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

Sadly, this isn’t quite right—elimination order can affect the outcome. If the Cuomo rival you like most can’t beat him but another could, ranking the latter higher increases the odds of the strongest option advancing. Some candidates may bleed more votes to Cuomo than others if eliminated earlier

submitted 50 minutes ago • 2 comments

might have been a bad idea for D cities to send astronomical funds and weaponry to a violent armed gang that hates them.

submitted 10 hours ago • 11 comments

not enough said about how, by turning the national government against states on the basis of ordinary political disagreement, trump is undermining the idea that the union is worthwhile. www.cnn.com/2025/06/06/p...

submitted 16 hours ago • 309 comments

Myth: The Electoral College forces campaigns to appeal to voters all over the country and not just in a few big cities. Reality: It removes the threat of electoral backlash against a tyrant who punishes states that voted against him

submitted 21 hours ago • 1 comment

It’s astonishing how we’ve rapidly devolved and it’s now an accepted fact that we’re no longer governed by the rule of law. Basically none of these ways of “inflicting pain” would apply in a functioning democracy. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/05/u...

submitted 1 day ago • 3 comments

New version of this paper up -- with (a cleaner version of) this figure now in the main text papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

Washington Republicans are trying to put an initiative on the ballot to require proof of citizenship to vote—which could disenfranchise citizens lacking documents. Federal law bars states from requiring this for federal races & already requires voters attest they’re citizens under threat of perjury

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

Really nice illustration of how the last rounds of NYC mayoral primary voting went. You can see how important it is for mid-tier candidates to name a second choice for their supporters.

submitted 1 day ago • 6 comments

Might be a lesson here somewhere about outsourcing capacity for key government services to a guy who lives in a lair under a volcano

submitted 1 day ago • 44 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 1 day ago • 47 comments

Really potent example of the difference between a government of laws and a government of men; a government of institutions vs a government of personalities. We're all following this degrading spectacle because we know there are real consequences at stake- all hinging on arbitrary whims and impulses

submitted 1 day ago • 9 comments

I've got a new piece out on the astounding abuse of power from Missouri's AG and GOP lawmakers right now, all to try to undo the abortion rights constitutional amendment voters approved months ago—and also, how this should be a reality check on the tactic of "putting abortion on the ballot":

submitted 1 day ago • 9 comments

NEW: Virginia's two most populous cities voted Harris in November, and both have Republican sheriffs up for reelection this year, at a time where sheriffs are rushing to help ICE. There's no Democrat, or indy, challenging either sheriff. Main filing deadline passed; a final one is in two weeks.

submitted 1 day ago • 34 comments

the Roberts-era SCOTUS: hey, it's only corruption when a politician accepts payment in quid-pro-quo return for an official act the world's richest man: I spent $300 million for these people, and gddamnit I want my quid pro quo*

submitted 1 day ago • 8 comments

Why we should have finished Reconstruction:

submitted 1 day ago • 3 comments

the irony here is that trump, who has such enormous anxiety over his 2020 loss and the perception that he won 2016 with Russian help, has now created a situation for himself where Musk can cast a cloud over his 2024 victory as well

submitted 1 day ago • 66 comments

In a normal, multi-party political system, we would have a center-left and left-wing party. Voters could choose who to vote for, and it would result in a proportional number of seats in Congress. Instead, we all have to pretend our preferred policy stances are politically optimal. It’s so dumb.

submitted 1 day ago • 16 comments

New piece! Media coverage of Kilmar Abrego Garcia hurt Trump, not Democrats. An actually data-driven analysis of some stale conventional wisdom. Alt title: Matt Yglesias is wrong about Democrats and Abrego Garcia🧵

submitted 2 days ago • 44 comments

The Bureau of Labor Statistics is cutting back its collection of data on consumer prices, raising questions about the reliability of federal economic statistics under President Trump. #EconSky www.nytimes.com/2025/06/04/b...

submitted 2 days ago • 43 comments

The next step is juking the stats. Pretty soon we're all celebrating another record grain harvest.

