Some, no doubt, will offer the lie that they went only to observe, and report.

If VA votes to gerrymander against an authoritarian Republican Party, it means two very different states with very different histories & electorates can nonetheless recognize a threat to democracy & vote for something—gerrymandering—that they generally dislike but recognize as needed at this moment.

Do Virginia voters understand what is needed from them to save democracy? California's voters showed they did by voting for this course of action by 61%.

This is a huge question not just for the fate of US democracy but also for the question of the role of mass electorates in defending democracy.

“Republican leadership doesn’t want to do anything but ICE and CBP” is basically a Dem campaign ad.

Trump approval falls to 35% as rating on handling prices hits a record -46 Our new Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll finds the president's overall job approval at a new low, Democrats leading by 7 on the generic ballot, and a majority says the Iran war is not worth the cost

I love record unpopularity for Trump, it's everything he deserves. But too many people, especially political & media elites, treat it as mission accomplished. Trump & co are still in command of the American state, using it to violate human rights, wage needless war, & destroy public health & science

What do you get for the city that's had everything

The White House Correspondents Dinner is really an acid test for whether the media elite will formally make peace with American fascism.

Attendance will be a useful shortcut for which broadcasters & 'journalists' must be hounded out of the profession & never allowed on air again

Clerk says girl mouthed 'help' to him after alleged kidnapping in Hamtramck YouTube video by WXYZ-TV Detroit | Channel 7

Kidnapped girl saved by Yemeni immigrant at a gas station in Detroit.

This is something I've been hoping Dems do for some time. Hold the Senate GOP accountable for every incompetent the confirmed, and the destruction of American lives that resulted, but also for the oversight not exercised, especially over Iran.

NYC progressives looking smart.

Just FYI, that section's second to last, so if time is pressing, you can just skip to it

Thanks for the shout out! Did you see this review (bsky.app/profile/kjep...)? The last section explicitly applies some of the core lessons of Democracy for Busy People to local land use planning. I'm a bit proud of it:

We're hiring!

The Aristotelian Society is recruiting a new Managing Editor. This is a demanding part-time role suitable for a current graduate student to undertake alongside their studies.

Deadline: Monday 18th May 2026. Read more here:

mailchi.mp/9ec3fa312725...

You're telling me a giant corporation lied & underdelivered on promises to the public to get $750 billion in tax breaks

This is my surprised face

ANCIENT GREEK PRO WRESTLING PROMOTER: ok so you're going to be what's known as a "heel"
ACHILLES: fuck you

There is no way to solve the "congestion problem" by expanding roadway capacity; no such approach exists.

No surprise, though, to watch an administration that denies the fact of climate change opt to reject the science on induced demand, too.

Are you seriously trying to dismiss a book that received multiple awards from the world's leading professional association for political science because someone reported *its Wikipedia page* has some AI writing in it? Is that really what you're saying?
politicalscience.yale.edu/news/seeing-....

I've had the good fortune to interact with Sherrod Brown a couple times and he is The Real Deal as far as I'm concerned.

So glad he's in this race and hopeful he can make it back to the Senate.

Seems bad

Injustice and Structural Wrong: Reply to Sankaran and Monaghan and to Collins | Ethics: Vol 136, No 3 This article defends my challenge to the influential idea that social structures can be wrong independently of individual wrongdoing. Responding to criticisms from Kirun Sankaran and Jake Monaghan and...

An ETHICS Discussion, with David Estlund defending his ETHICS article “What’s Unjust About Structural Injustice?” from recent Ethics replies to it in “Injustice and Structural Wrong: Reply to Sankaran and Monaghan and to Collins” at doi.org/10.1086/739646 #philsky #PolTheory #legalphil #moralphil

this is one of the most offensive things I've seen in years

Counter-counterpoint: rural Virginians are the ones *currently* fucking *themselves* over with their votes. Gerrymandering that away from them fucks them over *less*, by any meaningful metric.

Dictator Perpetuo That understanding did not originate in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787. It goes all the way back to Rome. Like America, Rome was a people consciously rooted in having overthrown a monarchy. In 44 BC, Julius Caesar had his portrait placed on the coinage of the Republic. It was a shocking statement. Roman coins had never before carried a living man’s portrait at the Rome mint. Much less one bearing his newly claimed, unprecedented title: dictator perpetuo, the dictator for life. To put your face on the money was to claim a status above that of a citizen, to assert that you were not first among equals but something closer to a sovereign. It was emblematic of his concentration of power, consolidating his rule into an open autocracy. Within weeks of issuing the “CAESAR DICT PERPETVO” coin, he was assassinated. Though the Roman Republic fell, the ideal survived. Public institutions exist apart from the men who lead them, and conflating the two is the hallmark of tyranny. That ideal profoundly shaped the generation that designed the American constitutional order. The Founders created a Senate, placed it on a “Capitol Hill,” and embraced neoclassical architecture. They modeled their concept of civic virtue on Cincinnatus, the farmer-general who, having defeated a foreign invader, relinquished his dictatorial powers after just 15 days and went home. The Federalist Papers were published under the pseudonym “Publius,” while others posed as “Cato” or “Brutus.” Washington’s voluntary departure from the presidency after two terms, and his earlier resignation of his military commission, were modeled on that Roman example.

When Congress debated the Coinage Act of 1792, an initial version of the bill called for the president’s portrait to appear on U.S. coins. Washington rejected the idea, and James Madison successfully had it removed, arguing that stamping the president’s head on the money was un-republican.

(Many people who say things like this do not think it's ridiculous)

Seeing Like a State - Wikipedia

Tell me you've never read Seeing Like a State without telling me you've never read Seeing Like a State
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeing_...

IF you make 65k or less, the tariffs effectively doubled your tax rate, and in fact, if you make much less than that it made the percentage increase incalculable because if you make less than like 50k and have a household of three you don't pay FIT net

Polisky, if I’m not mistaken, someone once shared an overview of null findings on what does not drive far-right / radical right voting.

If such a collection exists, or if you’re willing to share other important null results, I would greatly appreciate it!

Beware of ‘anti-woke’ liberals: they attacked the left and helped Trump win | Jan-Werner Müller So-called ‘reactionary centrist’ pundits proclaimed that there was a global ‘vibe shift’ in favor of the right. They were wrong

Hope you saw this column, which takes just the right tone to make that point: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Dang, congrats! And what a great sign of Liberal Currents' (well-deserved &) increasing cache

Really good column from @jwmueller-pu.bsky.social on the utter nonsense "anti-woke" discourse always was, & how reactionary centrism helped legitimate the right's baseless attacks on anyone with the temerity to represent or care about urban places & the people living there: