves

13.10.2025 03:10 β€” πŸ‘ 2865    πŸ” 496    πŸ’¬ 20    πŸ“Œ 12
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Eternal flame at Martin Luther King Jr.’s Atlanta burial site destroyed Police say the man also urinated in the reflective pool.

Extinguishing MLK's Eternal Flame is both outrageous and a hell of a metaphor for right now www.wsbtv.com/news/local/a...

11.10.2025 22:49 β€” πŸ‘ 1114    πŸ” 534    πŸ’¬ 47    πŸ“Œ 77

It's notable that one of the people who was invited to the White House for their "antifa round table" was Nick Sortor, a guy who has literally worked for "InfoWars." The feds are approaching the media aspects of this situation like an unabashed authoritarian state would. bsky.app/profile/opb....

12.10.2025 14:43 β€” πŸ‘ 363    πŸ” 100    πŸ’¬ 6    πŸ“Œ 2
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Chicago priest Fr. Larry Dowling describes procession to ICE facility: β€œNo one had the courage to speak directly to us. No one from Homeland Security could stand in the presence of the Monstrance holding the Blessed Sacrament. No wonder. Evil is repelled, recoils in the presence of Christ.”

11.10.2025 21:10 β€” πŸ‘ 16308    πŸ” 4991    πŸ’¬ 287    πŸ“Œ 732

Yesterday I was told that the class I’m scheduled to teach this month, Confronting Oppression & Injustice, is no longer part of our curriculum. This is a required class yet there was no discussion, no faculty vote, just an email saying the class no longer exists. This is what it’s like in Texas now.

11.10.2025 21:45 β€” πŸ‘ 4054    πŸ” 1725    πŸ’¬ 141    πŸ“Œ 69

For more information about the Friday night massacre at CDC, I wrote up an analysis of who got terminated and what that means for public health.

Grateful to @saveamericamvmt.bsky.social for supporting and amplifying. We are in really terrible trouble.

rasmussenretorts.substack.com/p/the-death-...

11.10.2025 16:42 β€” πŸ‘ 542    πŸ” 322    πŸ’¬ 17    πŸ“Œ 24

RFK fired the CDC official (w/decades of experience) leading the measles outbreak response. It's been decades since we've had such a large outbreak. And just to ensure they they can spread the measles outbreak even farther, they also fired the leadership for the center focused on immunization.

11.10.2025 14:58 β€” πŸ‘ 942    πŸ” 470    πŸ’¬ 35    πŸ“Œ 38
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BREAKING: Friday night massacre underway at CDC. Doznes of "disease detectives," high-level scientists, entire Washington staff and editors of the MMWR (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report) have all been RIFed and received the following notice:

11.10.2025 02:10 β€” πŸ‘ 15404    πŸ” 8476    πŸ’¬ 856    πŸ“Œ 1119

Thinking you could get the Nobel Peace Prize by over the course of a week doing a slapdash ceasefire deal, the true results of which will not be clear for months or even years, is peak Trumpism

10.10.2025 09:08 β€” πŸ‘ 468    πŸ” 81    πŸ’¬ 5    πŸ“Œ 0

Lot of people confidently missing the point in the replies to this: if every cent of Elon musks net wealth was liquid, which it isn’t, that’s not even enough money to run the govt for two weeks. The problem less that they have money, and more how they use that money in destabilizing ways.

10.10.2025 13:19 β€” πŸ‘ 968    πŸ” 193    πŸ’¬ 37    πŸ“Œ 18

Picture how big the Hoover Dam is. An absolute unit. The Hoover Dam has a power capacity of 2 gigawatts (GW).

The solar farm that the Admin just cancelled could have produces 6.2 GW of power. That's more than 3 Hoover Dams.

10.10.2025 04:00 β€” πŸ‘ 4626    πŸ” 2347    πŸ’¬ 127    πŸ“Œ 94
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Opinion | Jack Smith’s lawfare and James Comey’s arraignment on pathetically weak charges Good people will be deterred from public service if they see a meaningful risk of winding up in jail afterward.

