Three cabinet secretaries gone, all women. It's too on the nose to even point out but I'll be updating this chart, today!

meredithconroy.substack.com/p/the-number...

The Senate is now close to a tossup. (Gift link)

www.nytimes.com/2026/04/20/u...

Title page of our paper, “The Politics of Black Classification: Sociopolitical Cues and Racial Perception,” with Lauren Davenport (Stanford) and Hunter Rendleman (UC Berkeley), dated April 14, 2026. Abstract: What makes someone Black in American society today? From Donald Trump questioning Kamala Harris’s racial identity to Joe Biden’s claim that hesitant Black voters “ain’t Black,” American politics frequently brings questions of racial authenticity and belonging to the surface. Yet political science often approaches race as a fixed attribute rather than a social construction. Here, we seek to understand how Americans define blackness in social and political life. Using a conjoint experiment with a racially diverse sample that includes Black, white, and mixed race Black-white respondents, we evaluate how ascribed and acquired traits influence perceptions of blackness. The results show that inherited characteristics—particularly parentage and skin tone, which are the strongest determinants of racial classification—play a central role, while sociopolitical cues such as partisanship, neighborhood context, and spousal race also influence racial classification. Using a continuous measure, we also show that respondents make graded assessments of blackness rather than purely binary classifications, with some individuals perceived as more Black than others. Black respondents are more likely than white respondents to classify a broader set of profiles as Black, consistent with a more inclusive understanding of racial membership, yet they also place greater emphasis on shared political identity. These findings clarify how racial categories are socially constructed and why that construction carries real political and social consequences.

Our paper, “The Politics of Black Classification: Sociopolitical Cues and Racial Perception” (w/ Lauren Davenport & @hrendleman.bsky.social), has been conditionally accepted at Perspectives on Politics!

Sharing abstract below. Long time coming, but we are really proud of this paper.

More soon!

MAGA Is Increasingly Convinced the Trump Assassination Attempt Was Staged Conspiracy theories about the Butler, Pennsylvania, shooting have ramped up in recent weeks as once steadfast Trump supporters turn on the president.

I'm reminded of something Matt Sitman said long ago on the Know Your Enemy podcast...on the US right, nothing ever is just what it is. The layers of absurd fabulism are not a bug, but a feature of US conservative political culture, and it's long been that way. www.wired.com/story/maga-i...

“Fake news mafia”

Surge in U.S. Concern About Immigration Has Abated The percentage of Americans wanting less immigration has dropped by nearly half this year to 30%, with 79% now saying immigration benefits the U.S.

New Gallup Poll Results:

A Record High 79% of Americans Now Say Immigration Benefits the United States

news.gallup.com/poll/692522/...

Genuinely yes! I will reach out!

Yes I dragged @erincassese.bsky.social into this 😂

Man Charged in Lego Theft Scheme of Replacing Pieces With Pasta, Police Say A California man was charged with grand theft after the police said he reaped about $34,000 in what an official called an “off the charts” pasta-and-switch scheme involving Lego kits.

A California man was charged with grand theft after buying thousands of dollars worth of Lego kits, replacing pieces with bags of uncooked pasta, and returning the sets to stores for refunds, the police said on Thursday.

Hahahahaha. I LOVED a league of their own, and Kit was definitely the sister I related to more 😅

Geenachella 🎶

I’m walking along PCH and just saw a beat up sedan at a stoplight with out-of-state plates, blasting Phantom Planet’s “California” and I’m really happy for them 😂😂👏🤌

They’ve got it backwards right? “Doctored” is the cover up.

It's the Prices, Stupid Consumer sentiment is at an all-time low because prices are at an all-time high. Consumer sentiment isn't broken, popular government data is just incomplete

The index of consumer sentiment isn't broken; models that try to predict it just don't have the right input variables. I fix that and find that, yes, high nominal price levels explain why the vibes are so off. It's the prices, stupid
www.gelliottmorris.com/p/2026-04-14...

This is super interesting to me — boomers radicalizing, Gen-X taking up (traditional) boomer politics (which is always what they said would happen to millennials, because Gen X was too cool and alternative etc etc etc)

When I was digging into biweekly polls for 538 from @democracyfund.bsky.social from 2020-2022 or so, GenX men and women (but especially men) were consistently the most conservative on racial and gender issues, but I never got around to writing it up!

this is what teenagers in movies looked like during the iraq war

Cook just moved 4 Senate races towards the Democrats...

I have zero! But my Candace Owens numbers are higher than I'd like.

Well this is a great bunch!!?

"Protecting my family" is an insane defense, my man.

Trump Attacks Pope Leo as Too Liberal and ‘Weak on Crime’

The New York Times' article on Trump's attack on the Pope.
www.nytimes.com/2026/04/12/u...

why did I cry tho😫

Honmoon secured 🫡

A reminder to Americans how exceptional it is that a leader in a democracy does not except his electoral defeat.

Opinion | Beware conservatives promoting “intellectual freedom” Victor Ray: This conservative lie about schools like mine is furthering authoritarianism

Making tenure count, for MSNOW I wrote about my employer, The University of Iowa, creating a center for intellectual freedom. It's a reactionary project built on decades of conservative propaganda about higher ed.

Was scream-singing Dashboard Confessional earlier this week and was like “maybe I need to start a podcast called Podcast Confessionals” I was moved by the nostalgia 😅😅🎤

The specific allegations against Swalwell aside….this response reflects a very pervasive (but wrong) belief. Most sexual violence is relational and survivors keeping contact w/ their assailants is very common and not necessarily discrediting (esp when there’s a power imbalance)

Inside Pixar’s Scrapped Movie ‘Be Fri’ and the “Devastating” Aftermath "Disney reps were like, 'We can't have a girl power movie,'" an insider tells The Hollywood Reporter about the animation studio making the rare decision to cancel the feature after years of developmen...

the really telling thing about all these Pixar postmortems is that place used to be like Fort Knox and now people are so manifestly unhappy with leadership that the building leaks like a sieve

Men who eat tofu and like cats (2 of my favorite things?!?) has emerged as green flag shorthand on Instagram.