submitted 2 days ago • 17 comments

Republicans passed a new gerrymander of the Tarrant County, Texas govt. Tarrant contains Fort Worth & 2.2 million people. It turns a 2D-2R split into 3-1 GOP, so the GOP could keep its 3-2 majority even if Dems flip the countywide 5th seat. Trump won Tarrant by 5 points after Biden narrowly won it

submitted 3 days ago • 8 comments

Big news: The Trump administration has essentially proposed shutting down tribal colleges and universities, displacing more than 20,000 students. My latest for ProPublica:

submitted 3 days ago • 40 comments

Congress is about to pass a stablecoin bill that, experts say, will reopen ways of destabilizing the financial system that have been closed for decades talkingpointsmemo.com/news/some-de...

submitted 3 days ago • 13 comments

Iowa Republicans have enacted legislation to make it easier to challenge voters’ eligibility. They also set stricter limits on recounts & changed who oversees them. Republicans won a 2024 House race by 0.19 points, but the new law will only allow federal/statewide recounts for margins <0.15 points

submitted 3 days ago • 4 comments

Look this is pathetic but instructive because it’s not just about this lame creep it’s about the Overton window continuing to be moved so quickly by Trump’s criminality and lawlessness that bad people have reassessed their previous actions against the metric of “you can get away with anything.”

submitted 4 days ago • 27 comments

A lawless regime

submitted 4 days ago • 12 comments

One takeaway from Poland should be it's a big mistake for parliamentary republics to have popularly elected presidents.

submitted 4 days ago • 21 comments

This map hinting at Poland's 1800s partition resembles Southern U.S. states a bit: Regions suited to plantation crops in the 1800s still have Dem-voting rural Black populations, but their cities are even more Dem. In other regions, rural areas are heavily white & GOP, but their cities are very Dem

submitted 4 days ago • 3 comments

STORY: The One Big Beautiful Bill Act has a provision buried halfway through its 1,000-plus pages that would take away power from the courts. I break it down for HuffPost with some help from legal experts: www.huffpost.com/entry/a-show...

submitted 4 days ago • 6 comments

1. Agriculture is a WAY bigger consumer of water than AI prospect.org/environment/... 2. Pricing water sensibly is a great way to prevent overuse and the way we do it is often nonexistent or insane

submitted 4 days ago • 9 comments

Shorter Justice Kavanaugh: Let's wait till after the midterm elections to hold that bans on AR-15s violate the Second Amendment.

submitted 4 days ago • 8 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 4 days ago • 22 comments

New piece: Most Trump voters did not "vote to deport moms." They voted bc inflation was high under Biden, to deport criminals, or something else. Many do not support Trump's policies. Welcoming those voters back into the tent is key to future Dem victory. www.gelliottmorris.com/p/many-trump...

submitted 5 days ago • 932 comments

The Republican state legislative playbook for many years has been: 1) Gerrymander the districts after taking power 2) Pass burdensome restrictions to suppress voters 3) Restrict ballot initiatives so voters can’t use them to undo 1 and 2 or pass progressive policies

submitted 5 days ago • 11 comments

Scalia's nakedly racist performance at the Shelby County oral arguments got about .1% of the coverage that it merited www.newyorker.com/news/amy-dav...

submitted 5 days ago • 19 comments

New paper forthcoming, led by my coauthor @mikecowburn.bsky.social Figures below show that D women win in un-winnable (left) + safe (right) districts, but are less successful in purple districts. R women struggle everywhere except un-winnable places (definition of "sacrificial lambs" in politics).

submitted 6 days ago • 1 comment

something that stands out about this is just how cheap it is for us to have world-leading scientific capacity we spent ~6.75 trillion last year, and the combined budgets for NIH, NSF and NASA are barely more than 1% of that what an incredible waste to lose it all for a drop in the bucket

submitted 6 days ago • 45 comments

Department of Homeland Security officers invading a congressman's offices and arresting a staffer who tried to stop them is very, very bad. gothamist.com/news/homelan...

submitted 7 days ago • 241 comments

We’re four months in and masked paramilitary agents are using flash bangs on peaceful civilian crowds.

submitted 6 days ago • 7 comments

NEW: The Trump administration's fiscal year 2026 budget request's appendix says with no details: "The President's Budget proposes to reorganize the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bureau of Economic Analysis, and the Census Bureau at the Department of Commerce" www.documentcloud.org/documents/25...

submitted 7 days ago • 48 comments