E.J. Fagan

Hello new Bluesky followers! I study U.S. politics and policymaking, focusing on the politicization of expertise and information processing. I published a great book this summer. It's called The Thinkers: The Rise of Partisan Think Tanks and the Polarization of American Politics. Check it out!

A big problem with Cohn’s approach is that even in states like Wisconsin where geography really does disfavor Dems, it’s still feasible to draw a map that is balanced, competitive, compact, and avoids city/county splits. It becomes an excuse for accepting unfair maps and outcomes—we don’t have to

🚨BREAKING: Democrats asked a federal judge Monday night for a restraining order and temporary injunction to halt President Donald Trump and his administration from interfering in the upcoming midterms. www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...

Wow. The Florida electorate is 10 points more Democratic than at this point in 2022.

ICYMI

Lula is to my left. Magyar is to my right. And I don’t care in the slightest, because they are the candidates of democracy against autocracy.

checking in on the president of the united states

Coastal cities swing left, sparsely populated interior swings right

⚠️ Social media = polarization machine ‼️ 👉 Extreme ideologues post more 👉 People are more likely to post extreme positions "...robust evidence that online discourse severely over-represents extreme perspectives" = "prediction of false polarization." Important preprint: osf.io/preprints/ps...

Aleksandar Vucic, Serbia’s longtime nationalist strongman, conceded defeat Sunday in a general election held after his once-tight grip on power was weakened by nearly two years of student-led protests. nyti.ms/4zegOaY

Working on my Illinois policy agendas data portal. Comments welcome! illinois-policy-agendas-project.github.io/illinois-pol...

As far as our data can tell this is pretty much unambiguously good news for Democrats. Young voters strongly favor the Dems this cycle, including young men allianceforyouthpower.org/wp-content/u...

Incredible gender difference in voting intention in Brazil.

The president is considering mass pardons for his enablers. But they’d be foolish to assume the next administration will honor them. www.lawyeroyer.com/p/buyer-bewa...

NEW: Ingram, Texas, was just rebuilding from a devastating flood when its tiny police department enrolled in ICE’s 287(g) deportation program. Within a year, cops would hand over the equivalent of 10% of the town. with @nytimes.com

Turning to geography, Dems are starting to look less solid in terms of turnout advantage across the state. But that’s only looking at *registration*. Republican registrants are down as a share of ballots almost everywhere…and up almost nowhere.

So in a huge surprise to absolutely no one, it turns out that NIH director Jay Bhattacharya's new journal based on the premise of letting his friends and only his friends publish essentially whatever they want is full of crackpot nonsense from retired cranks.

The Brewers have six hits tonight, all singles. Four of them came with a runner on first, and the runner has gone from first to third on every one of them

The early voting blog is updated! As Week 2 of in-person early voting begins, signs are ominous right now for NV Republicans. The election isn't held today, but if it were, there would be a blue wave. I show you why in this post, and more data later. thenevadaindependent.com/article/the-...

Democrats and liberal law professors should just repeat on loop: “Pardons of your own officials don’t count because that would be absurd.”

I believe TX Hispanic turnout is up *a lot* since it exists in GA and NC, states that ask race/ethnicity on voter registration applications. I caution TX doesn't. This is data from an algorithmic surname match that works okay but has known limitations, particularly in mixed neighborhoods

As turnout in Texas nears 3 million votes, Hispanic turnout is now exceeding presidential levels. More Hispanics have voted than did at this point in the 2024 presidential election. What's driving this huge increase? Young voters.

JUST POSTED: Today at The NYT we are publishing a major investigation into how President Trump used his executive powers to expose millions of Americans to greater cancer risks. A six month-long investigation built on more than 10,000 pages of FOIA records. Read it www.nytimes.com/2026/10/24/c...

1/ Dan Wang’s NYT essay on TSMC's Arizona plant argues that TSMC is doing for America what Apple did for China. But the analogy rests on two assumptions and it's not clear that either one of them is holding. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/23/o...

Election Law Blog contributor and Notre Dame law professor Derek Muller says the Trump admin's legal argument in this case is “one of the worst I’ve ever seen” and “absurdly thin.” electionlawblog.org/2026/citing-...

wait a democrat is polling +3 in montana’s congressional race and he is a smokejumper that looks like this? why has no one told the thirsty masses?

My latest debunks 3 myths re US manufacturing jobs: 1) they're all good paying; 2) they're all attainable by anyone w/ a HS degree; & 3) Americans are dying to work them. These myths fuel a lot of bad policy (eg tariffs); pols should stop spreading them www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti... (🎁 )

The race to replace Ken Paxton as attorney general of Texas is a contest that has way bigger stakes than you might assume from the outside www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/1...

Oil hits $115 a barrel for the first time since May, adding to the economic strain just 11 days before critical midterm elections that may turn in part on affordability. @iankmsmith.ft.com @urbandirt.bsky.social www.ft.com/content/8948...

In popular music lyrics, positive & negative emotion-related words have declined over time & artists’ careers, alongside decreases in references to social relationships (though anger & anxiety may be exceptions): msutoday.msu.edu/news/2026/10...

"No matter how we look at the data, AI wins. It wins in 100% of the pairs overall when judged by another AI model...and 87% overall when judged by human journal editors... [H]umans agreed as much or more with AI’s judgment than they did with other humans" gking.harvard.edu/files/peerle...

It remains astonishing to me that James Dolan was able to stay out of the way *just* long enough for the Knicks to end a 53-year championship drought. Everything he's done from the second the team won seems like he's determined to remind you what a colossal asshole he is.

This is fucking insane. It reads like a bad spy novel. The corruption is almost cartoonish at this point. www.vanityfair.com/story/jared-...

We found that as of right now 73% of your campaign donation goes back to the consultants and vendors (!!!), four times more than just 20 years ago. Only 13% to ads. Even I was shocked.

Dutch intelligence obtained a Russian hack of Kushner's phone and then hacked it themselves to find:

To help prevent more pregnant women from dying, the Pritzker administration promised that private insurers would cover the cost of doulas to support families. But in many cases, they’re turned away or forced to pay thousands out of pocket.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBAf...

President Trump called Elon Musk and asked him to lift restrictions on a military-grade version of Starlink in Ukraine that the SpaceX chief throttled, U.S. officials said www.wsj.com/world/trump-...

🚨 EXCLUSIVE: MeidasTouch obtained NEVER-BEFORE-SEEN photos and videos revealing devastating damage to U.S. bases from Trump's Iran war. Troops and military families describe being abandoned by their own government. “It’s so much worse than people realize.”

Looking at the net partisan margin shift of votes cast so far to the same point in 2024 in party registration states, Dems are outpacing '24 in every single state. And Kansas looks... very good (yes, that reads +33.8 Dem).

Illinois passed a law guaranteeing insurance coverage for postpartum doulas beginning in 2026. But Blue Cross Blue Shield didn’t want to implement it. Then they ran into my badass wife @ellepolloloca.bsky.social, who has spent 9 months fighting them. She won. chicago.suntimes.com/the-watchdog...

Illinois passed a law guaranteeing insurance coverage for postpartum doulas beginning in 2026. But Blue Cross Blue Shield didn’t want to implement it. Then they ran into my badass wife @ellepolloloca.bsky.social, who has spent 9 months fighting them. She won. chicago.suntimes.com/the-watchdog...

Laughed pretty hard at this quote