LaGina Gause

Not happening somewhere else. Here. In America. Right now.

Not to pile on, but www.nytimes.com/2025/10/03/u...

I visited the apartment building ICE raided on Tuesday today. Story to come, but you can walk right in. Half of the apartments have no doors on them. Children's stuff abandoned in some flats. *Citizen* residents told me they were arrested and held for hours in zipties. This is America

My husband was detained by ICE today

Juan Muñoz, an American citizen, father of 2, and local government official, was peacefully protesting w. other elected officials. He was assaulted and taken away

I have had zero contact or updates since

#SOS
@duckworth.senate.gov @durbin.senate.gov

“It’s not just these two reporters’ fates that are at stake here—and that’s important enough—but also the fundamental, constitutional right of a free press.”

WTF is this? Normalizing authoritarianism repression as an electoral strategy www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

For the record.

My posts were not even about Kirk directly, but about America's apathy towards political violence, and the coddling of white male shooters and hate peddlers.

I was fired because I mentioned race: white men and violence-- that was my "gross misconduct."

Authoritarianism often enters through crime policy & policing bc public so often demands more & tougher policing. Yanilda González shows this in Authoritarian Police in Democracy. A while back I was in conversation w/ her & other policing scholars for @annualreviews.bsky.social. Highly recommend.

The takeaway:

👉 Accommodating the radical right on immigration doesn’t win back voters.
👉 It alienates the progressive base.
👉 And it raises the salience of the very issue the radical right owns.
In short: it’s electoral self-harm.

A racial reckoning? racial attitudes in the wake of the murder of George Floyd Andrew M. Engelhardt and Cindy D. Kam Abstract Did George Floyd’s murder and its ensuing protests produce a racial reckoning? Conventional social-science accounts, emphasizing the stability of racial attitudes, dismiss this possibility. In contrast, we theorize how these events may have altered Americans’ racial attitudes, in broadly progressive or in potentially countervailing ways across partisan and racial subgroups. An original content analysis of partisan media demonstrates how the information environment framed Black Americans before and after the summer of 2020. Then we examine temporal trends using three different attitude measures: most important problem judgments, explicit favorability towards Whites versus Blacks, and implicit associations. Challenging the conventional wisdom, our analyses demonstrate that racial attitudes changed following George Floyd’s murder, but in ways dependent upon attitude measure and population subgroup.

Figure 1 shows four scatterplots with Lowess smoothing lines comparing Fox (gray squares, gray line) and MSNBC (black circles, black line) coverage of Black Americans in 2020, with a vertical red line marking George Floyd’s murder on May 25. Top left (Daily Counts of Activism Frames): Both networks show a sharp spike in activism-related mentions immediately after Floyd’s murder, then declining through the year, with similar levels across Fox and MSNBC. Top right (Daily Proportion of Mentions containing Activism Frames): The share of mentions with activism frames rises briefly after Floyd’s murder for both networks but quickly declines, with no clear partisan difference. Bottom left (Daily Counts of Backlash Frames): Fox shows a much larger spike in backlash-related mentions (e.g., “violence,” “mob”) after May, while MSNBC increases more modestly. Bottom right (Daily Proportion of Mentions containing Backlash Frames): From June to October, nearly half of Fox’s mentions of Black Americans include backlash frames, roughly twice the rate of MSNBC, which remains lower throughout. Overall, the figure shows that while both networks used more activism frames immediately after Floyd’s murder, Fox emphasized backlash frames much more heavily than MSNBC in the following months.

Figure 2 shows six scatterplots with Lowess smoothing lines tracking mentions of racism or race relations as the most important problem in Gallup polls (2017–2021). Each dot is a monthly estimate, with a vertical red line marking George Floyd’s murder in May 2020. Top row: Full Sample: Mentions are low (under 5%) before 2020, then spike sharply in June 2020 (~16%) before falling but remaining above pre-2020 levels. Among Whites: Similar pattern as the full sample, with a ~10-point jump in June 2020, followed by a decline but remaining elevated relative to earlier years. Among Blacks: Higher baseline concern compared to Whites; mentions spike by ~21 points after Floyd’s murder and remain elevated through 2021. Bottom row: Among White Republicans: Very low pre-2020 mentions, a modest rise (~6 points) in June 2020, then rapid decline toward baseline. Among White Independents: Clear but moderate spike in June 2020, with some persistence above baseline. Among White Democrats: Low pre-2020 mentions, sharp June 2020 spike (~14 points), then decline but sustained higher levels through 2021. Overall, the figure shows a sharp discontinuity after Floyd’s murder across all groups, with the most sustained increases among Black respondents and White Democrats, and weaker persistence among White Republicans.

Figure 4 presents six scatterplots of predicted weekly average IAT D-scores for 2019 (gray squares, gray line) and 2020 (black circles, black line), with a vertical red line marking George Floyd’s murder on May 25. Higher D-scores indicate stronger implicit anti-Black bias. Top row: Full Sample: Bias was declining before Floyd’s murder and drops further afterward in 2020, diverging from 2019. Among Whites: A clear decline in D-scores appears after Floyd’s murder, with lower bias sustained through 2020. Among Blacks: No sharp discontinuity; scores remain stable across 2019 and 2020. Bottom row: Among White Conservatives: Noticeable decline in anti-Black bias after May 2020, sustained through the year. Among White Neutrals: A clear drop in bias after Floyd’s murder, somewhat larger than among liberals. Among White Liberals: Small decline in bias after May 2020, though less pronounced than among conservatives or neutrals. Overall, the figure shows that implicit anti-Black bias decreased among White respondents across ideological groups after Floyd’s murder, with larger reductions among conservatives and neutrals than liberals. Black respondents show little change, consistent with already low baseline bias.

