Scott Williamson

Just read @adambonica.bsky.social 's latest deep dive into the Democratic Party's campaign finance spamming. Wow! data4democracy.substack.com/p/the-mother...

The massive list of suspended UCLA grants came out today: 300 NSF and 500 NIH grants. I am miraculously not on the list, but this is devastating. Science will be lost, progress will be frozen, people will lose jobs, and careers in science and medicine are being destroyed. This is not ok.

so building a ballroom certainly feels like one of those 'he doesn't plan on leaving' things because especially this person isn't going to build something for the next guy and I mean I don't know how long a ballroom takes to build but its not going to be quick and Jan 2029 is approaching

Wow. A group of top scholars at Harvard just sent a letter to its president, Alan Garber, warning against surrendering to Trump.

Signatories include Steven Levitsky, Dani Rodrik, Ryan Enos, Theda Skocpol, and Steven Walt.

Someone forwarded it to me. Read it here:

Trump’s attacks on civil society are working.

YouTube video by Senator Chris Van Hollen WATCH: U.S. Army veteran gives first-hand account of suffering, starvation in Gaza

As starvation worsens by the day in Gaza, the Netanyahu government has been using food as a weapon of war — with complicity from Trump and U.S. taxpayer dollars.

This is painful to listen to but here’s what a U.S. Army veteran and Green Beret who witnessed it first-hand recounted to me:

World Central Kitchen | WCK Resumes Limited Hot Meal Service in Gaza After 5-Day Pause After a five day pause, limited cooking operations resumed today at World Central Kitchen's Deir al-Balah Field Kitchen in Gaza.  This marks the second time in 2025 our hot meal program has been force...

World Central Kitchen @wck.org has also been able to reopen kitchens in Gaza this week. Learn more and donate here:
wck.org/news/gaza-up...

VCU is still withholding the degree of a pro-Palestinian campus activist Sereen Haddad continues to face university discipline over an April protest.

Administrations that are pursuing these overly punitive policies are undermining the very existence of higher ed in so many ways. For one, they are chasing away smart, humane, eloquent students who are natural leaders. www.vpm.org/news/2025-07...

Revealed: Harvard publisher cancels entire journal issue on Palestine shortly before publication As Harvard’s feud with Trump escalated, so did tensions over an ‘education and Palestine’ issue of a prestigious journal. Scholars blame the ‘Palestine exception’ to academic freedom

I've been involved in academic publishing for 20 years and have never heard of anything like this happening. You can claim that the censorship is all a coincidence, but in the face of repeated censorship on the same issue, it is simply not believable.
www.theguardian.com/education/20...

ALEX DE WAAL: So, let me say that I've been working on this field of famine, food crisis and humanitarian action for more than 40 years, and there is no case, over those four decades, of such minutely engineered, closely monitored, precisely designed mass starvation of a population as is happening in Gaza today.

Few if any experts know more about the deliberate use of starvation as a war crime than Alex de Waal. If he says it's happening, it's so.

Opinion | I Watched It Happen in Hungary. Now It’s Happening Here.

This perfectly describes America's elite institutions.

"They cling to the illusion that they can preserve their independence and integrity while making deals with a strongman, just as Hungary’s elite believed they, too, could emerge unscathed."

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/23/o...

An unbearably sad statement from the Editorial Committee (SDJ) of the AFP news agency, please read:

"Without immediate intervention, the last reporters in Gaza will die.
AFP has been working with 1 writer, 3 photographers and 6 videographers, all freelance, in the Gaza Strip… /1

Our rapid slide into authoritarianism continues.

I've been saying to friends for a few months that the more I study authoritarianism in other countries, the more concerned I become that the CBS story is the sleeping giant here. The process has been a simmer (people inside the network have spoken out in real-time) but don't mistake slow for safe.

A scatterplot titled “Agencies Facing DOGE Layoffs vs. GOP Budget Increases” shows how liberal-leaning federal agencies are more likely to face layoffs, while conservative-leaning ones receive budget increases. The x-axis indicates perceived ideological leaning (from liberal on the left to conservative on the right), and the y-axis (log scale) shows agency size by number of staff. Each dot represents a federal agency and is colored by status: • Red = DOGE layoffs • Green = Budget increases • Gray = No layoffs Key findings visible in the plot: • 9 out of 10 agencies with documented layoffs are liberal-leaning. • Large liberal agencies like HHS, EPA, NIH, USAID, and the Department of Education face layoffs. • Conservative agencies like the Department of Defense (DOD), ICE, and CBP receive budget increases. The note cites data from over 1,500 federal executives and analysis of agencies with 500+ staff. Author: Adam Bonica.

