Adam Zelizer

🪃Do legislators trade proposals?

➡️Leveraging a lottery in the Canadian Parliament, @semrasevi.bsky.social & D.P. Green find little evidence MPs second motions to gain favor. Support seems driven by shared interests, not quid pro quo www.cambridge.org/core/journal... #FirstView

Shocking refusal of an econ journal to correct (retract) a clearly flawed, misleading, and dishonest paper. Kudos to the replicators.

Zombie finding cited by Zephyr Teachout on @ezraklein.bsky.social pod www.nytimes.com/2025/04/29/o.... Alas, that study did not hold up:

"Remember that study saying America is an oligarchy? 3 rebuttals say it’s wrong." www.vox.com/2016/5/9/115...

Lots of angles to the Columbia story, but the fact a majority of the board are MBAs suggests businesspeople have no idea what a university is for.

"When for any reason in a university on private foundation or in a university supported by public money the administration of the institution or the instruction in any one of its departments is changed by an influence from without; when an effort is made to dislodge an officer or a professor because the political sentiment or the religious sentiment of the majority has undergone a change, at that moment the institution has ceased to be a university, and it cannot again take its place in the rank of universities so long as there continues to exist to any appreciable extent the factor of coercion."

News that Columbia is considering ceding to the Trump admin’s demands that it change how it regulate speech on campus and teaches students in order to continue to receive federal funds made me think of this passage from a speech that UChicago President William Rainey Harper gave in 1900

Apparently they did -

bsky.app/profile/stev...

Did Dems ever make meaningful concessions to get Republicans to increase the debt ceiling? I just don’t recall.

Honest question - opinion here seems to be Dems were wrong to pass the CR. What would be the goal of opposing?

1) Symbolic resistance is important even if it won no concessions.

2) Opposing would have gained concessions.

3) Opposing would have forced Rs into tactical blunders.

Something else?

Lutnick on CNBC: U.S. Likely to Grant Reprieve to USMCA-Compliant Goods Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said that Canadian and Mexican goods compliant with USMCA, the free-trade agreement President Trump signed with the countries in 2020, likely won’t have a tariff unti...

One day off.

www.wsj.com/livecoverage...

I suppose more of a prediction.

What are the chances Trump imposes the tariffs so he can talk about them tomorrow, then drops them Wednesday?

Agree 100% with this. The tea party movement was not led by Republican elected officials. Interest groups, candidates, and the grassroots (and astroturfed roots) created a resistance movement that changed the party.

During the 2016 Rio Olympics, the women's and men's U.S. basketball teams again stayed on a cruise ship. Players from both teams, a group of NBA and WNBA stars, were sitting around one night, having a few laughs, a few drinks, and talking some serious smack, as is the habit of super competitive and successful athletes. Draymond Green, a noted NBA rabble-rouser known more for his defensive instincts, physicality, passing skills, and penchant for drawing technical fouls and suspensions than his shooting and scoring ability, was going on about something. Taurasi said, "Hey, Draymond, how does it feel to be the only person in this room who's never been double-teamed?"

GOAT

Raisin’ Cane sounds like a breakfast cereal.

Here’s a question - if the current admin cuts workforce but Congress doesn’t cut funding (a big if), will that extra funding just accrue to the next administration?

Agreed. It was supposed to be Russ Vought, a pretty boring, senate approved bureaucrat hollowing out the state. Instead it’s a billionaire with tons of baggage who loves the spotlight. Doesn’t seem like good politics for team Trump.

You don’t trade your 25-yo face if the franchise for an again star, making your team worse now and in the future. It’s an all-time bad trade.

You’d rather tie your hopes to ‘mercurial’ star Kyrie Irving?

No one’s arguing there aren’t uninformed voters. I just find it hard to believe uninformed voters are swayable and not partisans for other reasons, and that they all care about inflation and not other issues.

And I don’t see how partisan biases are so relevant to swing voters.

And there are lots of inattentives not voting based on inflation but on other things. So how many are left for the blind retrospection story? Are 3% of voters inattentive but single minded on inflation? I think it’s more likely they’re focused on more salient attributes like race and gender.

We could discuss whether identity drives policy preferences or vice versa. It’s surely both. But that’s a side quest. We agree there are such voters who aren’t being swayed by blind retrospection. I think that’s a lot of voters. In this polarized age, I think it’s a huge majority of voters.

Sure. How many voters are pro-life above all else? Pro-gun? Dan Lipinski was primaried likely because he was out of step on abortion, the only pro life democrat left. Voters who want tax cuts and don’t care about any other policy? There are definitely policy voters, even single issue voters.

Yeah this fact gave me pause. I would imagine in most countries the opposition party would actually propose policies to address inflation, like in Argentina. Inflation would hurt incumbent parties with policy voters when the opposition has reasonable plans to address it.

I didn’t buy it when they were selling it either.

I believe there are lots of policy voters. Some inattentives who vote based on social group, identity, prejudice, etc. And very few who vote based on a single strong policy preference who don’t learn what the candidates would do on that policy.

I should say attentive instead of smart.

Yeah the argument is that voters are smart enough to notice purchasing power declined, but dumb enough to blame the incumbent regardless of their policies or the oppositions proposals. It’s threading the voters intellect through a needle. Maybe that’s exactly how smart swing voters are.

If anyone still thinks the election was about inflation, I don’t know what to tell em. Everything Trump ran on would only raise prices, and now he’s doing it.

Dallas: “Lukas out of shape, so he’s always getting injured.”

*Trades for Anthony Davis, who’s older and always hurt*

And, as always, randomize.

If states can’t rescind their ratifications of amendments, we’re going to have a lot of fun at the upcoming constitutional convention.

Replacement of moderate with more extreme legislators, driven by Republicans & mostly on cultural issues, explains virtually all of recent partisan polarization in Congress; data from candidate surveys holding the policy agenda constant from 1996 to 2008.
harris.uchicago.edu/sites/defaul...