Live Soon: The Second day of the #APE conference, today at noon ET! Register (yale.zoom.us/meeting/regi...) to join today's events 👇

David Venturella, who spent more than a decade as an executive at the private-prison behemoth GEO Group, will be the next acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. GEO Group's biggest client? ICE.

Trump taps former private prison exec to run ICE

GEO Group's biggest client is ICE—and ICE's new leader helped run GEO Group.

motherjones.com

#OpenAccess from the Journal of Law and Courts - The Prosecutor Paradox: Understanding the Public?s Low Knowledge About Chief Local Prosecutors - cup.org/4dVw70v - @jktboston.bsky.social, @annagunderson.bsky.social, @davidryanmiller.com & @kirstenwidner.bsky.social #FirstView

New paper @ Journal of Law & Courts with great coauthors on the accountability gap for local prosecutors: (1) the public knows little about prosecutors, (2) knowing less decreases prosecutor approval, but (3) most prosecutors are reelected time and again. Open access below!!

New article with @mgmacdonald.bsky.social on the use of police social media around the 2020 policing protests in @urbanaffairsreview.bsky.social journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

journals.sagepub.com

ICE has now carried out two summary executions of innocent people in the streets of an American city. If you work for ICE, there's no denying that's the mission you're supporting now. You don't get to claim in one year or ten or twenty that you didn't know what ICE was doing. You're complicit.

Hot off the presses @polbehavior.bsky.social with stellar coauthors: "Gender Stereotypes Across Electoral Contexts" asks whether and how candidates use feminine + masculine stereotypes differently across office type. More here: 👇

Gender Stereotypes across Electoral Contexts - Political Behavior

We examine how the office a candidate seeks influences their use of feminine stereotypes in campaign messaging, focusing on the interplay between government branches (legislative and executive) and ju...

link.springer.com

Trump's higher ed ransom note is here - everyone would have to acquiesce to their unprecedented demands or not be "given priority for grants," plus they can demand "reimbursement" for "violations" www.wsj.com/us-news/educ... A mechanism to enforce fealty. An attack on academic freedom and democracy

Attention #polisky! Apply for @utaustin.bsky.social LBJ School of Public Affairs with a focus on American Political Institutions. I'm on the committee, so please reach out with questions. See below: apply.interfolio.com/170943

From May 2025 - Gendered Expectations: Do Voters Reward Women for Supporting Women’s Interests? - cup.org/3YTHTQJ - Nichole M. Bauer, @annagunderson.bsky.social, @jeonghyunkim.bsky.social, @elizabethlane.bsky.social, Belinda Davis & @kesearles.bsky.social #OpenAccess

NEW - Gendered Expectations: Do Voters Reward Women for Supporting Women’s Interests? - cup.org/3YTHTQJ - Nichole M. Bauer, @annagunderson.bsky.social, @jeonghyunkim.bsky.social, @elizabethlane.bsky.social, Belinda Davis & @kesearles.bsky.social #OpenAccess

New article hot off the presses from American Politics Research - "State Courts, Public Opinion, and the Changing Abortion Landscape after Dobbs" with a stellar group of coauthors. See more below 👇

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

journals.sagepub.com

60 Minutes could find no criminal records for 75% of the Venezuelans the U.S. sent to a notorious mega-prison in El Salvador. https://cbsn.ws/4clubLP

Trump administration deports gay makeup artist to prison in El Salvador

A gay man with no known criminal record sought asylum in the U.S. He's since become one of 238 Venezuelan migrants deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador by the Trump administration.

cbsn.ws

1/ I wonder if there's a complement to Mettler's _Submerged State_ thesis: the successful state thesis. In brief: American government has *in many ways* been so successful for so long that Americans have forgotten why they need it, making anti-government rhetoric more appealing.

This is absolutely devastating for public health, for scientific integrity, for innovation, for all Americans. I can't string together more coherent thoughts - just absolutely devastating.

Jason Ukman@jasonukman.bsky.social · last yr.

🚨 Former commissioner Robert Califf: "The FDA as we've known it is finished." www.statnews.com/2025/04/01/h...

