Blaine Stum

“Massive” war launched by a man with no plan. Again. Donald Trump is repeating George W. Bush's catastrophic mistakes.

Donald Trump is repeating George W. Bush’s catastrophic mistakes.

OFFS. When Iran tried to interefere in 2020, researchers caught them and called them out. Then the Benz-Weiss-Taibbi-Musk-Jordan-Trump axis labeled those researchers "censors" ... and set about defunding them and dismantling their organizations.

> @covie93.bsky.social

Regime Change in Iran (Terms And Conditions Apply) The warmongers, once again, get the war they've sought for decades. Trump and Netanyahu leave the hard work to the people they're bombing

While the bombs fall on the regime and its opponents alike, Trump and Netanyahu say that they come as liberators. Only they won't be the ones who do the dirty work. Encouraging the IRGC to sit on its hands and receive 'immunity' is the latest tell that the Iranian people's desires are irrelevant.

The entire Democratic strategy debate — "moderate" or move left? fight or compromise? — is based on a misreading of data. Voters don't think Dems are too progressive; they think Dems are weak. The actual math on what to do about this isn't even close!
New: www.gelliottmorris.com/p/new-poll-d...

He reported a stolen car. Then ICE arrested him at a police station, he says. DC police face criticism for allegedly assisting ICE in arresting immigrants at police stations

He reported a stolen car. Then ICE arrested him at a police station, he says. www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/202...

Epstein Files Are Missing Records About Woman Who Made Claim Against Trump

NEW: The New York Times confirms my reporting that the DOJ is withholding several FBI interviews with a woman who accused Trump of sexually assaulting her as a child

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/25/u...

NEW: @dcattorneygeneral.bsky.social says in a new legal opinion that the bill passed by the D.C. Council late last year decoupling the local tax code from Republican tax cuts remains the law, regardless of Congress having passed a disapproval resolution this month.

I had conversations with members of the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations in 2013-2014 where I vividly remember feeling like people had become complacent despite the organizing going on in right-wing spaces.

I grew up in Spokane Valley (formerly Opportunity) and spent a lot of time in Northern Idaho as a kid. There was some genuine progress against white nationalists in the late 90's and early 2000's. But a lot of folks (me included) worried that the progress was temporary.

A really great piece from @michaelehayden.bsky.social.

BREAKING: I read the new version of the “Save America Act” (S. 1383) so u don’t have to. Here’s my summary. Point 1 is new. It requires that all 50 states send their voter rolls to the DHS to run thru DHS’s faulty “SAVE” voter purge program. Points 6 & 7 are new too. Tell ur Senators #NoOnSAVE 1/

I am heartbroken to hear the news of Rev. Hagler passing away. He was an incredible human being, a human rights activist, a fighter for justice for all people for income inequality, racial inequality.

YouTube video by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert Rep. James Talarico On Confronting Christian Nationalism, And Strange Days In The Texas Legislatu…

Trump’s FCC pressured CBS into not airing Stephen Colbert’s interview of James Talarico.

Here it is on YouTube. Worth watching.

youtu.be/oiTJ7Pz_59A?...

NEWS: @dcattorneygeneral.bsky.social is suing notorious D.C. slumlord Sam Razjooyan and two family members under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, a law used to dismantle the mob. He says they ran a "sprawling illegal enterprise" that mostly impacted low-income residents.

(Just learned that the vote was on the motion to proceed, so it is not a final vote. Still not a good sign).

Interesting update: A D.C. judge has found the city in contempt for refusing to turn over budget documents in long-running legal fight with a public interest law firm. The judge has given D.C. 21 days to turn over the documents; if it doesn't, daily fines of $1,500 will be assessed.

It must be very hard to publish null results Publication practices in the social sciences act as a filter that favors statistically significant results over null findings. While the problem of selection on significance (SoS) is well-known in theory, it has been difficult to measure its scope empirically, and it has been challenging to determine how selection varies across contexts. In this article, we use large language models to extract granular and validated data on about 100,000 articles published in over 150 political science journals from 2010 to 2024. We show that fewer than 2% of articles that rely on statistical methods report null-only findings in their abstracts, while over 90% of papers highlight significant results. To put these findings in perspective, we develop and calibrate a simple model of publication bias. Across a range of plausible assumptions, we find that statistically significant results are estimated to be one to two orders of magnitude more likely to enter the published record than null results. Leveraging metadata extracted from individual articles, we show that the pattern of strong SoS holds across subfields, journals, methods, and time periods. However, a few factors such as pre-registration and randomized experiments correlate with greater acceptance of null results. We conclude by discussing implications for the field and the potential of our new dataset for investigating other questions about political science.

I have a new paper. We look at ~all stats articles in political science post-2010 & show that 94% have abstracts that claim to reject a null. Only 2% present only null results. This is hard to explain unless the research process has a filter that only lets rejections through.

We now have data from Trump's first full year in office. Let's review the performance of Trump and the two parties since 1989 and a new age of globalization began.

However you cut the data Trump continues to have worst jobs record of last six Presidents. 1/

Trump administration removes Rainbow Flag from Stonewall National Monument The Trump administration removed a large Rainbow Flag from a flagpole at the Stonewall National Monument, the National Park Service confirmed to Gay City News

When a headline says it all:

A new report from Democratic members of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee finds that the deployment of the National Guard in D.C. is costing $1.65 million a day, and over seven months has hit $332 million. The report is here: hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/upl…

Bad Bunny’s performance began in the plantation, featured broken electric poles, and ended by centering a hemispheric understanding of “América”—among many other things—and some Anglo journalists are like “his performance wasn’t political.”

This is why we need to be telling our stories.

DC’s money belongs to DC — Free DC In December, DC Council opted to keep our local tax code independent from drastic federal tax changes that would have led to shortfalls without quick action. Every state has the option to do this, and...

The GOP is trying to override a DC funding law passed by the city’s elected council. DC's finances and right to self-govern shouldn't be in the hands of politicians who don’t represent its people. Tell your Members of Congress to reject Republicans’ power grab in DC.

The prior report I worked on was related to housing code inspections and can be found here: lims.dccouncil.gov/downloads/LI...

The findings and conclusions are the result of several months of work that included analyzing data and standard operating procedures, doing ride-alongs, interviewing employees and residents, etc.

This is the second oversight report I’ve worked on related to DOB.

You can check it out here: lims.dccouncil.gov/Hearings/hea...

Congress Must Allow D.C. to Spend Its Own Local Dollars Congressional Republicans, who last year barred the District of Columbia from spending $1 billion of its own revenue in its 2025 budget, are now moving to block another DC law.

Last year, congressional republicans barred DC from utilizing nearly $1 billion of its own revenue and attempting to block another.

Congress should respect D.C.’s decision-making and allow our self-governing!
www.cbpp.org/blog/congres...

The legendary Catherine O’Hara has died.

She was 71.

Per TMZ.

With respect to budget enhancement requests, the FOIA statute does require proactive public disclosure (D.C. Official Code Sec. 2-536(a)(6A). The litigation mentioned in the notice Martin posted is about that provision.

I've contemplated running for office several times in the past, but I would only do it knowing that I had a *real* shot at winning. If I got a poll like that before I even launched? I'm not running.