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

The atmosphere is a needy sponge, demanding more and more water as it warms. This "atmospheric thirst" is largely responsible for the increase in drought severity and areal extent seen in the last 40 years, a new study finds. "A hotter world is a thirstier world." www.nytimes.com/2025/06/04/c...

submitted 20 hours ago • 9 comments

First we learn of deliberate hiding of analysis (of a growing agricultural trade deficit because of tariffs) because it embarrasses the administration. Now staffing cuts are eroding the quality of inflation data. The Emperor’s New Clothes approach of the regime is a virus. It kills vital data.

submitted 13 hours ago • 0 comments

The mistake that this President keeps making is failing to understand that cooperation with the rest of the world is a key ingredient in the international competitiveness of American manufacturing. Destroy that cooperation and you destroy American competitiveness and jobs.

submitted 19 hours ago • 27 comments

This this this this

submitted 17 hours ago • 0 comments

This. In a few months we could be in a recession, we could all feel it, but the administration could be cooking the books to make it look like America is great again. But because the data is cooked Congress could have little idea what needs to be done. Plus private enterprise relies on federal data.

submitted 17 hours ago • 0 comments

I wrote a thread on why this is especially nuts as well as dangerous. See my reply to this bleet. We’re getting Gilded Age policies without the Gilded Age context. Everything is going to break down pretty disastrously.

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

Another lunatic policy for the imaginary world of Donald J. Trump, in which America has plenty of steel & aluminum capacity for all our manufacturing needs. But we don’t. Shortages & tariffs mean domestic metals will get more expensive. Factories will close. Construction will stop. A disaster.

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

When the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago (and found highly classified state secrets) the agents wore polo shirts and khakis. But to arrest peaceful, productive restaurant workers, ICE agents bring automatic weapons and wear tactical gear. I guess spatulas are scary.

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

We are back in the Next Two Weeks Time Loop, folks.

submitted 1 day ago • 56 comments

Dictionary subtweeting.

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

I don't think you can find a more professional group of historians than the ones Trump recently fired for no reason from the State Department's Historical Advisory Committee. 🗃 www.npr.org/2025/06/03/n...

submitted 1 day ago • 2 comments

Any decent historian is wary of drawing simplistic lessons from the past. But Trump explicitly appeals to history to justify throwback policies. I’ve been writing threads (today, the spoils system) explaining how today they’re out of the context in which they made any kind of sense. They’re nuts.

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

🤡

submitted 1 day ago • 48 comments

DOGE is now reviewing every NIH grant that goes out, I reported last week. That review is AI-driven and is screening for DEI, trans health, China, vaccine hesitancy, and the institutions to whom Trump has blocked funding, @hannahnatanson.bsky.social reports. Gift link: wapo.st/3HhnPSt

submitted 2 days ago • 38 comments

Trump is trying to revive features of the Gilded Age out of the context in which they were an organic part of the political system. That means they will be even more corrupt, less (if at all) functional, and entirely disruptive. The good news is that this means they are fragile. But they will hurt.

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

We find ourselves in a reality show: Out of Context Gilded Age The reforms that came out of that era were hugely important. They made our context. But Trump is bringing back features of an extinct system. Tariffs, e.g., were a pillar of the gold standard—which is gone. Now it’s spoils. 1/🧵

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

Holy crap. The impact of Trump’s mindless cuts spelled out by the weatherman. Because the weatherman no longer knows which way the wind is blowing. Watch with sound on.

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

“It is destabilizing, frustrating and enraging to feel like my daughter, who wasn’t even 18 months old, has done more for public health than some people who are now currently in charge of it,” Giglia said.

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

It’s incredible that he does this as Mike Johnson is out there accusing recipients of widespread fraud.

submitted 2 days ago • 88 comments

Let's be clear: When the press talks about how "Trump is doing outrageous thing X" without any pushback or expressions of outrage, it means "from Republicans." Republicans in Congress have completely abandoned all morals and commitment to the Constitution. It has become the anti-republic party.

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

Trump's administration is going to cynically use the vile act of anti-Semitic terrorism in Colorado for political gain. Meanwhile this is what it's doing, with the full support of Republicans in Congress. www.npr.org/2025/05/30/n...

