Thomas J Hayes

The Breakdown with Erica Chenoweth and Steve Levitsky – Ash Center Join Erica Chenoweth and Steven Levitsky for The Breakdown, a webinar series on the ongoing struggle for American democracy. Each month, Chenoweth and Levitsky will break down key developments, reflec...

Join @stevelevitsky.bsky.social & me online, Monday 11/24 at 3:30pm ET, to talk about where we are in the US struggle for democracy. ash.harvard.edu/events/the-b...

Data visualization titled “Even Trump’s Own Judicial Appointees Rule Against His Administration Nearly Half the Time.” Top section shows 81 rulings against (49.1%) vs 84 for (50.9%) among Trump appointees. Middle section compares rulings by appointing party: Democratic appointees ruled against Trump 752 times vs 169 for; Republican appointees 232 against vs 126 for. Bottom section shows historical comparison - how other presidents’ appointees ruled on Trump cases: Biden appointees 252 against/46 for, Obama 368/91, Bush 62/23, Clinton 125/22, Reagan 88/19. Source: Federal Court Dockets from Courtlistener.com. Data from Jan 21, 2025 through Nov 11, 2025, lower federal courts only, Supreme Court not included.

As Trump again ramps up attacks on judges as biased, consider: his own appointees rule against his admin 49% of the time. Republican appointees 65%. Reporters should ask: If the judiciary is biased, why do the judges he picked keep ruling against him?

Racial Resentment Among White Americans by Birth Year and Demographics This figure presents the same four-panel layout (education, gender, geography, religion) but for White Americans from birth years 1940 to 2000. Education panel: A pronounced divide shows non-college Whites with substantially higher resentment across all cohorts, increasing sharply for older birth years. College-educated Whites rise more modestly but remain distinctly lower, especially among younger cohorts. Gender panel: Male and female trendlines rise together, with women slightly higher in mid-century cohorts. Younger cohorts of both genders start lower and climb with age. Geography panel: Regional lines separate clearly: the South is highest in resentment, followed by the Midwest. The West and Northeast show lower levels, with the Northeast consistently at the bottom. All regions slope upward toward older cohorts. Religion panel: Protestants show the highest resentment, peaking among mid-century cohorts. Catholics sit in the middle. Non-affiliated Whites show the lowest resentment, especially among younger respondents, with a small rise among mid-century generations. The figure notes CES 2024 data with GAM-smoothed trendlines.

Those claiming Dems should retreat on racial justice aren't hard-headed realists, they're pushing against the electoral tide rather than leaning into it. The story of Gen Z isn't about racist backlash or red-pilled young men. It's the most racially progressive generation in American history. 🧵

Table showing the five richest men in the U.S from Bloombergs billionaire list ., all in technology. Elon Musk tops the list with a net worth of $461B and a year-to-date gain of $28.2B. Larry Ellison is second at $300B with a $107B YTD gain. Jeff Bezos has $268B (+$29.5B YTD), Larry Page $250B (+$81.9B YTD), and Sergey Brin $234B (+$75.5B YTD). Each row also lists last-day change, country (all United States), and industry (all Technology).

Kind of wild that while food assistance was withheld from millions of families, one Trump-supporting billionaire (Ellison) saw his net worth grow more this year than the entire SNAP budget. And the YTD gains of the other four richest men would’ve fully covered salaries for all 2M federal employees.

@chrischirp.bsky.social is doing a fantastic work here
www.trumpactiontracker.info

Look at how Trump's tariffs are affecting retail prices.

In 34 states and D.C., more people say abortion generally should be legal than say it generally should be illegal. For example, in the District of Columbia, 81% of adults say abortion should be legal in all or most cases. Support for legal abortion also stands at about 75% or higher in several New England states, including Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Connecticut. Meanwhile, people in Arkansas are more likely to say abortion should generally be illegal (57%) rather than legal (41%). Arkansas is the only state where the balance of public opinion is against abortion by a statistically significant margin. In 15 states, the shares saying abortion should be legal and saying it should be illegal are not significantly different once the margins of sampling error in each state are taken into account.

The balance of public opinion is against abortion being legal in only one state, Arkansas.
www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/...

Trump bill is the second most unpopular in recent history. GOP don’t care.

via @gelliottmorris.com

Pardoned Jan. 6 Rioter Who Threatened Police Joins Justice Dept.

Sharing this one because it should be a bigger story-

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/01/u...