A pattern that emerged early has only intensified. Perceived agency ideology remains the single best predictor and clearest framework for understanding what’s happening to the federal government. After funding ICE like a foreign military, the funding cuts to NPR and PBS are just the latest examples.

The same company that's buying CBS (and needs Trump's approval to do so) is also trying to buy Bari Weiss' website. It's a political decision.

This reiterates the point I’ve made a few times on here: the US’s loss will be other countries’ gain, but overall it will be an enormous loss. There is no other country that can replicate the US research investment or environment, and the primary brain drain will be out of research, not overseas.

✨ Come and join @politicsoxford.bsky.social for 5 years ✨

This is the perfect position for a research and teaching active junior colleague with expertise in European politics and quant methods. Apply!

California and New York should get to work. Unilateral disarmament is a bad strategy.

Popular mobilization matters in many more ways than meet the eye. Keep showing up. Keep speaking up.

Infographic titled “One Court, Two Standards” compares how the Supreme Court used emergency powers to rule on lower-court injunctions against the Biden and Trump administrations. Two panels show: • Biden Administration: Lower courts blocked policies in 21 cases. All 21 cases are represented by red squares, indicating that 0% of injunctions/TROs were lifted by SCOTUS. • Trump Administration: Lower courts blocked policies in 86 cases. 66 green squares and 20 red squares show that 77% of injunctions/TROs were lifted by SCOTUS. Key takeaway box below reads: “Using its ‘shadow docket,’ the Supreme Court granted emergency relief to lift 77% of lower-court injunctions against the Trump administration. It lifted 0% of those against the Biden administration.” Sources and notes below include: CourtListener data through July 7, 2025; analysis by Adam Bonica.

The Supreme Court’s “shadow docket” has cast very different shadows depending on which party holds the White House.

When lower courts blocked Trump admin policies, SCOTUS intervened on an emergency basis to lift those orders in 77% of cases.

For the Biden administration, that number was 0%.

If the Emperor has no clothes, and chooses to walk down the Main Street of the city, it may very well be indecorous to call him out as buck naked. But the real wrong in that scenario is in the naked parade down Main Street, not in the call that points the nakedness out.

How Harvard’s Ties to China Helped Make It a White House Target

Nothing that any university has done has "helped make it a White House target". Universities are targets bc they are *always* targeted by authoritarian regimes, and anything would have been a pretext. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/07/u...

People who don’t pay any attention to political news aren’t that worried about the state of American democracy. Free to read: s2.washingtonpost.com/camp-rw/?tra...

Broken Heartland The war on Indiana University and beyond

“At the moment, powerful interests in the United States—federal, state, and even local—are destroying the institutions that create public culture. Even looking at these desecrations from afar, it still hurts to see the institutions that shaped me tossed aside so callously.”

Saddening and shameful to see what it being done to my alma mater.

Indiana public colleges cut almost 20% of degrees Public Indiana colleges and universities have eliminated 19 percent of their degree programs to meet requirements added to the state’s budget, according to the Commission for Higher Education.

So, here it is. Thanks to a new state law that was NEVER DEBATED, Indiana University has committed itself to abolishing majors in African-American/African Diaspora Studies: American Studies; Art History; French; Italian; Religious Studies etc. DOZENS of majors. www.ipm.org/news-section...

More of this please.

In Sudan, where children clung to life, doctors say USAID cuts have been fatal The Trump administration’s cuts to USAID had an immediate and deadly impact in war-ravaged Sudan, according to civilians, doctors and aid officials.

More on the impact of gutting USAID:

"The US cuts “force us to make extremely difficult decisions,” said Kristine Hambrouck, the acting UN rep in Sudan. Aid workers must choose between buying vaccines for babies or nutrition products for starving children, she said, & all could die without help."

the Big Beautiful Bill is extremely unpopular, fiscally disastrous, callous and cruel and devastating to Americans in need. And still we have national Democrats out on the Sunday morning TV shows criticizing their own party's mayoral candidate.

A real wakeup call. Something's gotta give.