ankylosaurus ERASURE

Low key he's bringing back hortatory names. Collarbone Pete, Canthal Tilt Jones, Cheekbones Johnson

open.substack.com/pub/searchli...

Transparency and fairness are the biggest ways to improve the experience of paying taxes, and people care somewhat less about paying less or only supporting programs they like

Happy tax day! New from Searchlight: Voters think paying taxes is part of being a good citizen....and feel like they're "a punishment". But, the thing that would make them feel better is increased transparency, not paying less.

also it's 2026 you should probably weight on past vote choice, which will balance your partisanship. partisan nonresponse is a known issue.

the median voter, folks

Be very careful about claims like "the number of people <X> is the highest its ever been".

This is often true, including in this case, because of the growing population.

The percent of Americans who had cost burdened rent (>30% of income) is lower than it was a decade ago.

Please no. This will not go well. Let us at least run a candidate who can make *new* mistakes.

That hesitation may harden after Friday's planned caucus conference call for Democratic lawmakers to learn more about the mechanics of the 25th Amendment from Rep. Jamie Raskin, a constitutional law expert who led Trump's second impeachment trial. Jeffries asked Raskin to talk the caucus through the range of options available to address presidential conduct before they reached a consensus position.

Like they’re literally having a conference call today to talk through the mechanism for impeachment, Bluesky stop falling for Dem rage bait challenge level impossible

I will never get over people saying Kamala campaigning with Liz Cheney meant she was more neocon than trump when he was openly campaigning with Rubio

Each individual chapter of the first Malazan book is incredibly compelling but the whole experience is of someone hurrying to make all the plot happen before they run out of space. I hear the second one slows down a bit?

Series of bar charts comparing CNN polling from January and March 2026. They show that President Trump's economic ratings have dropped from January, while his overall rating has remained more stable.

Our latest poll out today:
www.cnn.com/2026/04/01/p...

Full toplines/crosstabs:
www.documentcloud.org/documents/27...

A choropleth map of U.S. residential electricity bills by state as of March 2026, from the MIT/Heatmap Electricity Price Hub. States are shaded from green (lowest, ~$70/month) to red (highest, ~$198/month). Texas, Alabama, and South Carolina appear among the most expensive; Colorado and surrounding Rocky Mountain states appear among the cheapest. A timeline slider spans 2020–2026. Below the map, a chart shows the national average bill oscillating between roughly $100–$200/month with strong seasonality. A summary statistic shows the national average residential electricity bill rose 28.0% from March 2021 to March 2026 (12-month trailing average).

Electricity prices are essential to the US economy. But it’s very hard to get recent, granular data on them.

We’re changing that. Today, @heatmap.news and MIT released the ELECTRICITY PRICE HUB, a new tool breaking down local power rates and bills going back to 2021. electricity.heatmap.news

One of the great backstops of American electoral integrity is Barbara who has worked as the Podunkville County Clerk for 50 years and makes sure ballots are mailed out on time. There are many of her.

Plus, if you've ever worked with voter files, you know those lists are wildly messy. And occasionally on paper. What a nonsense EO.

This is super illegal, but also hilariously ignorant of how election administration in the US works. It's incredibly decentralized, controlled by county level officials, and not something the federal government controls.

This keeps happening and it keeps making this place worse (not least because people with real expertise stop posting here because of it).

There is also a fairly dire tendency for people involved to double down rather than admit causing / contributing to a pile on in error. Sigh.

also republicans love to pay for twitter but i don't think anyone is really using Grok

AI hasn’t broken through into political campaigns just yet Also, Republicans love to pay for twitter

I got distracted and went looking for what campaigns or PACs are paying for AI tools. It's not that many just yet!

open.substack.com/pub/cauldron...

This brought to you by 5 minutes spent on the ballotpedia "arguments for and against voter ID" page, hardly some arcane trawling of the internet

Is *Chuck Schumer* saying that? No, he's leaving space for hypothetically acceptable ID laws. But *some Democrats* definitely are.

I'd be happy to see more specific examples in this piece, but Democrats broadly are absolutely saying Voter ID is bad in all cases.

Here's Indivisible on this
indivisible.org/resource/vot...

People hate high prices SOOOO much

there are quite literally not enough of them to do this!

New polling today- voters oppose supplemental funding for the Iran war. Unsurprisingly, there's a big gap on partisanship.

www.searchlightinstitute.org/research/a-m...

New short paper w @jkalla.bsky.social !

Candidates gain from moderation, but less than many theories expect.

Many conclude voters must not care about issues.

This is wrong. Small *average* effects mask large effects on specific issues & are consistent with widespread issue-based voting 🧵

There's a growing worry that AI will break empirical social science -- that agents can p-hack until they find something that "works."

We think that worry deserves to be taken seriously. Our new paper shows that is true empirically and makes it precise: njw.fish/static/paper...

Interesting AmericasBarometer result from @johnsides.bsky.social in this week's @goodauth.bsky.social newsletter. Strong public willingness to trade features of democracy (free elections, free expression) for material and physical security, with some party differences.

mailchi.mp/goodauthorit...

Hermetica: Anarchist generation ship sci-fi short books that linger on the palate

If you want something fun to read between bouts of tarriff-related-scrolling, I have a suggestion

cauldronllc.substack.com/p/hermetica-...