Brendan Nyhan

Contrary to this op-ed, we don't actually have to give up on papers! New in @chronicle.com How to Assign Research Papers Again Three ways to counter AI and restore confidence in the integrity of student writing www.chronicle.com/article/how-...

Still true!

Insane and ridiculous. They are public documents!

Bots will vastly increase the scale of the negative impacts that trolls and weirdos can have on the world

Reporters covering election confidence and threats to the integrity of the election - our pre-election Bright Line Watch report comes out tomorrow with new expert and public survey data and forecasts of the probability of disruptive events. Email or DM me if you'd like an embargoed copy!

Where we are as a country www.nytimes.com/2026/10/27/u...

“If the person is a U.S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, that individual will be free to go after the brief encounter.” Justice Brett Kavanaugh

"Guys like Obama don't see it. They don't see dirt, they don't see filth. He doesn't see broken ornaments...The White House, President Obama is a symbol of America. It has to be clean." Feels like the focus on hygiene and cleanliness might be standing in for something here!

What competitive authoritarianism looks like - openly weaponizing the DOJ against his opponents and using its powers to try to tilt the election in his favor www.nytimes.com/2026/10/26/u... www.nytimes.com/2026/10/24/u...

Trump has made ICE way less popular than the IRS www.pewresearch.org/fact-sheet/h...

A federal judge. Where we are as a country.

🔥🔥🔥

interesting

I don't know that there is a definitive line to cross that makes you say, "I live in a police state now" but when masked gunmen can routinely brutalize the public, citizen or immigrant alike, with impunity, you have reached that point.

The Article I branch should act to curb lawless behavior and abuses of executive branch authority

Around 175 House Dems just called on Trump's DOJ and DHS to end "weaponization of law enforcement" against Rep Ilhan Omar. The letter is signed by numerous ranking committee Dems, showing depth of support for Omar in leadership and signaling how Dem House will act. newrepublic.com/article/2171...

The speed with which so many execs cozied up to this authoritarian says more about their revealed preferences than long term strategic thinking. They saw a chance for what they saw as a "business friendly" autocrat and oligarchic consolidation and jumped at it.

DOJ "is asking federal courts, before a single result exists, to bless the reasons it might later give for refusing to accept particular outcomes. For lack of a better term, I’ve been calling it preemptive election interference. And it’s as troubling as it is unprecedented."

In August, President Trump announced he had signed the “biggest oil deal in world history.” ProPublica reviewed the deal and found it gives a small group of people largely handpicked by the Trump administration long-term control of the enterprise.

Wow

Nothing an empathetic child wants more in the world than to read this in the New York Times!

This is the thing that scares me most about AI - the impossibility of stopping them from communicating with each other. Once the brain in the box gets clever enough, literally any interface with the outside world can become a potential communication vector. That includes us.

No fatalism please. A victory agaibst the odds over an authoritarian.

Highly plausible empirical hypothesis; any stronger evidence than over-time correlations?

As Trump barnstorms the country hoping to revive his base ahead of the midterm election, he is returning to an old habit: heckling protesters and encouraging violence against them. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/24/u...

“It’s not only unlawful, but it’s not in the U.S. interest to have Russian technology controlling the commercialization of Arctic gas in the North Slope,” Mr. Riddle said in a brief interview. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/23/u...

Trump and his enablers are creating tremendous downside risk

Stochastic parrots, amirite?

like prisoners tapping on the wall between them

At Angel island, the Chinese immigrants left poems on the walls of the prison to support themselves and motivate others who were later held in its walls.

Setting aside all the other deeply appalling aspects of this ad, it is being aired by a billionaire who would exploit this obviously troubled elderly homeless woman for his political career.

What a headline. Also, just incredible staff work here. Did Eric Schmitt's staff cast this ad?

This is a lawless and dangerous regime and precisely the reason that the Founders created the power of impeachment and removal.

This is literally the end of the rule of law. If a President can pardon people committing crimes on his behalf - and the Supreme Court says he himself can't be prosecuted for crimes committed as part of his job - then the government becomes a lawless entity able to violate our rights without limit.

26 papers featuring original experiment data published in SPQ (sociology’s social psych journal) in 2023-25. 6 used pre-registration (despite a near-uniform embrace of “hypothesis testing” language), 8 made data available. Oof.

Courts are weak. The only reason they have had the success they have in limiting government abuses is because we’ve had leaders who comply in the face of public pressure. Not so today.

If you are just catching up....

holy moly openai.com/index/securi...

Incredible website with data-rich design and excellent communications. Terrifyingly beautiful. huggingface.wtf

From my @slate.com piece on Alaska: slate.com/news-and-pol...

"the legal claim is so absurdly thin, there’s essentially no likelihood of success" electionlawblog.org/2026/citing-...