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

Critically important work. This is the infrastructure for fighting fear and fostering collective action.

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

Let me sound an optimistic note. Depending how this blows up - and it will blow up - there is a chance that we get a belated public appreciation for government, a repudiation of this crazy dismantling, and a surge of smart people motivated to rebuild and confident the madness will not be repeated.

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

This aged well: "The global elite of Brussels and Davos that so many voters detest has certainly led us astray too often. But the alternative that authoritarian populists like Trump are offering is not popular sovereignty. It’s deference to the elites of Moscow and Beijing."

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

Wouldn't it be great if the business community had billions of dollars, an army of lawyers and lobbyists, and enormous economic leverage to muster in a full-throated, collective defense of American democracy?

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

I had a genius idea today. I took the engine out of my car. No more wasting money on gas and oil changes!

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

This is exactly right. It's time for leaders to get noticed, not to hope they overlook you.

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

It seems to me the likeliest mechanism here is a catastrophe clearly attributable to this dismantling of government that crystallizes the attention of investors and businesses on the many risks we now face. Could be next month, could be next year.

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

Lotta flak for this guy but the whole thing surfaces an important point: We are seeing FDR's first 100 days in reverse. Then: A massive program enabling government to reconstruct a devastated economy. Now: a massive program dismantling government that will shrivel an otherwise-promising economy.

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

This from @dandrezner.bsky.social: If you are serious about stopping Trump, the best thing you can do is to welcome these people with open arms. They are your most credible messengers. Don't call them slow on the uptake. Don't mock. They're doing a hard thing - admitting error in public.

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

Wild to think how strong a position the US would be in geopolitically if it weren’t just shooting itself in both feet. Russia’s military and economy devastated. China stagnating, in massive debt, and falling off a demographic cliff. Europe…adrift at best. An own goal of unbelievable proportions.

submitted 7 days ago • 6 comments

Much debate about what to name our constitutional disintegration. I'm not on board with crisis/coup, but I think it's critical to name the components of authoritarianism coming together: Corruption Coercion Anti-constitutionalism Sabotage *Incitement. daviddagan.substack.com/p/elements-o...

submitted 6 days ago • 1 comment

Civil servants should take a page from colleagues at DOJ and refuse such orders. Easier said than done. But an infrastructure is quickly coming together to support them.

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

Let’s see what motivates this guy to join DOG…oh

submitted 7 days ago • 230 comments

If there are genuine worries then we should also consider that if there is an opening it is in the early days and not under a consolidated authoritarian regime. Making a big noise now has greater chances of success

submitted 7 days ago • 2 comments

This will become more and more true as it grows obvious to people that this administration is steering us into a generational disaster. The premium on a reputation for integrity will rise fast.

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

They might be able to defy courts. But they can't break the lawyers (or agents) they need to run DOJ as a protection racket. This is going to prove a hard limit on this administration's authoritarian ambitions. Turns out when people study and then practice the law, most end up believing in it.

submitted 10 days ago • 1 comment

This woman is going to inspire a generation of constitutional conservatives. All of these people deserve our gratitude and any help they need to ride out the storm they are going to face.

submitted 10 days ago • 0 comments

This woman is a hero and proof that for many in the conservative legal movement, it's still about LAW. Ordered to turn DOJ into a protection racket, she told her new bosses to pound sand. May many other DOJ employees of all political persuasions follow her lead, knowing we have their backs.

submitted 10 days ago • 0 comments

It understates the danger to say politicization of the state brings us back to the 19th C spoils system. That was a completely different state. Much of its work was truly clerical. And it was nowhere near as able to coerce. No IRS, no FBI, no standing Army, no sweeping regs.

submitted 12 days ago • 0 comments

But most of those judges were still trained to believe in the law. The McConnells who acceded to Trump for judicial noms thought they could control his radicalism. They were wrong.

submitted 13 days ago • 0 comments

It's also not cost cutting. First, the money legally still has to be spent. Second, rebuilding from these disasters is going to cost a hell of a lot more than avoiding them would have.

submitted 16 days ago • 0 comments

A lot of people are having a hard time understanding, so let me explain it to you: When Elon Musk doxes normal people doing their jobs, it's a heroic exposure of the deep state and they deserve to have their lives ruined. When reporters point out that he is hiring racists, it's a witch hunt. Get it?

submitted 16 days ago • 0 comments

Today: Marc Dunkelman replies to @dsquareddigest.bsky.social with an argument that previews his terrific upcoming book. hypertext.niskanencenter.org/p/our-proble... Read Davies, Dunkelman, and @pahlkadot.bsky.social, and you will be prepared for the Very Big Fix that will be required after all this.

submitted 16 days ago • 2 comments

Yesterday I wrote rather bleakly about our present condition and the fact that it will take time before the worms turns, and we will suffer a great deal of damage until then. Today, @pahlkadot.bsky.social reminds us there is an affirmative program to offer as an alternative to DOGE's abuses.

submitted 16 days ago • 0 comments

Russell Vought has been confirmed. His words: Originalism should mean "to understand the logic of the original Constitution and how these authorities should be used unencumbered by the scar tissue resulting from decades of bad cases and bad statesmen." That is, unencumbered by the law.

submitted 16 days ago • 0 comments

There are heroes in the civil service sticking around, working with the people who disdain them, to limit the damage they cause.

submitted 16 days ago • 0 comments

Was at an event in DC this evening with a lot of federal employees and it is absolutely wrenching to talk to people who dedicated themselves to public service work through the appalling attacks and uncertainty that they are facing now.

submitted 17 days ago • 112 comments

New: Grappling with the full extent of Trump's lawlessness, and considering the levers we have to work with now. Some key points follow in thread: www.niskanencenter.org/the-politics...

submitted 17 days ago • 1 comment

This aged fast, but well.

submitted 20 days ago • 0 comments

I see we have moved from "YMCA" to the hokey-pokey

submitted 20 days ago • 0 comments

I didn't believe Trump would go whole-hog on tariffs b/c markets didn't believe it. But he is on a honeymoon with himself, believing he can muscle over law, markets, and public op. Today, the markets start teaching different. In time, he'll find the mountain he is standing on is actually an anthill.

submitted 20 days ago • 0 comments

There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

submitted 23 days ago • 2 comments

This is how you motivate people and recruit the best and the brightest, folks - let those hapless civil servants know that ANY job in the private sector is more productive than ANY job in the public sector. www.opm.gov/fork/faq

submitted 23 days ago • 0 comments

In Washington, DC real estate: we could simultaneously see a run on oligarch-priced homes along with a slightly delayed glut in homes affordable at the upper end of the locally adjusted GS salary table. www.wsj.com/real-estate/...

submitted 26 days ago • 0 comments

This is wrong. Trump won't back police who back him. He will back police who back him AND don't accidentally get in his way. Police are as dispensable to him as any other supporter. You think the Capitol cops were thinking "this is against Trump" when they fought off the mob?

submitted 30 days ago • 0 comments