adambonica.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

So timely, so important—read the full piece at: data4democracy.substack.com/p/federal-ju...

submitted 1 hour ago • 0 comments

The best scientific evidence is that the 2020 BLM protests helped defeat Trump in the election. These protests are likely doing the same. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

submitted 2 hours ago • 18 comments

NEW: I analyzed nearly 300 federal cases involving the Trump administration. Federal judges—across the political spectrum—are using language I’ve never seen before. One called government actions “unconscionable.” Another quoted Kafka. They’re begging us to pay attention.

submitted 9 hours ago • 37 comments

yes, the MAGA dads are fighting but this is a big deal, too:

submitted 3 days ago • 2 comments

Shame on these 5 Democrats who joined Republicans in voting for a bill requiring the Small Business Administration to take money away from "sanctuary" cities: Henry Cuellar Don Davis Laura Gillen Jared Golden Marie Gluesenkamp Perez They're just straight-up bigots.

submitted 3 days ago • 15 comments

The $289M Musk spent on Trump is just 0.13% of the $213B he made in 2024. For the rest of us, that's like paying for a friend’s dinner at Olive Garden. He isn’t mad about the check, he’s mad they ran out of unlimited breadsticks.

submitted 3 days ago • 4 comments

Not surprising, but important that agencies perceived as liberal are the ones that have been targeted with cuts and firings. Good piece from @adambonica.bsky.social. data4democracy.substack.com/p/they-calle...

submitted 3 days ago • 3 comments

Maybe Musk will manage to cut some actual fat in the budget after all. Musk isn't an agency but costs the gov more than most agencies. Musk got $6.3B in government contracts last year > entire proposed EPA budget ($4.1B) in GOP budget bill.

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

working class: billionaires buy elections billionaires: i buy elections white collar centrist think tank guy who promotes himself as some kind of working class whisperer: nooooooooooooooo that's not how money in politics works

submitted 3 days ago • 4 comments

9 out of 10 agencies targeted by DOGE for layoffs are liberal-leaning. Every single proposed GOP budget increase goes to conservative agencies. They're not cutting fat—they're performing ideological surgery with a chainsaw.

submitted 3 days ago • 49 comments

This is absolutely essential reading in case you’re wondering what the wholesale dismantling of civil service work has to do with you. data4democracy.substack.com/p/how-to-dis...

submitted 7 days ago • 29 comments

It's all funny until people start dying. And they will. The work of government is largely invisible until we suffer the harms they help prevent - or need the help they provide in a crisis.

submitted 6 days ago • 14 comments

Case in point:

submitted 6 days ago • 1 comment

It's good to see the OPM hiring memo has started to get the attention it deserves. We're going to sorely miss the smart, hardworking, career federal workers who serve the public--not the party in power--when they're gone. Let's break down what this means and why it's a major concern: 🧵⬇️

submitted 6 days ago • 3 comments

"For 142 years, the merit-based civil service survived because both parties recognized that functional government requires professional expertise. That consensus is dead. We're watching the transformation of public servants into party servants, of a government of laws into a government of loyalty."

submitted 6 days ago • 22 comments

Law firms that capitulated revealed poor strategic judgment: they alienated liberal in-house counsel, folded on a winnable federal case (law firms rarely lose because judges have affinity for lawyers), and signaled they won't even fight easy battles. They confused cowardice with pragmatism.

submitted 6 days ago • 3 comments

Someday we'll have to reckon with the fact that not only are billionaires bad for society, having that much money seems to be genuinely bad for their own mental health. This is a problem we need to address--if not for our sakes, then for theirs.

submitted 7 days ago • 14 comments

This is so right and so devastating—required reading for these times: data4democracy.substack.com/p/how-to-dis...

submitted 7 days ago • 6 comments

"There is no silver bullet, no “that was easy” button we can press. No single tactic or strategy — not one ad, nor message frame, nor media project — will win any single election or sustain that win beyond it. We need to do lots of things and we need to do them for decades."

submitted 7 days ago • 2 comments

Another excellent and important @adambonica.bsky.social piece. data4democracy.substack.com/p/how-to-dis...

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

Working on a piece exactly to try to refute this point International students do not generally take away slots from Americans! People’s brains have been totally cooked by SFA v. Harvard and by the obsession on undergrad admissions!

submitted 7 days ago • 11 comments

Democracy thrives on equality. Equality requires inclusion.🏳️‍🌈 Our democracy is strongest when everyone can participate fully and authentically. Happy Pride to all who make our communities more vibrant and our democracy more complete.

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

Absolutely second this. @donmoyn.bsky.social and @pamherd.bsky.social have been doing vital work documenting the systematic dismantling of federal expertise. If you're looking for a way to act on this, see this guide on submitting public comments against politicization of public services.

submitted 7 days ago • 2 comments

this @adambonica.bsky.social piece deserves to be read beside the yeoman work that @donmoyn.bsky.social and @pamherd.bsky.social have been doing. The dismantling of administrative expertise is one of those stories that is so big that pro journalists with beats find it hard to focus on or explain .

submitted 7 days ago • 14 comments

This week marks one year since Trump was convicted of 34 felonies. We were told accountability would be "too dangerous." Meanwhile, these democracies held their convicted leaders accountable: 🇫🇷x3 🇰🇷x3 🇧🇷x3 🇺🇦 🇭🇷 🇦🇹 🇲🇾 🇿🇦 🇷🇼 🇨🇮 🇲🇻 🇧🇦 🇬🇪 🇮🇹 🇦🇷 🇧🇮 America was the sole outlier.

submitted 8 days ago • 5 comments

They’re gonna discover the loyalty/competence trade-off and it will not be pretty

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

Why are we hiring? We just fired everyone.

submitted 9 days ago • 4 comments

It's not just authoritarians. As described in "Snakes In Suits," psychopaths in business use people the same way. That book focused on the corporate environment, which never constrained Trump. But his many business dealings followed the same pattern. He was VERY well prepared for authoritarian rule.

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

The Federalist Society gave Trump three SCOTUS seats, hundreds of judges, and near-absolute immunity from prosecution. Now he calls their kingmaker Leonard Leo a "sleazebag" who "probably hates America." Authoritarians have no allies—only naive enablers they haven't turned on yet.

submitted 9 days ago • 7 comments

OPM memo: Fed job applicants must now pledge in writing to implement Trump's political agenda. The final step in the Authoritarian playbook on the civil service: ✅ Purges disguised as "efficiency" ✅ Gut oversight agencies ✅ Weaken regulatory enforcement ➡️ Replace experts with loyalists ← UNDERWAY

submitted 9 days ago • 30 comments

Trump’s 2025 pardons so far, by the numbers: Convicted of: – Fraud: 24 – Tax Evasion: 7 – Illegal Campaign Donations: 4 – Political Corruption & Bribery: 8 – Insurrection: 1,500+ A reminder of why descriptive representation matters.

submitted 10 days ago • 15 comments

How it possible that "Dems did not have a turnout problem in 2024" has become the top required belief for continued admission to polite DC society based on a report that has this as figure 2.

submitted 11 days ago • 10 comments

Guess it’s only fitting: someone found guilty of tax fraud and making illegal campaign donations pardoning someone found guilty of tax fraud and making illegal campaign donations.

submitted 10 days ago • 0 comments