Brendan Nyhan

The story here is increasingly about the right’s reaction — the incitement, the calls for war, the effort to use this terrible incident to neuter opposition.

This should be seen in the context of authoritarian regimes worldwide and their efforts to exploit acts of political violence to consolidate.

X’s head of product celebrating record downloads of his app on a day where a man’s murder was autoplayed on loop for all to see.

Patel said the 22-year-old suspect, Tyler Robinson, was arrested at 10 p.m. Thursday, however an announcement was delayed until President Donald Trump could appear on Fox & Friends Friday morning to reveal that authorities believed they had the person responsible for killing Kirk.

So people who were worried about a killer on the loose had to worry about little longer because Trump wanted to tell his TV friends in person.

Right-Wing Activists Urge Followers to Expose Those Celebrating Kirk Killing

Is criticizing the victim of an assassination - or refusing to lionize them - "celebrating" it? I don't think so. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/12/u...

"'My son, his dad, is a Republican for Trump …. Most of my family members are Republican. I don’t know any single one who’s a Democrat.'"

But in the aftermath of this shooting and others like it, Alex Newhouse, a researcher at the University of Colorado at Boulder who studies extremism, says any critiques of gaming culture in this instance must be contextualized. “It's not a specific game, but it's rather the use of gaming references. It's not the specific meme, but rather the use of online memes,” he says. “It's not the specific ways that things are written on the gun, but that they’re writing something on the gun at all.”

“It's pretty indicative of general speech associated with the deep parts of internet culture, in particular the types that are very much into irony posting and edgelord humor," says extremism researcher @alexbnewhouse.bsky.social

With @makenakelly.bsky.social

www.wired.com/story/charli...

It's not just Louisiana. Pertussis (whooping cough) has surged globally since the pandemic ended. The infection can be spread by asymptomatic immune individuals, so it's critically important for everyone to be vaccinated, especially babies and pregnant women. Most kids get pertussis from adults.

Kids: Study logic and probability

FP: Clearly the universities are responsible for the epidemic of extremist violence... oh wait, we don't actually believe in data or evidence

Pete Hegseth at his confirmation hearing about efforts to counter extremism in the military: "Things like focusing on extremism... have created a climate inside our ranks that feel political when it hasn't ever been political."

Hegseth now: Deploying commissars

The way the FP doesn't quote anyone is the tell. It's a phantasmagoria.

This is totally insane - like invading Iraq in response to 9/11. What evidence is there that any of these horrible events are related to universities?

Very cool survey experiments on informational treatments to counteract NIMBY attitudes about affordable housing, from @brendannyhan.bsky.social and his students

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

that's what's so crazy!

The US President’s attempt to seize control of our statutorily independent central bank—beyond being illegal—turns out to have been based on a fabrication.

Two key things to point out re: Trump sending National Guard troops to Memphis:

1) Unlike in blue states, there’s just no need for this; even if circumstances warranted, Governor Lee, who still commands the TN National Guard, could’ve just sent them in himself; and

2) Chicago (and Illinois) won.

I had a corneal transplant as a teenager for a rare eye disease. It was a novel treatment then-I would have otherwise become blind. Now they have new contact lens that make another transplant likely unneeded. US health research is amazing--and RFK/Trump are killing it.

Something the past 48 hours have underscored for me is how Twitter has succeeded in making violent white nationalism part of the normal everyday unremarked-on background noise. These are shocking, repellent beliefs but it's now considered highly impolite to mention them.

Stand up to bullies. They hate it.

The Gestapo was never hounded out of neighborhoods by angry Germans, but ICE is shamed away from a community every day.

Keep it up, America. Stand up to bullies wherever they are.

Friends don't let friends give preregistration a bad name. Exploratory findings are fine; you just have to label them!

Who could have predicted that this wouldn't go well?

Judge Allison D. Burroughs in Harvard lawsuit: ""difficult to conclude anything other than that [the Trump administration] used antisemitism as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically-motivated assault on this country's premier universities, and did so in a way that runs afoul of [federal law]."

Its all about law and order until you try to coup

Could not be more dangerous. A president with a devoted following of extremists who follow his suggestions of political violence (most notably, on January 6) ... what happens next?

president calls for political violence against those who disagree with him

He could not be less interested in finding out who killed him or why — and his message to his apparatus is clear that that is not a priority — when the killing creates such an opportune pretext to stoke attacks on whoever he feels like.

“Every political movement in history, including the most bloodthirsty, has condemned political violence by its opponents. The only real test is whether you also oppose political violence by your allies. This is a test Trump has repeatedly failed.”

Has Patel been watching The Fugitive while he flies his government-funded plane around pretending to do law enforcement?

The worst possible outcome -> "As if to prove that point, Mr. Patel and Mr. Bongino traveled on Thursday to Utah to personally oversee the investigation."