Opinion | Trump Corrupts, and Absolute Trump Corrupts Absolutely

“To say that President Trump is corrupt is to somehow understate the size, scope and magnitude of his corruption.

It is as if you were to describe a modern thermonuclear device as a ‘bomb.’ That is true enough, but it is not quite the truth. It does not capture the nature of the thing in full.”

"No puppet. No Puppet. You're the puppet." is the organizing framework for this regime

Genuinely wondering: Why would anyone--at either the micro or macro level--aid America and its state actors at this point?

🇪🇬👑

Part II - oud game crazy

Will post the second half—the whole thing is like an IR “We Didn’t Start the Fire” 🙃

If this hasn’t crossed your feed yet, take a second to enjoy this certified banger

But just think about all the prestige! 🫠

NYT headline stating Mamdani made $1600 from "rapping" last year

I know a lot of NYers are TIGHT this morning

The mayor made more money from rapping last year than most full-time "rappers"

PSA: If ever get an unsolicited "ayo my man, you like hip hop?" when walking the street of NYC, the answer is an emphatic, unequivocal, downright disrespectful "NAH FAM"

🚨 I have an article out at APR titled “Educational Polarization in American Politics: More than Just a Diploma Divide” in which i look at how educational attainment shapes public opinion and political behavior across the entire education spectrum, not just the across the degree/no degree binary 1/x

Headline about Sec Hegseth reciting a supposed bible verse with a translation commonly associated with Pulp Fiction

So many unserious people…with so much unchecked power

a real actual headline about real actual news: Shoe company Allbirds pivots to AI compute in sign of a totally normal and healthy economy

literally nothing makes sense anymore

That last line is a banger :-)

Then again, I love diversity, good food, and walkability, which are the constituent parts of “city life”—so maybe there’s something shared there after all?

I think I get what you’re saying…tho there just seems to be a lot of headwinds. One thing that immediately comes to mind is the transient nature of most major cities’ residents.

Speaking for myself, as a NYer (at heart) it’s hard for me to think about sharing in someone from DCs love for their city

If you mean cities generally, that seems like a fairly tall order, in psychological terms. There is certainly a lot of localized city pride, but I’d say it’s hard to shift that to a natl “urban” pride. It’s prob not as hard for a “rural” pride to take shape (largely similar experiences/lifestyles)

Par for the course I guess. Will keep an eye out for updates. Thanks for the heads up 🙏🏽

Whoa! Didn’t know about Ahmed

Such a shortsighted move—really poor judgment

Hope he gets thru this quickly

War as a Pretext: Gulf States Are Tightening the Screws on Speech—Again War does not only reshape borders. It also reshapes what can be seen, said, and remembered. When governments invoke “misinformation” during wartime, they often mean something simpler: speech they do n...

I published this yesterday. www.eff.org/deeplinks/20... Today I learned that my friend Ahmed Shihab Eldin is among those detained. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/a...

Racial Disparities and Black Parents’ School Preferences: Evidence from a Survey Experiment - The Urban Review Nearly half of Black parents have access to public school choice, but choice may not provide equitable and supportive school environments. Qualitative research documents Black parents worries that majority-White schools with more resources and higher test scores may over-discipline, underestimate, and exclude their children. Yet large-scale studies rarely examine what Black families desire in potential schools, including how they navigate potential tradeoffs between high school quality and denigrating school racial climates. This survey experiment examines the extent to which test score gaps and suspension gaps between Black students and their non-Black peers deter Black parents from choosing schools with higher overall test scores and lower overall suspension rates. We randomly assign a large, national sample of Black parents (N = 1,677) to examine a school profile vignette where the school has overall high academic achievement and low suspensions rates but includes either one, both, or neither academic and discipline gaps to assess how test score and suspension disparities affect Black parents’ school preferences and perceptions. We find that racial disparities in student discipline and academic outcomes, on average, diminish Black families’ desires to enroll in high-achievement schools and their perceptions of student belonging. These findings align with qualitative research showing that well-resourced, high-achieving schools are less appealing to Black families when they marginalize Black students and that schools’ unequal punishment of Black students shapes Black parents’ evaluations of potential educational spaces.

New research by Todd Hall, Jeremy Prim, @drjae.bsky.social, and me:

Black families are 10 percentage points less likely to choose an otherwise high-quality school when it has large racial disparities in test scores and student discipline.

Read the paper: doi.org/10.1007/s112...

1/2

this also reveals the lie at the core of "we're ok with immigrants who do it the 'right way'" because it demonstrates how "the right way" is always subject to the whims of the ruler(s), and, importantly, their racism.

A map of the US and its territories

The United States--not as a logo map, but in its full Imperial glory(?)

Found in the unlikeliest of places...

We’ve transitioned to the Boss Baby portion of today’s proceedings in my household 🙃

There are many things to be angry/annoyed with in this world

This may not be at the top of the list…but it’s not that far down, either

The End of Immigration Americans despise ICE, but it’s “succeeding” nonetheless

Check out @pkrugman.bsky.social's sobering new piece about the success of the Trump administration in stifling immigration to the US, despite the massive unpopularity of ICE and its tactics, citing @prri.org's brand-new survey report. open.substack.com/pub/paulkrug...

New working paper: Rethinking Misinformation Interventions. The field has spent years searching for the one intervention that will solve misinformation. This search is the wrong approach — and our disappointment says more about our expectations than our tools. (1/5)
osf.io/preprints/so...

A whole lotta folks really milked that “look, I’m liberal, BUT…” cultural moment

Jamie Dimon, head douche at JP Morgan Chase, pontificating on the prospects for lasting MidEast peace

Always great to hear from scholars known for their depth and breadth of regional knowledge

Having been subjected to a 45-min "enhanced" screening the last time I returned to the US--despite being enrolled in Global Entry--I am almost certainly the "wrong" kind

Muslim Immigrants Assimilate Even More Than Polls of Muslims Indicate It is important to understand that Muslims do assimilate. In prior posts on this topic, I have shown how this pattern repeats on a variety of other issue areas—including support for violence against c...

In case you ever wondered why so many minorities balk at the notion of "assimilation," just read this piece that is presumptively in defense of American Muslims:

"Indeed, leaving Islam is a form of assimilation into the broader society"

Real quiet-part-out-loud energy

www.cato.org/blog/muslim-...