Chris Maisano

This is the America I believe in. The neo-Confederates will never, ever win.

My family has been here for less than a century, all four of my grandparents and my dad were born abroad. The GOP's embrace of Blut-und-Boden ideology is an attack on the actually existing USA, an embrace of neo-Confederatism and the most reactionary strands of European-style nationalism too.

It’s a trip to see “Andrew Cuomo (I)” complaining about the Democratic Party on a Fox News chryon. It’s like watching realignment happening in real time.

Good points for MOCs in particular, but this may be less of a problem for city councilors or state legislators. LA city council members get paid over $200K, for example. In NYC it's about $150K. Chicago a bit less. Can't do it everywhere, for sure. But some should consider it, I think.

Definitely a potential downside, but here in NYC for example 80% of the Area Median Income for a single person is around $90K, which is pretty good despite high COL. NYC Council salary is about $150K, state leg salaries a bit lower. Could be doable for normal people in some situations, I think.

I've long thought that one of the heterodox non-ideological things candidates could do is pledge to not take their office's full salary if elected, but only the district median while donating the rest. Not feasible where elected salaries are very low but maybe elsewhere, like blue cities/states?

Two Days Inside the Movement to ‘Reindustrialize,’ and Rearm, America

Some bleak worldviews on display here. Apparently our choices are production for industrial and military warfare or “an economy centered around McKinsey and DoorDash,” as if there were no other possibilities available to us. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/20/u...

“A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday - and may every day be another wonderful secret.”

What if it’s not “the groups” or progressive activists who are the big problem but uninspiring centrists who don’t have a credible economic program and triangulate on social questions base voters really care about?

Sen. Josh Hawley, claiming to oppose a bill he just voted for.

This is Josh Hawley’s whole routine, encapsulated. He’s a run of the mill Republican with a fake “populist” shtick that way too many people fall for.

This study was conducted in 6 European countries, and I'd love to see this kind of research reproduced in the US, but I think this conclusion would hold here as well. There's no necessary tradeoff between economics and culture so long as the economic program has a credible working class appeal.

Counterrevolution A thorough investigation of the current combination of austerity and extravagance that characterizes government spending and central bank monetary policy

Trump’s big ugly bill perfectly crystallizes Melinda Cooper’s conception of the neoliberal counterrevolution. Fiscal extravagance for the rich (and the repressive state apparatus), punishing austerity for everyone else. press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

The Making of Millennial Socialism Jacobin has been a flagship publication of “millennial socialism,” a phenomenon that began gathering force around 2010 and first fought its way into the political arena through the 2016 Bernie campaig...

I think this piece I wrote a couple years ago holds up pretty well in light of @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social’s historic performance among under-45 voters. Our collective experiences have perfectly primed us for the kind of politics he represents. jacobin.com/2023/10/the-...

I don’t think that’s half baked! It’s an expression of social democracy in a postindustrial political economy. Coalition between immigrant service workers and the college educated but economically squeezed, organized around making habitation (particularly housing but not only) cheaper and better.

The Republican Party, in a single image. This is what Democratic leaders in Congress should spend their time talking about and rallying people to oppose, not spreading lies and innuendo about @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social for things he never said and doesn’t think.

Piss Boyz 4 Zohran (and Brad)

Three months ago today, plain-clothes ICE agents abducted Mahmoud Khalil in his apartment building lobby after they'd followed him home.

Free Mahmoud.

Wow. So you’re telling me this guy constantly lies about everything. I’m hearing about this for the first time.

Vance has always been like this. Any journalist who read Hillbilly Elegy should have immediately clocked how it was a statement of Charles Murray Thought in the guise of a personal narrative. Not exactly the stuff of national reconciliation!

wow, I hope it was worth it

Canadian political parties' change in vote share since 2021.

Canada seems to have effectively imported America's polarized, two-party presidential system despite having a parliamentary system. It's a big reason why third, fourth, fifth, etc. parties have so much trouble catching on in the US, a dynamic the Electoral College strengthens and reinforces.

Do we know whether the SPÖ's loss in vote share basically just shifted over to the KPÖ, or is it too early for that kind of data?

Your average GOP voter had no idea what Critical Race Theory or DEI or "gender ideology" was before their propaganda apparatus started talking about it nonstop. Maybe Slotkin and other centrist Democrats don't want people talking about oligarchy because they don't actually have a problem with it.

Mayor Adams rips Maryland Sen. Van Hollen over ‘tequila drink’ with ‘gang member’ The statement was an apparent reference to Van Hollen's trip to El Salvador last week to meet with a constituent who was mistakenly deported to the country.

Our mayor is telling New Yorkers that if you happen to be kidnapped and sent to an overseas gulag, too bad! You're on your own, and you're probably a gang member anyway. This man's political career can't end fast enough. gothamist.com/news/mayor-a...

Opinion | There’s a Reason the World Is a Mess, and It’s Not Trump (Gift Article) Global economic stagnation underlies today’s disarray.

Excellent piece by @abenanav.bsky.social making the case for public investment and redistribution, not AI or natalism or fantasies of mass manufacturing employment, in a low growth world: www.nytimes.com/2025/04/21/o...

BREAKING: Over 50,000 New Yorkers shut down Madison Ave to demand “Hands Off Migrants, Hands Off the Planet”, in the lead up to Earth Day.

Free Mahmoud, Free Kilmar, Free Mohsen, Free Rumeysa, free them all!

#HandsOffMigrants #HandsoffthePlanet

Donate to Help DRUM Family who Lost Everything in Bronx Fire, organized by DRUM - Desis Rising Up and Moving, Inc. DRUM leaders fight for the working-class. Now, an undocumente… DRUM - Desis Rising Up and Moving, Inc. needs your support for Help DRUM Family who Lost Everything in Bronx Fire

@jamellebouie.net if it’s possible to share this mutual aid request it would really help - a working-class community leader in the Bronx lost everything in a fire and needs support to help get her family back on their feet. More details and donation link here: www.gofundme.com/f/help-drum-...

On Post-Fascism - Boston Review Its central characteristic is hostility to universal citizenship.

Well, suffice to say I'm even more worried now. Here's the classic essay by Tamás, still powerful a quarter-century after it was written: www.bostonreview.net/articles/g-m...

At the time I considered MAGA to be a species of what G.M. Tamás called post-fascism, but worried that "Trump’s open solicitation of right-wing paramilitaries and the 'groyperfication' of GOP cadres raises the possibility that the 'post' modifier may, at some point, end up being superfluous."

Rolling Back Birthright Citizenship, Rolling Back Democracy The Right’s recent attacks on birthright citizenship are a further step in their slide toward “postfascism.”

With the Supreme Court set to take up a birthright citizenship case, this article I wrote a couple of years ago has, very unfortunately, become timely once again.