Ash Splawinski

TrumpRx, the President’s Online Drugstore, Opens for Business TrumpRx is aimed at helping patients use their own money to buy medicines. But researchers who study drug pricing warned that many patients could pay too much if they use the site.

The new government website TrumpRx is aimed at helping patients use their own money to buy medicines. But researchers who study drug pricing warned that many patients could pay too much if they use the site.

awful day to have eyes.

Support for Alberta independence sits at 3 in 10 in favour, poll finds | Globalnews.ca As groups continue to collect signatures on a petition regarding Alberta independence, new polling shows support for the movement doesn't appear to be budging.

Hm… We also need to account for the subset of symbolic separatists who answer “Yeah, totally” in an Angus Reid poll but would definitely think twice about doing so in an actual referendum.

globalnews.ca/news/1165913...

Trump's Schedule F Rule Finalized A bizarro rule formally justifies politicizing public services

New, from me: Trump finalized his Schedule F policy, allowing him to remove job protections from career civil servants.

The new rule is dishonest and unmoored from reality in its effort to formalize the politicization of the federal government 🧵
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/trumps-sch...

portraying epstein as a "foreign agent" of [fill in the country] is satisfying but lets the US off the hook for creating the network enabling him, and misunderstands his business model as hierarchical links with foreign spies instead of a node in a global network of converging interests

Trump vs. Canada Former Alberta Premier Jason Kenney on annexation threats, the unraveling of U.S.-Canada relations, and how Trump is forcing allies to rethink democracy, defense, and immigration. Plus: the Trump family’s astonishing UAE crypto deal and Sara Jeannette Duncan’s The Imperialist.

Former Alberta Premier Jason Kenney joins @davidfrum.bsky.social to discuss annexation threats, the unraveling of U.S.-Canada relations, and how Donald Trump is forcing allies to rethink democracy, defense, and immigration.

Watch the episode:

My daughter might have hundreds of half-siblings. For this, I feel immense guilt Carol's two children were conceived with donor sperm in the late 90s. Decades later, she and her family found out the whole truth.

Unfortunately, nothing in this article is a surprise and, in many parts of the world, this continues to happen. The “profit over people” model of repro tech is alive and well.

www.sbs.com.au/news/insight...

Right out of primary school? I mean, why wait? Kindergarten is more than reasonable. /s

Right, yes. Let’s all calmly integrate this information into our day, I guess.

Worth stating this clearly: American constitutional law affords due process protections to non-citizens, even those without legal status. Any official who does not respect those rights—whether a political official or law enforcement officer—violates their oath to support the Constitution.

A separatist group in Canada is asking for Trump’s help to split from their country. Here’s what we know | CNN Yet another spat over territory is rocking the troubled US-Canada relationship – and it’s not a result of a Donald Trump threat to turn his northern neighbor into a 51st state.

If 90s era Quebec separatism taught Canada anything, it’s How To Separate From Canada. We have an idea of how constitutionally viable separatism would work… with a few caveats, of course (🧵)

www.cnn.com/2026/01/30/a...

Experts say treason definition depends if you’re holding Criminal Code or dictionary B.C. Premier David Eby made headlines Thursday by saying Alberta separatists reportedly meeting with U.S. officials are committing treason — but experts say the word means different things in differen...

Are the separatists in talks with Americans committing “treason”? Like everything else in politics, “it depends.”

www.ctvnews.ca/vancouver/po...

Hey, @uoft-poli-sci.bsky.social can we get this on the Canadian major field exam?

The caveats: Who decides what a “clear question” or “clear majority is”? The House of Commons (thanks Clarity Act!)

And, the House of Commons can override a referendum if, in the end, they deem that any part of the process was not aligned with the Clarity Act.

And, uh, that’s how you separate!

