Doctor J

this is poli sci 101 press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

wealth concentration is already 200% as bad at is was in 2020. think about that

This is a huge glaring issue right now. Courts generally ARE doing fairly well, even including significant number of Trump appointees. The corruption is concentrated in scotus.

The removal order was over writing a bad check?!? That's a crime???

Homeland Security Wants Social Media Sites to Expose Anti-ICE Accounts

New story up on the Homeland Security Department’s new tactic: flood social media companies with subpoenas to unmask anonymous accounts that criticize ICE or monitor the movements of ICE agents.

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/t...

Just noting this because I have cited the trends a lot recently: Tracking data from Civiqs now shows a plurality of the public favors abolishing ICE, with 47% in support and 46% opposed. Independents are net +5 on abolish, up from -40 a year ago substack.com/profile/4791...

👇

Chadwick Boseman and James van der Beek both died in their 40s of an illness that's treatable if a colonoscopy catches it but almost no insurer covers them for people under 45, this is what Engels meant by "social murder"

Every time Biollante isn’t on screen everyone should be asking “Where’s Biollante?”

Two cities under siege Remarkably similar scenes from Boston and Minneapolis, 260 years apart, show a federal government betraying its founding principles.

New at The Watch:

I dug into archival witness accounts of the British siege of Boston prior to the American Revolution.

They are remarkably similar to what we're seeing in Minneapolis.

open.substack.com/pub/radleyba...

Drivers are not ok.

"People who parked in the lot told KING 5 they didn't see the signs or expected there would be an exception for the parade.

'It's a little bit unfair,' said Simon Hatzey, a Seattle Seahawks fan."

never get involved in a land war in Minnesota

Found an additional graphic that gets even more of these quotes together.

I've kept "I hate myself, I hate clover, and I hate bees" pinned above my desk since I first started studying evolutionary biology as an undergraduate. So relatable to get extremely frustrated with your study system.

More Thoughts on the Authoritarian International Yesterday, we talked about the global Authoritarian Movement or Authoritarian International (with...

More Thoughts on the Authoritarian International talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/more-...

AG Keith Ellison: "The surge is contributing to violent crime. Two of the three homicides committed in Minneapolis in 2026 have come at the hands of federal immigration agents."

really interesting to me how many professional political commentators have basically retconned the draconian immigration enforcement policies of Obama and Biden out of existence and have completely swallowed the right wing narrative of immigration enforcement

OK, claiming property rights in a new term (I think). I just did a Substack live with Catherine Rampell, in which she suggested that young men may be pivoting from Bitcoin to prediction markets. And it just popped into my head: the Testosterone Trade.

🪡 Many orgs have closed down, many more have done layoffs, and even more have had to make tough decisions to cut essential programs to build the infrastructure we need to win.

It may not seem important now, but it’ll cost us in November when key voting groups don’t turn out.

🪡 Folks are more than valid in their anger and fear, I understand why they’re not donating to party committees and associated PACs.

But what’s being underreported is that outside groups, those that engage youth, POC, or do key digital work, have also seen their budgets shrink drastically.

Democratic donors have spent a year frozen, largely out of justified anger at the consultant class, the spammy texts, and lack of leadership from some elected leaders.

That anger, however, is also hurting outside groups doing critical work — and that could hurt us in November.

THREAD 🧵

We live in a country that had to abruptly declare a no fly zone around an international airport because CBP thought they were under attack by a party balloon.

Abolish DHS.

Pretty good description here of what constitutes a push poll. (I too would be fascinated to know if people... actually sign up for this?)

the median voter

If democrats want to win elections when Republicans aren't in office, they need to provide clear gains to people's lives that can be experienced in real time, during election season - with headwinds like oil price manipulation and right-wing propaganda.

1. Turnout - max your base, discourage theirs

2. Persuading low info voters - who are highly sensitive to material conditions on the ground, and to incumbency (I'd wager the latter is focused on the presidency and whichever office they're voting for)

Second order observation: in a highly polarized environment, high info voters are largely pre-sorted into their existing partisan affiliations.

That means any persuasion gains in this category are likely to be marginal, and leaves two main paths to winning elections...

(speaking as someone who writes surveys for a living)

Tbh, I think it boils down to:
* we've all internalized an expectation that corporate America will placate Trump in more ways than we can imagine
* most of us are not as in the weeds about polling companies and practices as you are

Gallup ends daily presidential approval tracking poll The change is the latest retrenchment for Gallup, which has been the dominant name in public polling for decades.

Gallup moved from a daily to weekly (and later, monthly) frequency for cost reasons in 2018. Had nothing to do with Trump (the privately funded survey they attached the free-rider approval question to moved from phone to mail) www.politico.com/story/2018/0...

bsky.app/profile/leah...