Don Moynihan
@donmoyn.bsky.social
Policy Professor, Ford School, University of Michigan. Irish immigrant. Administrative burdens guy. Free newsletter, Can We Still Govern?: https://donmoynihan.substack.com
At least the acolyte didn’t get a second season bsky.app/profile/wash...
The Washington Post@washingtonpost.com · 12h agoThe owner of a top BBQ joint in Texas decided to cut brisket, the top-selling item, from the menu rather than institute a $10 markup for customers. The decision was fueled not just by the skyrocketing price of brisket but by inflation.
In 1990, the US had ~130 tax coupons (credits, adjustments, deductions, etc), today we have more than double that: 271. To address the debt, we should start with the coupon book that doles out $2.3 trillion in discounts each year, dwarfing Social Security. www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...
There’s a Secret Third Path to Escaping America’s Debt Trap
The US deficit has reached $1.97 trillion and is on track to pass 6% of gross domestic product this fiscal year, the latest milestone in a remarkable deterioration of the federal budget. With national...
bloomberg.com
A lot of shows should be one season only. A good skill to cultivate is to know when to bail on a show, which I've done with all of these after a couple of seasons. At some point, even shows that started really well have nothing new to say.
John Warner@biblioracle.bsky.social · 1h agoThe Bear managed to turn itself into one of the worst shows of the 21st century. If Ted Lasso ended after S3 I could let it slide, but S4 was a bridge too far. Stranger Things should've been one season. Dexter was at least three seasons too long.
If the car requires you to be constantly peering at the road, ready to grab the wheel or slam the brakes, it is not a self-driving car. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/22/b...
Self-Driving Cars Are Getting Better. The Risks Are Getting Bigger.
Self-driving systems are getting so good that drivers may overestimate the technology and not be prepared to respond when something goes wrong.
nytimes.com
In the before times, I had a startup, and we got picked to interview in person for YCombinator. It was all just questions about "how fast will line go up?" I could see it was a VC human puppy mill based on the kids arriving in t-shirts and vans. This will be 100x worse.
Faine Greenwood@faineg.com · 1h agoBig names in AI and Silicon Valley tech announced yesterday that they're launching a boarding academy for 16 to 22 year olds. (Would you trust the people in this scene with keeping an eye on minors?) theacademysf.com
The most generous thing I can say is that maybe its the Agnes Callard impersonator participating in the reproducing tech inequality school
Faine Greenwood@faineg.com · 1h agoBig names in AI and Silicon Valley tech announced yesterday that they're launching a boarding academy for 16 to 22 year olds. (Would you trust the people in this scene with keeping an eye on minors?) theacademysf.com
Awful: Trump's Office of "Remigration" has just been exposed making sordid payments to authoritarian governments to take third-country deportees, leading to serious abuses. Dems tell me they will try to defund the agency if they win power. They should. 1/ New piece: newrepublic.com/article/2157...
Stephen Miller’s MAGA Terror Campaign Exposed by Damning New Leaks
Sordid revelations about the white-nationalist-themed Office of Remigration should galvanize Democrats: If they win power, they must try to shut it down.
newrepublic.com
In an Uber. Driver having loud phone conversation with someone in Spanish. A little annoying, but it happens. He hangs up. Says, “Mi hermano. La Migra.” And starts weeping.
Flashback to primary school when some people came to give us all blessed brown scapulars and (?) told us about the importance of wearing one in case we were ever shot.
Stephanie@stephknee.bsky.social · 7h agoDid you all go to posh schools??? Or just down south? Because literally no one ever came to do a talk in assembly at mine
"Administration officials are circulating a list of government sites that could have Trump’s name affixed to them... One landmark that has emerged in the discussions among administration officials has raised eyebrows: Ford’s Theatre, the playhouse where Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865."
Trump aides explore attaching president’s name to Ford’s Theatre
The playhouse where Abraham Lincoln was assassinated has been mentioned among federal properties that could carry the president’s name, people familiar with the effort told MS NOW.
ms.now
Renee Good's mom: "I am a registered Republican. I voted for President Trump under the impression that these agents were here to protect citizens -- innocents like our family and the others here. Certainly not to accuse those of us here of being terrorists and take precious lives. This is madness."
The Times has another story about influencers boosting Mamdani! The gist of it is, there is still no evidence of influencers paid by the Mayor's Office, ambiguity about when Signal can be used, Council unhappy they don't have more information. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/22/n...
Mamdani Aides Give City Council Little Insight Into Influencer Effort
At a New York City Council hearing, frustration grew as Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s representatives were unable to answer questions about the mayor’s use of influencers.
nytimes.com
by this point Mamdani will have finished fixing New York and started spreading out down the Acela corridor
Samer@samer.is · 17h agoPut in a DC311 request for a broken sidewalk that’s a trip hazard, and LOL at expected resolution date…
The abiding sense is of a government that prefers to attacks its critics rather than address the criticism.