I spent more than a decade at The Post. It was good to me and I was proud to work there. I’ve largely refrained from being critical since I left. But this framing of the special counsel probe is embarrassing and flatly wrong. Stunning, but not. www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

09.10.2025 00:46 β€” πŸ‘ 5219    πŸ” 1248    πŸ’¬ 161    πŸ“Œ 98

I’m a career prosecutor who took a $25,000 check from an affiliated entity of Donald Trump’s while investigating Trump University and later left my lobbying firm to become Donald Trump’s personal impeachment lawyer, White House aide, and Attorney General. So don’t you DARE question my integrity.

07.10.2025 15:46 β€” πŸ‘ 6900    πŸ” 1894    πŸ’¬ 252    πŸ“Œ 49

perhaps the biggest story TFPever ran was a catastrophically shoddy argument that George Floyd ackshully died of an overdose. When confronted with irrefutable evidence that the piece was simply wrong, Weiss didn’t take it down, she asked her critic, @radleybalko.bsky.social, to come on a podcast.

06.10.2025 13:35 β€” πŸ‘ 9512    πŸ” 2157    πŸ’¬ 181    πŸ“Œ 88

I was told not to teach a class on the intellectual histories of Zionism and Anti-Zionism next year - not because they doubted I could teach it fairly, but because it would attract too many politicians scrutinizing the syllabus.

A society where that is a valid fear is no longer fully democratic.

05.10.2025 19:15 β€” πŸ‘ 2579    πŸ” 678    πŸ’¬ 29    πŸ“Œ 20

We built the best biomedical research system in history by centering peer review and we're trading it in for a system based on the whims of hacks and cranks.

05.10.2025 14:30 β€” πŸ‘ 39    πŸ” 18    πŸ’¬ 3    πŸ“Œ 0
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Trump Canceled 94 Million Pounds of Food Aid. Here’s What Never Arrived. ProPublica obtained records from the Department of Agriculture that detail the millions of pounds of food, down to the number of eggs, that never reached food banks because of the administration’s cut...

The Trump administration has cancelled 4,304 deliveries to food banks so far this year, refusing to deliver 94 million pounds of contracted-for food. Food banks simply can’t feed people enough anymore. Millions of Americans are going hungry as a result.

05.10.2025 13:43 β€” πŸ‘ 860    πŸ” 608    πŸ’¬ 47    πŸ“Œ 60

There has been basically no (public) reckoning with the democratic strategists who said that "raising the salience" of immigration/deportations in ~March would help Trump, which was obviously wrong at the time and has been proved wrong over the last 6 months www.gelliottmorris.com/p/kilmar-abr...

05.10.2025 13:44 β€” πŸ‘ 2219    πŸ” 462    πŸ’¬ 48    πŸ“Œ 26

The US is under attack from drug traffickers in the same sense I am under attack from cookie dough.

02.10.2025 22:38 β€” πŸ‘ 2145    πŸ” 324    πŸ’¬ 55    πŸ“Œ 10

BREAKING: Our client Mario Guevara, an Emmy-winning journalist detained by ICE in retaliation for livestreaming law enforcement activity, will be deported tomorrow to El Salvador.

Mario and his family are being punished for his reporting. This cruelty is meant to stifle our free press.

02.10.2025 22:42 β€” πŸ‘ 32332    πŸ” 15544    πŸ’¬ 654    πŸ“Œ 734
03.10.2025 01:43 β€” πŸ‘ 401    πŸ” 43    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

#KavanaughStop

02.10.2025 09:46 β€” πŸ‘ 393    πŸ” 202    πŸ’¬ 12    πŸ“Œ 13

It seems pointless even to say this, but the Fourth Amendment does not permit federal agents to kick down every door in an apartment building just because *some* people in that building are allegedly undocumented. Even in the unlikely event they had a warrant, warrants have to be specific.

02.10.2025 10:17 β€” πŸ‘ 445    πŸ” 182    πŸ’¬ 13    πŸ“Œ 7

Reminiscent of the old stories from the USSR about you could always tell who was kissing the ass of the secret police and dutifully reporting on their neighbors because they didn't get their homes and businesses raided when everyone else did.

01.10.2025 04:48 β€” πŸ‘ 127    πŸ” 40    πŸ’¬ 4    πŸ“Œ 2

To be clear, saying you're going to "avoid politics" is an INCREDIBLY political statement, especially in an age of fascism.

01.10.2025 04:00 β€” πŸ‘ 4542    πŸ” 936    πŸ’¬ 44    πŸ“Œ 47

@akerchner is following 20 prominent accounts