Danielle Thomsen

What do you have to do to a person to make them behave like this? What brings a person to a point in their life where they’re gleefully inflicting lawless, unjust violence like this?

Opinion | The W.N.B.A. Is Making More Money Than Ever. Why Aren’t the Players? Other professional sports leagues give their players roughly 50 percent of the revenue, but the W.N.B.A. players get less than 10 percent.

In @nytopinion.nytimes.com

“By many measures, it’s been the most successful season in league history” for the WNBA, David Berri, a sports economist, writes. “But the players aren’t fully sharing in that success.”

Excellent overview

The Fundraising-Industrial Complex Is Eating American Politics New data reveals campaigns burn about a third of donations raised just asking for more donations

Political campaigns now burn 30¢ of every dollar raised just fundraising for more dollars (up from 9¢ in 2004).

In 2024, $3 Billion was spent on fundraising.

In 2026, fundraising costs are on track to exceed advertising spending for the first time.

The Fundraising-Industrial Complex Is Eating American Politics New data reveals campaigns burn about a third of donations raised just asking for more donations

"When nearly one-third of all political contributions get recycled back into asking for more contributions, we've created a system that exists primarily to perpetuate itself while enriching fundraising consultants." data4democracy.substack.com/p/the-fundra...

Trump Is Shutting Down the War On Cancer America’s cancer research system, which has helped save millions of lives, is under threat in one of its most productive moments.

“It will take decades to recover from this, if we ever do.” America’s cancer research system, which has helped save millions of lives and is in one of its most productive moments, is under threat by the Trump administration.

The Money Signal A data-rich, eye-opening look at how, when, and why political fundraising is consequential.  Over the last two decades, the number of competitive congressional races has declined precipitously. Yet ca...

Danielle Thomsen's (@daniellethomsen.bsky.social) The Money Signal will change how you think about the function of money in US elections. A must-read! press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

APSA folks: Free on Saturday, 9/13 at 10 am? Come to an Author Meets Critics panel for my new book, The Money Signal! Thanks to an amazing group of scholars: Larry Bartels, Brandice Canes-Wrone, @carnes.bsky.social, @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social, and Frances Lee. @uchicagopress.bsky.social

Have you ever wanted to hear the stories of pathbreaking LADIES of political science? these new podcasts tell their stories. #GenderSky #Polisky #Behaviorsky #EGEN @egenpolisci.bsky.social

Exactly right. And no incentives for strong GOP challengers to run. Problematic in era of uncompetitive general elections.

If pundits would like to talk about violence, a terrorist recently shot up the CDC and another assassinated Democratic officials in Minnesota but they sort of let both stories disappear

Not as threatening as motorbikes in DC I know but maybe we could circle back?

Very bad sign when masked, unidentified agents of the security state are not just grabbing people off the street but openly identifying with the regime's politics

Enjoyed giving a keynote at CogSci 2025! 🧠 🖥️ 🌉@cogscisociety.bsky.social ‬ #CogSci2025 #philsci #philsky #HPS

Thanks for the shoutout, Mirya! Book is hot off the press! Full thread soon.

SNA is amazing. No lines, efficient, small but mighty.

Something I love about running a tiny independent media outlet that's beholden only to our readers: We get to do awesome public service journalism like this.

Don't get me wrong—this redistricting war is terrible. But we don't have to worry about clicks or shareholders. We just do work that matters.

graph showing DOGE only saved 5% of claimed savings

DOGE cut less than 5% of claimed savings in contracts
www.politico.com/news/2025/08...

Chart showing progression of the number of open Republican house seats over the election cycle for the years 2006 to 2026. 2018 and 2020 had the most retirements, and 2026 looks similar so far.

Republican open House seats are tracking the massive 2020 and 2018 years so far. Notably all but one of this year's open GOP seats is due to the member running for Senate or governor. 1/2

Data: docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

Trump’s War on Measurement Means Losing Data on Drug Use, Maternal Mortality, Climate Change and More By slashing teams that gather critical data, the administration has left the federal government with no way of understanding if policies are working — and created a black hole of information whose…

In agency after agency, the U.S. government is losing its capacity to measure how American society is functioning, making it much harder to gauge the nature and scale of the problems we are facing and the effectiveness of policies.

(Published April)

Great thread about a very cool paper about elite behavior that shapes voter choices.

Some papers take longer than others. I've been studying dropouts for nearly a decade. I think they hold important lessons for who runs for office, which indicators are used as signals of viability, and how we measure and count political candidacies. Many more questions remain for future work.

The now publicly available dataset includes measures of early money and prior office experience for 26,000 U.S. House candidates who ran from 1980 to 2022. I have collected and re-collected (and re-collected) these data for years. Thanks to the dozens of RAs who have helped along the way.

The fact that money is such a strong predictor of exit decisions matters for the choices on the ballot and contributes to biases in representation. The exit of experienced candidates in particular leads to less competitive primaries and fewer choices for voters.

We know a lot about who runs for office but much less about why candidates change their mind and drop out before the primary. Early money is a potent signal of viability in the initial weeks of a campaign. Those who post impressive early totals are seen as more formidable by competitors.

Excited that my paper on early money and dropout decisions is out at @bjpols.bsky.social! A brief thread:

Main finding: Experienced candidates who struggle to raise money are more likely to drop out before the primary. Pattern is even more pronounced in the current money-driven era.

Old money: Campaign finance and gerontocracy in the United States Politicians in the United States rank among the oldest globally. This study examines how money in politics contributes to age inequality in political …

@adambonica.bsky.social and I are economists now (economist salary coming soon, I imagine)

Ungated until the end of September: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

The real scandal here is how deeply embedded Mothership is with the Democratic establishment. It was founded by DCCC alumni and continues to work closely with party leaders. It’s way worse than I thought. And it’s infuriating they continue to allow preying on people to enrich consultants.

The Mothership Vortex: An Investigation Into the Firm at the Heart of the Democratic Spam Machine How a single consulting firm extracted $282 million from a network of spam PACs while delivering just $11 million to actual campaigns.

The annoying spam texts destroying the Democratic brand:

$678M raised through those spam tactics

$282M to one consulting firm: Mothership Strategies.

$11M to actual campaigns (1.6%)

The party isn’t just treating donors like marks—it’s being fleeced itself yet continues to back Mothership.

Donor List Suggests Scale of Trump’s Pay-for-Access Operation

The most corrupt White House in history. Here is an account of what people are paying, directly to a PAC called MAGA Inc, in order to meet the president, get pardons, change policy

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/02/u...

Brilliant keynote by @laurennross.bsky.social at #cogsci2025 on cognitive science and its philosophy. Lauren pointed out the myriad ways in which cogsci and philosophy support and benefit one another, using explanation and causal reasoning as case studies. Thank you for a great talk!! 🙏