#HHS isn't being transparent about the cuts occurring within the department or its agencies such as #CDC, #NIH, #FDA. If you've received a RIF notice today, @statnews.com wants to know. www.statnews.com/2025/03/27/h...

Are you affected by the HHS cuts and restructuring?

HHS is set to cut 10,000 jobs and consolidate divisions — have you been affected? @statnews would like to hear from you.

statnews.com

“Prosecuting people for migration is big business.” Our top story: Over the past four years, the Texas Legislature has allocated more than $11 billion to fund the sprawling tentacles of the Operation Lone Star.

Abbott’s Border Disaster Has Created a No-Bid Bonanza for Private Contractors

There is now a powerful, well-heeled constituency that has built up around Operation Lone Star.

texasobserver.org

New, from me @theatlantic.com: *No, the federal government is not too big *It has real human capital needs *Firings are indiscriminate, weakening state capacity *Creating a toxic and politicized workplace is driving away dedicated employees www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

The DOGE Project Will Backfire

Trump’s war on public employees is bad for all of us.

theatlantic.com

Damon Hininger, CEO of private prison giant Core Civic, just told investors: " I've worked at CoreCivic for 32 years, and this is truly one of the most exciting periods in my career ... we're anticipating .. the most significant growth in our company's history." theintercept.com/2025/02/11/c...

Private Prison CEO on Trump Deportation Surge: “One of the Most Exciting Periods in My Career”

CoreCivic CEO Damon Hininger could barely contain his excitement about the Laken Riley Act and Trump’s anti-immigration executive orders.

theintercept.com

What can you do about the assault on USAID? Share this far and wide. Do your part! Please do retweet 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼

Very hard to imagine any social science that would not be flagged by NSF's new censorship regime

Darby Saxbe@darbysaxbe.bsky.social · 2y ago

🚨BREAKING. From a program officer at the National Science Foundation, a list of keywords that can cause a grant to be pulled. I will be sharing screenshots of these keywords along with a decision tree. Please share widely. This is a crisis for academic freedom & science.

This is illegal. These are crimes!

These teenagers and young men — 95% of whom are Black, Latinx, or Filipino — earn between $2.20 and $4 per hour, plus an additional $1 an hour when they’re actively fighting fires, according to the DJJ. ⤵️

In California, Incarcerated Teenagers Help Fight Wildfires

"You’re put in danger every time you’re on the fire line.”

teenvogue.com

Hot off the presses @igajournal.bsky.social with @kirstenwidner.bsky.social and @mgmacdonald.bsky.social! We look at inside + outside lobbying strategies of social media groups on Facebook and Twitter. Check it out here 👇 link.springer.com/10.1057/s413...

Lobbying in public: interest group activity on social media - Interest Groups & Advocacy

Social media has transformed political communication by making it easy to post and free to disseminate information. Interest groups can use social media platforms to direct messages to policymakers an...

link.springer.com

“The nearly 1,500 individuals who received commutations today have been serving their sentences at home for at least one year under the COVID-era CARES Act.” This is an action that people have been pushing for since before Biden took office, and it’s very good to see.

FACT SHEET: President Biden Announces Clemency for Nearly 1,500 Americans | The White House

Today’s announcement will commute the sentences of close to 1,500 individuals who were placed on home confinement and will pardon 39 individuals convicted

whitehouse.gov

Interested in how litigants + amicus have (and will) respond to Trump SCOTUS justices? See our new book! Open access! 🎉🎉🎉

My @cambridgeup.bsky.social Element with @annagunderson.bsky.social is finally available, and the electronic versions is open access for the next month! www.cambridge.org/core/element.... 1/3

This Trump-linked private prison stock has soared since the election, adding over $2 billion to its market cap. So it goes, so it goes.

Fabulous research on SCOTUS by @annagunderson.bsky.social and @kirstenwidner.bsky.social The Haves and Have-Nots in Supreme Court Representation and Participation, 2016 to 2021. They joined me on the @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social podcast! newbooksnetwork.com/kirsten-widn... #PoliSky #LawSky 💙📚