Dan Pemstein
@danpemstein.com
Political economist working mostly on democratic institutions, tech, political careers and party org, and measurement. http://www.danpemstein.com https://digitalsocietyproject.org
The Department of Education has now officially submitted proposals to eliminate International Education and Fulbright Hays programs, which have funded thousands of students and scholars to study languages and conduct research abroad. I encourage you to make public comments and contact your reps.
GovInfo
Official Publications from the U.S. Government Publishing Office.
govinfo.gov
Beyond the disruption, it changes the equilibrium going forward, almost no matter what the next four years look like, because we all know it can be turned upside down on a dime. Eg, the political/institutional change necessary to make being an NSF rotator attractive again is massive.
Katie Mack@astrokatie.com · last yr.I've seen folks talk about how "in four years" they'll be able to get back to their planned projects and I really don't think that's going to work out. People & projects losing funding now will not be able to hit pause and come back once funding is restored. Hard-won progress & capacity will be lost
I'm thoroughly jaded about this world cup, but the Mexican anthem at Azteca has me wobbling a bit.
Pretty delighted with how Fargo voted for mayor (bonus that he's an NSDU polisci grad): www.facebook.com/share/v/1DBC...
New book on democracy. #OpenAccess Seven Myths about Democracy by Jørgen Møller & Svend-Erik Skaaning, Routledge taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-mon.... Challenges (full or partial) misunderstandings about the meaning, trajectory, causes, and consequences of democracy.
Seven Myths about Democracy | Jørgen Møller, Svend-Erik Skaaning | Tay
This timely book challenges seven widespread misconceptions about democracy that continue to shape public and academic debates about its past, present, and
taylorfrancis.com
📣 New #FirstView Notes from the Field 📝 In "USAID Bureau on Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance", @mlkrook.bsky.social interviews Julie Denham, Rebecca Gordon, and other members of the gender team at DRG. buff.ly/r1Kh24W #OpenAccess gendersky polisky
Matt Scherer on what I've been telling journalists for some time now: one of the biggest AI harms that we are staring down is the popping of the AI bubble, and the attentive harms we'll be seeing for working class folks. lpeproject.org/blog/the-rea...
My Callais take: we should view the politics behind this decision through the "colorblind" lens - a backlash frame palatable to normal people. open.substack.com/pub/goodpoli...
Colorblind politics have undermined civil rights for decades. Callais is just the latest.
The Voting Rights Act acknowledged what needed to happen for American democracy to flourish.
open.substack.com
This is one of the most quietly revolutionary things any city can do to improve kids' lives & outcomes. If you genuinely care about kids having access to education or safe after school spaces & activities, then fund your libraries, staff your libraries, & make every public school ID a library card.
Whoa 🤯 in Slow-Mo@0lsi.bsky.social · 3mo agoChicago made it so every public school student can use their school ID as a #LibraryCard 📚. No forms, no extra steps. It gives over 300k students instant access to #books, #tutoring, and online resources 🙌
Following our April 29 announcement, we believe it's important to be transparent about the context that led to the decision. We want to explain, where we can, why this was made on such short notice, only days before we were set to host RightsCon. Read: www.rightscon.org/rc26-stateme...
A statement to our community about why RightsCon 2026 will not take place in Zambia
Our official statement to the digital rights community about why RightsCon 2026 will not take place in Zambia
rightscon.org
Harry Kane has put together a Ballon D'Or-caliber season while playing 771 games of online chess and improving his rapid rating by 280 points His Bayern teammate Michael Olise, second in the BDO odds, has played 854 games and improved by 344 points Their accounts have never played each other
Very helpful. I'm still struggling with alt text on data visualizations for teaching. Sometimes the graph is there to explain something but often it is for practice drawing inferences from data. And then it feels like you need to exhaustively describe the figure, which quickly gets absurd.
Accessibility Awareness@a11yawareness.bsky.social · 4mo agoMany struggle with writing alt text for charts and other other data visualizations. Amy Cesal's "Writing Alt Text for Data Visualization" hammers home the importance of explaining the chart type, the type of data, and the reason for the chart. medium.com/nightingale/...