The Irish Times@irishtimes.com · 18h agoNetanyahu says he will use UN address to ‘tell the truth about’ New York mayor
This story and the story of the Collins corruption allegations broke the same day, and in one instance the administration is alleging fraud to remove access to healthcare, and in the other they are stopping anti-corruption investigations of political allies.
Sarah Lueck@sarahl202.bsky.social · 21h agoIt’s surreal to see federal officials take a victory lap today for cancelling hundreds of thousands of marketplace enrollments, while massive health coverage losses are underway. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/22/h...
The GOP majority on SCOTUS has shown they would prefer to defer than engage in the hard work of judgment. In this, they have co-produced Trump’s personalist regime. They deserve their own gold-leaf portraits at the empty Kennedy Center. We deserve something better. By @donmoyn.bsky.social.
The art and science we deserve?
Both the Kennedy Center and NIH are crumbling under the weight of Trump’s ego
donmoynihan.substack.com
To me, this feels like an extension of DOGE. Big claims about fraud, using data-matching to drop people from coverage. Without actual data, or investigation, it is impossible to refute the claims, but such transparency is unlikely to be forthcoming.
Sarah Lueck@sarahl202.bsky.social · 21h agoIt’s surreal to see federal officials take a victory lap today for cancelling hundreds of thousands of marketplace enrollments, while massive health coverage losses are underway. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/22/h...
NEW @pewresearch.org survey (n=10,548) shows increasingly negative views about data centers in the US. Just since January, there have been big attitudinal shifts across the demographic and political spectrum. Full analysis: www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/...
At her 22-week ultrasound, Amanda Jablonski learned their daughter had developed without a skull or a brain. There was no chance for survival, and every day Amanda stayed pregnant was a threat to her health and life. Under TN law, she was denied an abortion. www.wbir.com/article/news...
wbir.com
It is tremendously funny that a group of out-of-state professors who were appointed by a conservative governor suddenly pretend they have faculty governance rights, by doing things like taking votes of no confidence when they don't like how their political project is going.
The Gazette@thegazette.com · 23h ago‘Vote of no confidence’ in Center for Intellectual Freedom prompts advisory council mass resignation: https://www.thegazette.com/news/vote-of-no-confidence-in-center-for-intellectual-freedom-prompts-advisory-council-mass-resignation/article_d8af9300-0884-45da-b16c-7ce3071aa0a3.html
PAA Vice President-Elect @pamherd.bsky.social, @umich.edu @fordschool.bsky.social, will present the NIH Matilda White Riley Distinguished Lecture on Oct. 7: Life Course Social and Environmental Influences on Later-life Health and Cognition: The Role of Multidisciplinary Research buff.ly/kmST81v
Concerning. Troubling.
Don Moynihan@donmoyn.bsky.social · yesterdayThis seems like a pretty big deal: donors made illegal contributions to Susan Collins and then were awarded lucrative contracts after her office intervened with the Navy. An FBI investigation was dropped under Trump. www.propublica.org/article/fbi-...
Have been wondering when we would start to see real numbers out of Nebraska (the only other estimate circulating, of 200 coverage losses in the first month, cites back to a guesstimate from a pre-implementation interview)
Joan Alker@joanalker1.bsky.social · yesterday@birdy.bsky.social has scooped the 1st data I have seen on Nebraska Medicaid work reporting requirements and it is worse than I expected. Incomplete data shows that 1,000 have explicitly lost/denied coverage and almost half of new applicants are not getting thru the red tape/ineligibility.
Your regular reminder that this is a public website and things that you say can and will be used against you.
Ryan J. Reilly “paints a vivid and urgent portrait of… disarray”@ryanjreilly.com · yesterdayA federal grand jury indicted a Tennessee Bluesky user for allegedly threatening ICE agents. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
If you want a sober view of why the federal government was so vulnerable to DOGE’s draconian efforts, what’s been lost, and how we might rebuild, read this donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-system...
The System for Using Evidence to Improve Federal Programs Has Been Gutted
Here’s How We Fix It
donmoynihan.substack.com
This article is an infuriating sanitization of DOGE. It tells the DOGE story from a personal POV, with zero recognition that the “agency” lacked legal authority, operated to evade accountability, and had no strategy for reducing the debt —because that’s not how it works! wapo.st/4yOLi2y
He spent 11 months inside DOGE. Now he wants to set the record straight.
In his first major interview about his tell-all memoir, Tyler Hassen describes the culture clash surrounding DOGE’s mission and the backlash that followed.
wapo.st
