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jonmladd.bsky.social
Assoc Prof in the McCourt School and Dept of Government at Georgetown. A political scientist who studies public opinion, polling, and media effects. https://www.jonathanmladd.com/ Occasionally a Marilynne Robinson stan account. Apologies for typos.
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Multiple reports of drivers doing spontaneous sieg heil salutes at protesters today, including in one case from someone I know personally. What is being normalized is monstrous and dangerous; every day we step closer to the abyss

submitted 11 hours ago • 47 comments

Think of all the ways the administrative arm of the world’s most powerful sovereign state is like a medium-sized tech company that sells ads on a website. Both collect taxes, provide the national framework for markets, run spy agencies, have nuclear weapons, run the global reserve currency, etc

submitted 11 hours ago • 8 comments

You can imagine if Elon answered his own email. * Sent out a funny new email * Had latest baby mamma file a paternity suit * signed up for a class to learn how to use a chainsaw

submitted 8 hours ago • 38 comments

Musk: "My mind is a storm"

submitted 2 days ago • 416 comments

Trump: "We were the richest relatively -- think of this -- from 1870 to 1913. That was our richest. Because we collected tariffs ... we had so much wealth. Of course, now we give it away to transgender ... everybody gets a transgender operation."

submitted 14 hours ago • 1432 comments

From an expert: "Last night was the worst night in US civil-military relations since the Civil War." Loyalty purges of the military are very, very bad.

submitted 16 hours ago • 6 comments

[me staring off into the middle distance]

submitted 15 hours ago • 10 comments

For those interested, here is a website to find a protest at a Tesla dealership in your area. actionnetwork.org/event_campai...

submitted 18 hours ago • 0 comments

Staffing the security apparatus and justice department with loyalists and purging non loyal elements is a hallmark of authoritarian regimes. It’s not a “shake up”; it’s power consolidation.

submitted 1 day ago • 3 comments

What was the provocative gesture? What was the provocative gesture!?!?

submitted 1 day ago • 7 comments

There are no perfect analogies. But one comparison with the U.S. throwing away NATO and its dominant global economic trading position is the Ming Dynasty's decision to end the Treasure Voyages right before the European age of exploration. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ming_tr... @ryanlcooper.com

submitted 2 days ago • 2 comments

I think the most wrong I have ever been as a political scientist was when I said in a public forum in 2020 that there would not be political violence in the US (Jan 6 was 2 mos later). Tonight’s purges are a clear precursor to more future such violence. This is textbook authoritarian abuse stuff.

submitted 1 day ago • 43 comments

Starlink should be banned from European markets on national security grounds. Anything requiring Starlink should be shut out of the European market, and sanctions should be considered against all relevant actors. kyivindependent.com/us-threatens...

submitted 1 day ago • 133 comments

This is competitive authoritarianism in action. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/22/u...

submitted 23 hours ago • 1 comment

today in breaking laws no matter how obscure, ladies and gentlemen, the Goldwater-Nichols Act

submitted 1 day ago • 53 comments

A pundit tried to argue with @jamellebouie.net just yesterday that Trump isn’t trying to resegregate the bureaucracy. But this stuff would make Woodrow Wilson proud.

submitted 1 day ago • 6 comments

“Shortly after Friday’s exchange, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced that it launched a Title IX violation investigation into Maine’s Department of Education and one of its school districts.”

submitted 1 day ago • 258 comments

My friend and mentor Orville Schell puts very clearly what many people with experience in 20th century China are thinking: The parallels with the nihilism and chaos-for-its-own-sake of the Cultural Revolution years. www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/d...

submitted 1 day ago • 20 comments

“Every current and former NNSA employee who spoke to The Bulwark was alarmed about the possibilities of this sort of brain drain, fretting that Musk and his tech-bro buds simply didn’t realize how unsuited the ‘turn everything off and see what breaks’ model was to their line of work.”

submitted 1 day ago • 14 comments

This data is funny because it suggests it’s just the same generation of people buying houses over and over again.

submitted 1 day ago • 13 comments

As we now increasingly live under a defacto Elon Musk government heavily shaped by the online rationalist movement and “long-termism,” we are forced to think about this movement. A big problem is their neglect of common sense morality and decency as a virtue they value in decision-makers.

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

What was the provocative gesture? What was the provocative gesture!?!?

submitted 1 day ago • 7 comments

The government should enforce the law and award contracts fairly and impartially. It shouldn't be completely corrupt and designed to funnel taxpayer money into Elon Musk's companies.

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

Elon Musk's AI has been altered so it now does a "both sides" if you ask it about climate change

submitted 1 day ago • 6 comments

Very dark stuff from David Super. “Revolution” is, I think, the right word for what the reactionaries are trying to achieve. But I would name the target more directly: Reconstruction. Both the first and the second. balkin.blogspot.com/2025/02/emer...

submitted 1 day ago • 6 comments

hey @mattyglesias.bsky.social, the piece that you link to here — my piece — does not say that “all DEI critics want to reimpose segregation” and i would appreciate it if you didn’t lie to your audience about what my work says.

submitted 2 days ago • 355 comments

There’s really no difference between X and getting your info from a message board hosted on gop.com. They are both literally owned and operated by the administration for its benefit.

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

I’ll keep pushing this line of analysis because I’m increasingly convinced the clearest path out of this mess is for Dems to adopt a relentless anti-corruption, anti-inequality, anti-oligarchy, pro-democracy platform. The Dem leadership hasn’t realized it yet, but they’re now a reform party.

submitted 2 days ago • 78 comments

My #1 rule of politics: Take yes for an answer when people come around to agreeing with you.

submitted 2 days ago • 2 comments

Universities are facing the largest (extremely partisan) attack on their funding model in the modern era and we’re still writing pieces like this? Feels like fighting the last war. Vanderbilt (whose provost is a co-author of this opinion piece) is slashing their grad programs.

submitted 2 days ago • 21 comments

First Elon, then a county official, now the lead base messenger and predidential advisor. The MAGA movement’s in-group signal of power and cohesion is now a Nazi salute

submitted 2 days ago • 9 comments

How stupid and arbitrary are Trump's mass firings at federal agencies? A State Dept employee tells me some colleagues are racing to change their job descriptions so phrases like "transnational crime" don't get caught up in DOGE AI bots scanning for words like "trans" to fire people because "DEI."

submitted 2 days ago • 95 comments

There are no perfect analogies. But one comparison with the U.S. throwing away NATO and its dominant global economic trading position is the Ming Dynasty's decision to end the Treasure Voyages right before the European age of exploration. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ming_tr... @ryanlcooper.com

submitted 2 days ago • 2 comments

You can't have high egg prices when there aren't any eggs at all.

submitted 2 days ago • 3 comments

This situation is not good. I wish I didn't have to know about this, but he is currently leading this administration.

submitted 2 days ago • 8 comments

I was today years old when I learned that someone (Charles Evans Hughes) had served nonconsecutive terms on the Supreme Court. Associate Justice (1910–1916) and then Chief Justice (1921–1925). And in between, he was the Republican nominee for president in 1916! The past really is another country.

submitted 2 days ago • 6 comments