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

Agreed. Intended to erase the corruption of the spoils system, the merit-based civil service created administrative capacity. Nonpartisan experts allow government to do more, better. It's under attack. We don't want air-traffic controllers picked for political loyalty. But that's what Trump wants.

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

This is what I mean when I say Trump imposes tariffs out of a fantasy about the economy. After decades of increasing trade & industrial development abroad, our manufacturers use a LOT of imported inputs—to make much higher value stuff. Trump closed factories in his first term. He'll close more now.

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

I love these lines from this piece: "Did somebody beat him up? The list of possible suspects seemed long." www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/u...

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

The attack in Colorado was nothing but the vilest anti-Semitic terrorism. I hope the attacker receives every possible year in prison coming to him. Separately, it angers me how this monster gives cover to an administration full of anti-Semites who cynically use the issue for their own gain.

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

There are a lot of things to be said about this. One that strikes me is that Trump’s policies are universally based on an old man’s fantasies. Erratic, coercive tariffs, e.g., won’t cause domestic manufacturing to spring from the soil; they’re unconnected to economic reality. Things will break down.

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

Forgive me for being obvious. You know this—yes, I mean you. But it drives me nuts that the “natural remedy” crowd is anti-vaxx. Vaccines aren’t meds. They leave your body quickly. All they do is alert your immune system to danger, like a 10-most-wanted poster. Your own body does the job.

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

We live under a tyranny that holds free speech means some whack job can post lies without challenge about a disease as it kills 1,200,000+ Americans, but a university president may not discuss federal policy as it affects one of her students. This is the negation of the Bill of Rights.

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

Takes a lot of chutzpah to make a $290 million political donation, assume a powerful position in government, use that power to fire tens of thousands of people and do immeasurable harm to American state capacity, and expect not to have to answer for it afterwards.

submitted 3 days ago • 99 comments

This entire administration, from top to bottom, is a conspiracy against the Constitution.

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

What do you do to a man who conspired to create a monarchy? Who launched a project to destroy the republic? Whose purpose is to end the Constitution? Russell Vought should be prosecuted.

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

"In essence, former officials said, nobody is above the law except Mr. Trump." Happening right in front of us - a rule-of-law crisis created by the Supreme Court and Republicans in the Senate

submitted 3 days ago • 9 comments

“Do we really need automatic weapons and tactical gear, Jim?” “Steve, they’re RESTAURANT WORKERS. They’re disciplined and accustomed to the worst conditions!”

submitted 4 days ago • 1 comment

Sarah Huckabee Sanders was once politely asked to leave a restaurant and it generated 100x as much handwringing from the media as this will

submitted 4 days ago • 186 comments

Wonder if she’s more a fan of slavery or Natives’ conquest & dispossession. Look, I sure think history is fascinating. Makes for great books. But it ain’t history without the negative. Many of our greatest achievements—what defines us at our best—resulted from our grappling with the worst.

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

“What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground.”

submitted 5 days ago • 2 comments

This is striking. We now have two Trump-appointed judges directly knocking down Trump's power to simply create emergencies by decree and then assuming extraordinarily sweeping powers on that basis. This is the thing to watch. It's key to their dictatorial project. newrepublic.com/article/1959...

submitted 5 days ago • 22 comments

Today in the manuscripts reading room of the Library of Congress, I read William H. Taft’s VERY long, VERY detailed description of a truly disgusting infection of his perineum, in a letter to Secretary of War Elihu Root. Therefore I nominate, for Trump’s Garden of Heroes, Taft’s perineum! #research

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

Again, because we have totally lost the plot: it was totally unprecedented for Democrats to replace an incumbent against his will in 2024, & yet they actually did it. And the <other party> did the opposite & re-nominated an elderly criminal fascist.

submitted 16 days ago • 7 comments

As expected, Trump fired me today and named Marco Rubio acting author of my Theodore Roosevelt biography.

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

I don't think anyone outside of universities, pharma and biotech, independent research institutions have any idea of what is happening right now. If you haven't sounded the alarm among your friends, family and colleagues, now is the time to do it.

submitted 5 days ago • 66 comments