Ok, so Republicans just introduced a 900 page bill none of them have read. But my team is going through it line by line and on this 🧵you can see the hidden provisions we found. Will update all day.

1/ NEW Medicaid cuts, so now 17 million - instead of 16M - lose health care.

Opinion | Will States' Rights Go the Way of Medicaid Funding? Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill' bolsters federal power

To top it all off, as I wrote in @medpagetoday.bsky.social, the bill goes against the federalism principles that Republicans have historically espoused, literally penalizing states for offering more generous health coverage with their own state funds. www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/seco...

Medicaid cuts would devastate mental health, substance use treatment services in red states Though behavioral health conditions do not discriminate between Democrats and Republicans, the Medicaid cuts may be particularly damaging for residents of red states.

Now let’s talk behavioral health. The opioid epidemic ravaged Appalachia (where I live, and which largely voted for Trump), and Medicaid is critical lifeline for people requiring treatment for mental health and substance use disorders, as I write on in @statnews.com www.statnews.com/2025/06/12/m...

Medicaid cuts will harm rural Republican communities most Trump’s budget will actively harm the health and incomes of rural communities and Republican voters, well beyond those who themselves are enrolled in Medicaid.

As Republicans expedite their efforts to rip health coverage from millions of Americans, re-upping my writing on the not so-beautiful bill. First, my piece in The Hill w/ @mshepruralpolitics.bsky.social on harms to rural (conservative) communities (ex: hospital closures). thehill.com/opinion/heal...

One of the tough things about covering Trump’s 2nd term is that he is breaking so many laws & norms that when you cover them each on their own, you come off as an anti-Trump Dem pundit w “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” But when you list it all out things indeed look pretty alarming

if Congress does not seize its powers back Trump *will* fly the American economy straight into the side of a mountain.

Embattled Voice of America to use newsfeed from hard-right network One America News will now provide news and video to government-funded organization

The US government is pumping right-wing conspiracy theories into other countries. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

This is America.

Opinion | No One Has Ever Defeated Autocracy From the Sidelines

Appeasement, as Churchill warned, is like feeding a crocodile and hoping to be the last one eaten.

Levitsky, Way, and me today in New York Times

www.nytimes.com/2025/05/08/o...

There’s so much happening right now, I thought I’d put together a running thread on the dismantling of #climate and research and knowledge infrastructure in the United States 🧵

The Justice Department ended a decades-old school desegregation order. Others are expected to fall The Justice Department is lifting a school desegregation order in Louisiana dating to the Civil Rights Movement, calling its continued existence a “historical wrong” and suggesting that others across ...

they are literal segregationists apnews.com/article/scho...

Welp, the federal minimum wage is now officially a poverty wage (as in, a full-time worker earning the federal minimum wage gets paid less than the poverty line for a single person). www.epi.org/blog/the-fed...

Trump's ActBlue attacks serve two goals: Cripple Dems' small-dollar machine (where GOP mega-donors can't compete) while forcing Democrats deeper into the arms of their own billionaires and mega-donors. Not just about winning—it's about kneecapping Dem candidates who refuse to bow to elite interests.

Something has happened in the last three months that has led basically every economic forecaster to predict that inflation will be substantially higher than they previously thought.

The Accidental Harvard Letter
The Accidental Deportation
The Accidental Tariff on an Uninhabited Island
The Accidental Disclosure of War Plans to a Journalist
The Accidental Firings of Nuclear Safety Workers

Trump redefines "emergency" to impose his will Powers originally crafted to give the president flexibility in rare moments of crisis now form the backbone of Trump's agenda.

In his first 100 days, Trump has declared more national emergencies — more creatively and more aggressively — than any president in modern history.

The emergency powers were originally designed to give the president flexibility in rare moments of crisis.

Trump is losing voters on the economy Inflation got Donald Trump elected in 2024. Now, his ratings on economic issues are at their lowest point ever, even worse than during COVID-19

New from me: Trump's job approval rating on the economy is now at an all-time low, even worse than during COVID-19. Opinion in his handling of inflation is at -18 on average! He has now lost the GOP's single best political asset of the last decade.

www.gelliottmorris.com/p/chart-of-t...

Exiling people beyond the protection of US law without due process is not only unconstitutional, it's a rejection of the entire American revolutionary project. Sending people "beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences" is one of the grievances enumerated in the Declaration of Independence.