David Froomkin

I perennially wonder whether Trump's fans like him despite or because of the fact that he is a moron.

Good point. But whereas Republicans understand the ways in which their positions are unpopular with the public, Democrats tend to perceive the public as more conservative than it is.

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

There are a number of other cases of people seeming to change deeply after getting elected to Congress. Worth studying why. Maybe power goes to their head? Maybe not just power but a feeling of (or desire for) elite belonging. Or they become targets of lobbying in new ways?

In their Feature, David Engstrom, David Marcus & @elliotsetzer.bsky.social explore the shift from case-by-case adjudication to digitized, centralized “managerial” court systems. They trace the roots, forms, and implications of this quiet but far-reaching revolution in courts’ function and role.

Impeach and remove.

There have been two Republican Presidents in my lifetime, and they were the two worst Presidents in U.S. history.

Trump in 2011: “Our president will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate. He’s weak and he’s ineffective.”

Great thread.

FWIW not a single student ever found out my party affiliation until one party decided it didn't necessarily believe in democracy anymore.

Trump’s State of the Union Reminds Us The Republican Party Is Truly Lost More evidence that the Republican Party has been entirely transformed into the party of violence and authoritarianism.

What we saw Tuesday night from the Republican Party was the legislative counterpart to what ICE is doing in the streets. Bullying. Menacing. Illiberal.

The party is just a fascist gang.

www.liberalcurrents.com/trumps-state...

Denazification needs to be a central plank of Project 2029.

‘They can't lose a single vote’: Republicans say a razor-thin majority has made them ‘untouchable’ A recent scandal involving Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, is testing a blunt dynamic with House Republicans: They can get away with just about anything — and leaders won’t call on them to resign.

Johnson can’t maintain his House majority unless he keeps “one person accused of domestic abuse… and another guy accused of massive sexual harassment… If that’s not a statement about the 119th Congress under Mike Johnson’s leadership, I don’t know what is.” www.ms.now/news/republi...

It's presidential power that is unhinged!

For example, they failed to put Rick Scott in prison for Medicare fraud.

Any thoughts from folks in Harris County about Mike Doyle vs. Traci Gibson for Democratic Party Chair?

Please, Mr. President, don't "do something" about the woke Roberts Court.

I think there are two explanations that go hand in hand: (1) tariffs are a vote-loser for the GOP; (2) the Court wants to appear legitimate by sometimes ruling against Trump. This is the perfect way to bolster legitimacy, because it simultaneously helps Republicans' electoral fortunes.

The political effects of X's feed algorithm https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10098-2 Received: 16 December 2024 Accepted: 4 January 2026 Published online: 18 February 2026 Open access • Check for updates Germain Gauthier,5, Roland Hodler?5, Philine Widmer35 & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya3,4,5 m Feed algorithms are widely suspected to influence political attitudes. However, previous evidence from switching off the algorithm on Meta platforms found no political effects'. Here we present results from a 2023 field experiment on Elon Musk's platform X shedding light on this puzzle. We assigned active US-based users randomly to either an algorithmic or a chronological feed for 7 weeks, measuring political attitudes and online behaviour. Switching from a chronological to an algorithmic feed increased engagement and shifted political opinion towards more conservative positions, particularly regarding policy priorities, perceptions of criminal investigations into Donald Trump and views on the war in Ukraine. In contrast, switching from the algorithmic to the chronological feed had no comparable effects. Neither switching the algorithm on nor switching it off significantly affected affective polarization or self-reported partisanship. To investigate the mechanism, we analysed users' feed content and behaviour. We found that the algorithm promotes conservative content and demotes posts by traditional media. Exposure to algorithmic content leads users to follow conservative political activist accounts, which they continue to follow even after switching off the algorithm, helping explain the asymmetry in effects. These results suggest that initial exposure to X's algorithm has persistent effects on users' current political attitudes and account-following behaviour, even in the absence of a detectable effect on partisanship.

A new paper shows that less than 2 months of exposure to Twitter’s algorithmic feed significantly shifts people’s political views to the right.

Moving from chronological feed to the algorithmic feed also increases engagement.

This is one of the most concerning papers I’ve read in awhile.

As others have already observed, Musk is using a thinly-disguised euphemism.

Musk is wrong. People are willing to die to defend multiracial democracy. Renee Good and Alex Pretti did.

My view is that topic selection is unavoidably normative. We have to decide what is worth spending our scarce time on. But within the bounds of a research project, being ends-motivated undermines the scholarly enterprise.

“White Americans are increasingly second-class citizens in a country their ancestors founded and in which, until recently, they were the overwhelming majority of the population,” he writes in his 2024 book, “The Unprotected Class: How Anti-White Racism Is Tearing America Apart.”

Klan Leader Says Whites Face Bias By Doug Perry, Courier-Journal Staff Writer White people are becoming second-class citizens, the national leader of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan said here Saturday. David Duke, in Harlan County to attend a Klan rally and "cross lighting," said during an interview he thinks integration in this country is a "total failure."

Jeremy Carl, whom Trump has nominated for a senior position in the State Department, made precisely the same claim --white people are becoming "second-class citizens"--in his 2024 book as David Duke did in 1975, when he was the leader of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

The Houston restaurant scene is so impressive: even the Italian food is great here.

Related:

Absolutely insane that our elites are not screaming about this. We have a generation of leaders who have completely failed to internalize the values of democracy. People of no conviction whatsoever. Truly the iron cage.

Yes! Jessica Bulman-Pozen and Miriam Seifter have some good writing on this. Among other things, they observe that state-level popular initiatives/referendums provide a rare channel for people to correct the democratic process in the US.

Exclusive: White House uses USAID funds for budget director Vought's security, documents show The White House budget office is using millions of dollars from the former U.S. foreign aid agency to pay for the security detail of Russell Vought, President Donald Trump's budget chief and an archit...

There are ~90 million people alive today because of USAID. Russ Vought illegally shut it down and now is spending the money on himself. These are deeply evil people. www.reuters.com/world/us/whi...

Surely public ignorance about politics is part of the story, but I think that has a lot to do with the roles of the Republican Party and the media. It's not unreasonable for people to think they are getting reliable info from trusted elites.

We need an answer to why the US in the 21st century elected one of the most evil men alive to be President. I think it must have a lot to do with the collapse of crucial vetting institutions, including the Republican Party and the media. But no doubt there is also an important cultural story.