Adam Sheingate

Re-upping this post from February showing location of fed employees by House district. The pain of a shutdown reaches far and wide.

Opinion | You Beat Trumpism by Banding Together. It’s as Hard and as Simple as That.

"It wanted to signal strength. Instead, it’s revealing its weakness. The administration’s need to break the academy is forcing it to make a desperately risky gamble." www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/o...

According to the USDA, 17.9% of households with children experienced food insecurity in 2023. Yesterday, the USDA said it was cancelling its annual food insecurity report. Today, they placed the economists responsible for the survey on indefinite leave.

NEW SPECIAL ISSUE: The Politics and Governance of Migration

Guest editors: Tiziana Caponio, Maria Schiller, & Cathrine Talleraas

#Pasky
#Policysky
#Polisky

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/toc/10.1...

Thanks, this is great.

Hey friends, recently someone posted a very nice in-class worksheet for discussing assigned readings. If that was you, or you have something similar, please share.

Conflating Lobbying and PACs: The Surprisingly Low Overlap in Organizational Lobbying and Campaign Expenditures Alexander C. Furnas, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, USA Timothy M. LaPira, James Madison University, USA Clare Brock, Colorado State University, USA ABSTRACT This article investigates whether campaign contributions and lobbying are com- plementary, substitutive, or distinct forms of organizational political engagement. Our study reveals minimal overlap between organizations that engage in lobbying and those that make campaign contributions despite the perception that these activities are interchangeable forms of “money in politics.” Using comprehensive contribution and lobbying report data from 1998 to 2018, we find that most politically active organizations focus exclusively on either lobbying or making campaign contributions. Only a small percentage of organizations engage in both activities. This finding challenges the assumption that these forms of political activity are inherently linked. The majority of organizations engaged in political activity do so exclusively through lobbying. However, the top lobbying groups spend the most money and almost always have affiliated political action committees (PACs). Most lobbying money is spent by a small number of big spenders—organizations that also have affiliated PACs. Organizations that both lobby and make campaign contributions tend to be well resourced and rare.

Excited to see my new paper "Conflating Lobbying and PACs: The Surprisingly Low Overlap in Organizational Lobbying and Campaign Expenditures" with @timlapira.bsky.social and @clarebrock.bsky.social out at @pspolisci.bsky.social!

What I learned teaching American Politics in the age of Trump Democracy is a matter of faith

I wrote this short reflection back in May and decided to share it now as we embark on another semester. For my political science colleagues gearing up to teach an intro course in U.S. politics, keep the faith.

A few scattered thoughts on BLS:

Trump would have done better to install a loyalist before the jobs numbers started looking like trouble. The post-revision tantrum and sacking will make it, if anything, harder rather than easier to cook the books without anyone taking notice (1/x)

This is amazing, entirely justified and just makes me love Tom Lehrer even more.

Boston remains THE WORST.

"The largest increase was 292 percent in Boston and the second highest was a 289 percent increase in San Diego."

immresearch.org/publications...

On Data and Democracy (Mid-Year Roundup): Charting the Assault on American Democracy and A Path Forward A narrative of a democracy in the balance, told through 29 data visualizations.

Been a busy year in the data mines.📊 Just published my mid-year roundup: 29 data visualizations on the state of US democracy, tracking everything from judicial resistance to billionaire influence to why Dems have a mobilization crisis, not a moderation problem.

All charts free to use:

The new platform from @wiley.com is an unmitigated disaster. The journal I co-edit (@govjournal.bsky.social) receives more than 80 submissions per month. Since the transition on July 1, we've received only 9 new papers. The new platform has half the functionality of the old one. #enshittification

Here's a similar figure for SNAP recipients

🧵

The AI Dividend: Turning Computational Power into Shared Prosperity How to fund an AI Dividend from the engine of automation itself: make cloud computing a public utility, set prices above raw computational cost, and channel the difference into universal basic income.

60% of jobs in advanced economies face AI disruption. We're sleepwalking into a future where a handful of billionaires own all the AI infrastructure while millions lose their livelihoods.

But what if everyone received a monthly dividend funded by the engine driving AI?

Meet The AI Dividend 🧵

I've spent much of my career studying the legal institution known as "the posse comitatus" as well as "The Posse Comitatus Act." Here's a quick thread. Cites at the end.

Posse comitatus is Latin for "power of the county," or temporarily deputized people obligated to assist law enforcers.

My friends, it's not just happening in a galaxy far, far away.

From my undergraduate lecture notes on the Weimar Republic's collapse

GOP fixation with work requirements in Medicaid and SNAP is based on a logical fallacy at the heart of US social policy:
If you work hard, you will succeed
If you are lazy, you are undeserving
If you do not succeed, you are lazy and undeserving.

I think this reflects a real feature of the Democratic Party, an Obama era hangover from the ‘08 and ‘12 elections that led to the fetishization of data analytics as the lens through which all strategic questions should be answered. A very specific consultant ecosystem evolved as a result.

The War at Home

www.thewarathome.tv

This article by Jeff Jenkins is a good place to start if you want to see how contested elections would likely play out if the GOP clings to congressional majorities in 2026

This is exactly the position our university leadership needs to adopt right now. Higher education is under attack, not because of what it does wrong, but because of what it does that is right: seek truth, expand opportunity, and promote the values of a free society.

American politics scholars to comparative politics colleagues:

2017: What should I read on democratic backsliding?
2025: What should I read on democratic transitions?

This how the regime consolidates power. Cruelty and corruption. Supplicants will be spared. At this point, little can be done to stop further entrenchment absent a large, pro-democracy movement on the scale of the civil rights or abolition movements.

Opinion | Elon Musk Should Take a Hard Look at the U.S.D.A. (Gift Article) The Department of Agriculture is exactly the kind of dysfunctional behemoth that Elon Musk and DOGE should reform.

Too bad Elon isn’t here, I found a bloated federal bureaucracy that wastes billions of taxpayer dollars paying off politically connected businessmen. I wrote about it in the @nytimes.com, someone tell DOGE!

www.nytimes.com/2025/03/07/o...

I’m begging a member of the press to ask Speaker Mike Johnson how his caucus feels about adding a 51st state with a congressional delegation the size and political orientation of California. Expose the absurdity.

Varieties of experimentation

Chris Ansell’s work gets at the multiple meanings and uses of experimentation. Here’s one example.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

A musical montage tribute to the Bond franchise like it’s 1987