Gifting this article bc I learned things from it - it’s not good news. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/18/o...
Opinion | Why the Stock Market Makes No Sense Right Now
nytimes.com
i don’t ask for much but i’d really like ssx tricky to be available to play on any modern console pls and ty
My dad died a few weeks ago. He was a good dad and funny and interesting and lived a remarkable life. He was a journalist, and, as a result, his friends tend to write wonderfully. I want to share this delightful remembrance by his friend John Jeansonne:
Farewell to a friend
Ron Pemstein was a journalism star
substack.com
Sunrise at a backcountry camp. Isle Royale National Park #new #blueskyartshow #nationalparks #sunrise #Saturdaysunrise
Whenever someone complains about roundabouts I suggest that at least we don't follow 1970s Yugoslav traffic laws, and they look at me funny and generally find someone else to talk to.
Tressie McMillan Cottom@tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 4mo agoIt’s hard to overstate how much roundabouts completely unravel American drivers. There’s this conspiratorial thinking — versions of which I have also heard. And there’s the way people seem to just breakdown when they encounter a roundabout. It’s bizarre.
Contrary to our expectations, Trump's appointees were not distinct from the other judges of the D.D.C. However, we find that Biden's appointed judges in the district were consistently more lenient than those of other presidents (Trump, Obama, Bush II, Clinton, & Reagan) across multiple models.
Our forthcoming article in PRQ explores partisan and individual presidential appointment effects on the sentencing of those who attacked the US Capitol on January 6. We find: There were no partisan differences between Republican and Democratic judges in length or probability of imprisonment. And...
After Claudia Goldin became the first woman to win a solo Nobel in economics, she got hundreds of invitations. She accepted three. One was advising WNBA players on a labor deal. She helped players land the biggest % raise in US sports history. www.wsj.com/economy/wnba...
WNBA Players Had an Ace Up Their Sleeve in Pay Negotiations: A Nobel Laureate
Harvard economist Claudia Goldin helped WNBA players win a nearly 400% raise. Starting this season, players’ average salary will top $580,000.
wsj.com
Very interesting reflections on interpreting trends in V-Dem data for a specific country (Mongolia) from an expert on that country.
Mongolia Focus@mongoliafocus.bsky.social · 5mo agoWhat does it mean that all @vdeminstitute.bsky.social subindices on #Mongolia democracy have gone up for 2025? Not sure it does mean much, I am much more comfortable w/ 5/10-year trend. Some thoughts on earlier @kailmarkvart.bsky.social thread in blog post. mongoliafocus.com/2026/03/demo...
💡 How does V-Dem assess the levels of democracy in a country? Watch the video or read the thread below to find out! 🧵1(7) #VDemMethodology #VDemData #Polisky #PolDataSky #SocialScienceData #PoliSciSky @vdemamlat.bsky.social @digitalsocietyproject.org
📢 We are hiring: Combined Postdoc position at V-Dem Institute and GLD! Applications are open for a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Cross-National Survey Methodology in Political Science. Application: web103.reachmee.com/ext/I005/103... 🧵1(4) #Polisky #PoliSciSky #PoliticalScienceJobs #PostDoc
📣Freedom in the World 2026 is now out! freedomhouse.org/report/freed... tl;dr: - Global freedom declined in 2025 & every year since 2005 - 20 yrs of backsliding has transformed the world: more autocrats, fewer democratizing states - Freedom deteriorated in the US last year & over the last 20
The Growing Shadow of Autocracy
Global freedom declined for the 20th consecutive year in 2025. But even in this especially challenging moment, there are reasons for optimism.
freedomhouse.org
However, with still largely free and fair elections, broad freedoms of expression and association, and a very strong civil society, the country has the potential to continue confronting the ongoing autocratization through voting, protesting, and broader organizing and advocacy.
A 🧵on how the @vdeminstitute.bsky.social accountability indices help us understand how democratic backsliding is occurring in the United States. tl;dr: in principle, vertical constraints on the president remain strong; in practice, horizontal and diagonal constraints have been greatly weakened.