The Ref case led to the Clarity Act (2000) and they both outline a few things:
1) The referendum question must be CLEARLY about succession/independence and not about something like negotiation
2) The result must have a CLEAR MAJORITY
3) If successful, all parties have a duty to negotiate terms

After the (obviously failed) 1995 Quebec referendum, the province asked the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) how independence could work in a way compatible with Canadian constitutional principles and in the Reference re Secession of Quebec (1998) the SCC told them.

A separatist group in Canada is asking for Trump’s help to split from their country. Here’s what we know | CNN Yet another spat over territory is rocking the troubled US-Canada relationship – and it’s not a result of a Donald Trump threat to turn his northern neighbor into a 51st state.

If 90s era Quebec separatism taught Canada anything, it’s How To Separate From Canada. We have an idea of how constitutionally viable separatism would work… with a few caveats, of course (🧵)

www.cnn.com/2026/01/30/a...

Closing the gender gap in political science publishing: The role of female editorial boards European Political Science | Cambridge Core

❇️ FirstView – 💼 Profession

Daniel Stockemer, Engi Abou-El-Kheir & Stephen Sawyer explore the relationship between the percentages of female editorial board members, female editors, and of female authors published across 120 political science journals.

👉 buff.ly/Wi1ONla

At COPPR: a fascinating but incredibly bleak discussion of the cycle where citizens lose faith in the state, then vote for politicians whose primary goal is to break it further.

The @polprocessrsch.bsky.social conference is off to a wonderful (and very fancy, I mean look at that ceiling!) start 📝

The mirage of AI deregulation One of the most interventionist approaches to technology governance in the United States in a generation has cloaked itself in the language of deregulation. In early December 2025, President Donald Tr...

🧵 Trump administration AI policy is widely described as deregulatory. This description is misleading. What's happening is not the absence of governance but its rearrangement--intensive state intervention operating through mechanisms we don't typically call regulation. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

When Misinformation Means the Difference Between Life and Death A Review of Daniel Silverman, “Seeing Is Disbelieving: Why People Believe Misinformation in War, and When They Know Better” (Cambridge University Press, 2024).

"With so much written on disinformation and misinformation over the past decade, original research on these topics has become rare. But @dmsilverman.bsky.social “Seeing Is Disbelieving" is genuinely novel..."

Review of 'Seeing Is Disbelieving' in @lawfaremedia.org

https://cup.org/4qDjN80

The Age of Academic Slop is Upon Us what happens when AI automates "normal science"?

I just finished a three-year term as an editor at an international relations journal. I began at the start of the LLM era but ended right in the middle of it. Our volume of submissions tripled and our desk reject rate rose to 75%. I have some thoughts.
open.substack.com/pub/hegemon/...

Canada is not Venezuela. But, that doesn’t mean we’re somehow immune to geopolitical conflict. A few have wondered if ‘aligning with American interests’ would protect us. But… getting at what that actually means depends on who you ask. Sigh.

The Insurrection Hiding in Plain Sight The alternate reality that political leaders, media properties, and influencers have helped construct still envelops millions of Americans.

In a 2021 essay, Renee DiResta and Alex Stamos discussed the factors that led to the January 6 storming of the Capitol—and warned that “echo chambers, hyperpartisan media, and peer-to-peer misinformation are not going anywhere.”

Congratulations 🎉

Got called “carceral” for this which means it’s time to lay my favorite game: does this person not know the difference between civil and criminal law, or do they simply think that “carceral” is a magic word that delegitimizes all feminist resistance to sexual abuse?

Artificial Intelligence and Public Policy Cambridge Core - Political Economy - Artificial Intelligence and Public Policy

New Cambridge Element of Public Policy on AI

"Artificial Intelligence and Public Policy" by Fernando Filgueiras

www.cambridge.org/core/element...

We remember them always.

Geneviève Bergeron
Hélène Colgan
Nathalie Croteau
Barbara Daigneault
Anne-Marie Edward
Maud Haviernick
Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz Maryse Laganière
Maryse Leclair
Anne-Marie Lemay
Sonia Pelletier
Michèle Richard
Annie St-Arneault
Annie Turcotte