If I were in a role as superfluous and insignificant as Vice President, I'd probably cope by fantasizing about how cool it would be to be the Pope too.

A DOGE staffer assigned to the National Endowment for the Humanities to flag grants for "DEI" tries to explain what "DEI" is. This deposition is part of a lawsuit by the @acls1919.bsky.social, @historians.org and @modernlanguage.bsky.social.

First-of-a-kind study shows encouraging data for trans kids who socially transition Ninety-four percent of participants in a new study stood firm in their trans identity after five years, and "detransitioning" is rare.

The name "Popular Science" doesn't mean we shift our coverage depending on public opinion. It means we cover relevant subjects that are rigorously researched, reliable, and grounded in reality.

And trans lives are grounded in reality.

We see y'all. No matter what.

www.popsci.com/science/tran...

Help! I'm developing opinions about which Healthy Choice Power Bowls are the best.

I'm bringing my first edition with me to class. Gotta let the kids know I'm an OG. #feministflex

Friends, I am prepping a lecture on federalism and I am genuinely enthralled by and excited about it. I may have received my PhD in political science 10 years ago, but I don't think I truly became a political scientist until today.

An example irony of which I'm sure Alanis would have have availed herself were she an American: The man Richard Hofstadter once called "the Marx of the master class" doing disparate impact analysis to defend the rights of aggrieved southerners. I love my job.

It strikes me that Charlie Kirk was precisely what he imagined the professors on his watchlist to be: a rigid and obtuse ideologue who exploited campus cultures of comparative openness and freedom to mobilize young people in the service of an exclusionary and illiberal political agenda.

Democracy is a means to the end of using politics to make the lives of the poor more livable, more stable, and more free. You don't get a better, more flourishing life for ordinary working people without democracy. Somebody in the godforsaken Democratic party please say this!

Democracy *by definition* is a form of government that empowers the poor, the low born, and the relatively vulnerable to resist the predations of the rich, the noble, and the relatively powerful. That's why things like due process and the rule of law exist in the first place!!!!

The whole point of democracy according to the 5th century BCE Athenians who literally invented the freakin' word is rule by the many, the common, the poor.

Anyone who knows anything about democracy knows this is a false choice. If we're talking about democracy in a coherent and historically grounded way, we are talking about BOTH inequality & due process, affordability & the rule of law because all these things are tied at the root.

I am so tired of Democratic pundits and politicians talking about midterm strategies as if the party needs to choose between messaging about the economy, costs, inequality, affordability, etc. or democracy, due process, rule of law, Trump's authoritarianism etc.

Proud to have contributed a little piece on pedagogy to this fantastic history blog. Little known fact: All my lesson plans involve T-Pain.

When I caught wind of the consternation surrounding the new logo, I had high hopes it was gonna include a black panther mauling the old guy in the rocking chair or maybe just the old guy in the rocking chair holding hands with a second old guy in a rocking chair. No such luck.

If our irreparably broken and stupid political culture makes it so all the gays and feminists have a moral obligation to eat at Cracker Barrel now, I am gonna be such a happy camper.

Honestly, the funniest thing about this is that over the past 50 years, there have been more Republican presidents who were male cheerleaders than those who have been in combat.

Classes start one week from today. Time to start relearning how to talk and wear pants again.

Whenever I use a stud finder, I feel like a medieval peasant desperately trying to make meaning out of inscrutable signs. A short beep, a long beep, a flash of light! Ah, yes. Here it is. Here is where ye shall drill thou pilot hole.

Desantis went for "Deportation Depot" when "Rip Away from Home Depot" was right there. He is such a weak and sad little monster.

When I read the Nat Con drivel Vance is always cribbing from I'm haunted by the thought that I've stood for the national anthem at baseball games next to these guys and the whole time they were fantasizing about how we were part of some mystical organic unity together. Gross.

The Airbnb ad urging you to rent your house to ren fest carnies is the most compelling recession indicator I've seen.

If the person throwing the dildos at the WNBA athletes is doing so in a spirit of misogyny and homophpbia, then they can go $%*# themselves. That said, my first response when I saw this news story was to gaze off wistfully into the middle distance and think, "Noone ever throws dildos at me anymore."

"When the first of August came round, the Professor realized he had pleasantly trifled away nearly two months at a task which should have taken little more than a week."

--Willa Cather, 1925 and timeless

I'm not proud to admit it, but I loved the Presidential Fitness Test as a kid. Flexed arm hang, push ups, pull ups, sit and reach, 1 mile run. I crushed them all. I would have made an excellent child soldier.

Others may have caught this already, so forgive me if I'm late to the party, but JD Vance called Harry Jaffa "Henry" Jaffa in his Statesmanship Award acceptance speech at the Claremont Institute a few weeks ago. So perfect.

For week 2 of my new Politics in the U.S. course, I'm assigning those famously prophetic excerpts on race from Democracy in America. In an effort to alienate as broad a swath of students as possible, I'm calling that week "A 19th-century conservative French aristocrat invents Critical Race Theory."

A line chart with a blue line showing a large growth of protest events from Jan 20 - May 31, 2025, and a green line showing the relatively modest growth of protest events during the same period in 2017.

My team and I at the Crowd Counting Consortium (@djpressman@bsky.social, Soha Hammam, & Chris Shay) have a new piece out: wagingnonviolence.org/2025/06/amer.... In it, we show that through May 2025, the size and scale of anti-Trump protests have dwarfed those in 2017. 🧵

We still have an Establishment Clause. Hooray!

@raygunsite.com is the best!