“A racial reckoning?” New study by @amengel.bsky.social & Cindy Kam:

“Challenging the conventional wisdom, our analyses demonstrate that racial attitudes changed following George Floyd’s murder, but in ways dependent upon attitude measure and population subgroup.” www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

🚨NEW PAPER 🚨 Are police more right-wing and biased against marginalized groups than the general public? If so, why? My new article in
@pnas.org w/ @tylerreny.bsky.social, Newman, and Sears provides some answers. 🧵1/n

Faculty Support of George Mason’s President Draws Federal Investigation

Faculty who wrote to defend their president and object to a DOJ investigation of their university...are now being investigated by the DOJ.
The most banal defense of free speech and academic freedom will trigger the full wrath of the US government now.
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/u...

We must see that our lives, our struggles and successes, are bound up in each other. What does collective action look like if you stop being optimistic your discipline's market will improve and instead think about academia as a whole?

HAPPENING NOW: a group of New York rabbis are being arrested at a protest outside the Israeli consulate calling for bringing food into Gaza, an end to the war, and return of all hostages

@newjewishnarrative.bsky.social

Lots of folks asking about the #s at the nationwide June 14 No Kings actions. My team won't have our own estimate for a few weeks; we validate every record to the fullest extent possible. Our current data are updated through the end of May; see the piece below for our report on trends prior to 6/14.

Opinion | This Is What Makes Protests Successful

Yesterday, @robbwiller.bsky.social and I published an opinion essay making the case for the power of nonviolent protest. I’m proud of our work but also think we could have done more to “steel man” case *against* nonviolence. Here’s essay. Some counterarguments in 🧵 www.nytimes.com/2025/06/17/o...

Excellent op-ed on nonviolent protest from @robbwiller.bsky.social and @owasow.bsky.social on the importance of nonviolence here www.nytimes.com/2025/06/17/o.... Some additional points worth noting:

Nice thread here! It’s incredibly important for thinking about violence and protest tactics. What counts as violence depends on who is protesting and who is observing those protests. So, one-size-fits-all judgments about whether specific tactics “work” would definitely benefit from more skepticism.

The comment period for this ends in 3 DAYS. Please leave a comment telling them EVERYONE should be able to get covid boosters.
www.regulations.gov/commenton/FD...

Today's action is the single largest mass-illegalization event in US history.

350,000 people woke up this morning with legal status, living and working here with official permission. They'll go to bed as undocumented immigrants facing deportation.

Meet 2025 RBSI Scholar, Xavier Humphrey, Tufts University Xavier Humphrey, Tufts University Xavier Humphrey is a rising senior at Tufts University, where he majors in political science and applied mathematics, with a focus on economic theory. Throughout his life, two driving forces have remained constant: a deep curiosity and a commitment to understanding all positions. This manifests in his academic approach, as he strives to embrace diverse viewpoints—believing that omitting even one perspective could mean overlooking a critical factor.

Meet 2025 RBSI Scholar, Xavier Humphrey, Tufts University

Xavier Humphrey, Tufts University Xavier Humphrey is a rising senior at Tufts University, where he majors in political science and applied mathematics, with a focus on economic theory. Throughout his life, two driving forces have remained…

How Volunteer Patrols Are Working to Protect San Diego Immigrant Communities From ICE In response to mass deportation threats and mixed messages from county leaders on federal cooperation, San Diego organizers are taking action to inform residents of ICE activity.

A group in San Diego is patrolling neighborhoods to identify potential ICE presence. They keep watch for vehicles that may belong to federal agencies, and use livestreams, radios, and social media to keep communities informed. boltsmag.org/how-vol...

Apply for the 2025 APSA Fund for Latino Scholarship | Deadline: June 29, 2025 The Fund for Latino Scholarship encourages and supports the recruitment, retention, and promotion of political science students and scholars who study and research Latina/o politics (especially students and tenure track junior faculty).

Only one month left to submit your 2025 APSA Fund for #Latino Scholarship applications! The supports teaching, research and publishing activities of contingent, junior-level, tenure track, and other #polisci faculty whose main area of academic focus is Latina/o politics. buff.ly/2yyA9LT

A group of Quakers are marching more than 300 miles to demonstrate against the Trump administration's crackdown on immigrants. Organizers of the march say their protest seeks to show solidarity with migrants and other groups that are being targeted by the administration.

The cost of Grok: "I can't breathe at home, it smells like gas outside. How come I can't breathe at home and y'all get to breathe at home?"

HAPPENING NOW: Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was just taken into custody while protesting outside the Delaney Hall ICE detention center

1) USPS did not lose $3.3b. It provided a service that cost $3.3b. *The Pentagon* loses you money, however, every time it accidentally yeets a fighter jet off the deck of a carrier

Amid all the other news, it's easy to become inured to the basic facts here. Öztürk:

-Is not accused of committing any crime

-Is nonviolent

-Was in this country legally

-Merely engaged in speech that the administration objects to

-Has been locked up for six weeks

Race, Gender, and Public Opinion toward Black Female Political Elites | The Journal of Politics: Vol 0, No ja

I’m excited to share that it’s my first official day on blue sky!

I’m also thrilled to say that my first solo-authored article, “Race, Gender, and Public Opinion Toward Black Female Political Elites,” has been accepted for publication @thejop.bsky.social!

www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1...