Jill Laufer
@jilllaufer.bsky.social
Postdoc @ Stanford GSE Youth Politics | Policy & Politics | Civic Engagement Media & Framing | AI & Tech | Art & Space UC Davis PhD BKLYN in OAK đź––
My first solo-authored article, which seems right! 🤓 Many thanks to the editors of THE FORUM on how politics can learn from science fiction, @smotus.bsky.social and @poliscisara.bsky.social: www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi... PDF link: www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/e6p85...
Gotta figure out a research project that combines local restaurants and local governance.
The Oaklandside@oaklandside.org · 5d agoThree longstanding chefs have called Scott's Seafood home for half their lives. With nearly 40 years together, they say it's like going to work with family.
Excited to share that Nature has released a preprint of my work with @jilllaufer.bsky.social on evaluating the impacts of the March for Our Lives gun control advocacy movement on youth participation in the 2018 midterms (manuscript still under review). Read here: doi.org/10.21203/rs....
This Time is Different: Evaluating the Effect of the March for Our Lives GOTV Campaign on the Outcomes of the U.S. 2018 Midterm Election
This study evaluates the impact of the youth anti-gun violence advocacy group March for Our Lives and its “Road to Change” Get-Out-the-Vote (GOTV) campaign on political participation in the 2018 midte...
doi.org
Been off the socials and working hard to get papers out, and thrilled to see this out finally as a preprint at Nature HSS (and not desk-rejected) for a special issue on youth activism. Crazy, I've been working on this project for eight years since I (re)started my academic journey back in 2018!!
Alice Malmberg@alicemalmberg.bsky.social · 2w agoExcited to share that Nature has released a preprint of my work with @jilllaufer.bsky.social on evaluating the impacts of the March for Our Lives gun control advocacy movement on youth participation in the 2018 midterms (manuscript still under review). Read here: doi.org/10.21203/rs....
The big news outlets (NYT, ABC, etc.) often dismiss their critics, particularly people who use social media. But the coverage of last night's speech was actually pretty honest---and therefore scathing. People on here and other places demanding less false equivalence/both sides are getting results.
I cross-referenced my database of candidates against credible voter fraud cases. GOP politicians are implicated at 50x–38,000x the general public's rate. Yet even if every American voted with the integrity of a GOP candidate, it still wouldn't come close to justifying making voting one iota harder.
“I write with dismay, grief and sorrow for the permanent closure of MIT Libraries Barker, Dewey and Rotch, and termination of library staff in those libraries. For MIT to be closing three of its four major libraries..." fnl.mit.edu/may-june-202...
Lament for the MIT Libraries - MIT Faculty Newsletter
fnl.mit.edu
Wrote about the importance of adhering to an effective, disciplined nonviolence in fighting the Trump regime, especially given a growing obsession with “heroic” violence online (gift link). www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
The Assassin’s Delusion
Violence serves an authoritarian agenda.
theatlantic.com
In a historic moment, I was interviewed by fellow Black woman particle physicist Dr. Katrina Miller. Few people can understand my journey the way she does. We talked about my new book, why poetry matters, and yes, how the *fact* of non-trinary neutrinos challenges anti-trans rhetoric. #GiftLink
A Physicist Who Thinks in Poetry From the Cosmic Edge
nytimes.com
We are glad to share a new report just released on the experiences of school board members in the diverse California context live-gdtf3.pantheonsite.io/reports/loca.... It's part of the "Getting Down to Facts III" initiative on the state of the state of CA's ed systems. live-gdtf3.pantheonsite.io
Local Control in a Time of Change: The Work of California School Board Members | Getting Down to Facts
K-12 school boards have historically served as key institutions for establishing school district goals, strategies, and policies that reflect community needs. In California, they hold a particularly c...
live-gdtf3.pantheonsite.io
HUGE NEWS: ProPublica is launching a new investigative reporting hub in California, our sixth regional unit. Read more 👇
ProPublica to Launch Investigative Reporting Hub in California
The new team will bring accountability journalism to the nation’s largest state as part of a broader expansion.
propublica.org
New publication from our team on local TV news coverage of COVID-19-related racial disparities. This work highlights which communities and media environments were more — and less — likely to encounter reporting on racial health disparities during COVID-19. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Community Characteristics Predict Local News Agenda Building About Racial Health Disparities
We examined market-level social and demographic characteristics and station-level factors as predictors of local television news coverage of COVID-19-related racial disparities using the theoretica...
tandfonline.com
We have a new version of this paper out. The headline results are the same—political science must filter results heavily for statistical significance—but we've added many extensions and rewritten much of it in response to feedback (thank you!). A quick thread on updates 👇
Ryan Briggs@ryancbriggs.net · 8mo agoI have a new paper. We look at ~all stats articles in political science post-2010 & show that 94% have abstracts that claim to reject a null. Only 2% present only null results. This is hard to explain unless the research process has a filter that only lets rejections through.
In a case that revealed the inner workings of DOGE, a federal judge ruled that the agency did not have the authority to cancel National Endowment for the Humanities grants, which made up more than $100 million in congressionally appropriated funds.
Judge rules DOGE’s cuts to humanities grants were unconstitutional
A federal judge said more than $100 million in cuts to NEH grants were discriminatory, ruling in a case that revealed the inner workings of DOGE.
washingtonpost.com
Courts may restrict access to the popular abortion medication mifepristone in the United States. Telehealth providers have backup plans in place. www.wired.com/story/telehe...
Telehealth Abortion Is Still Possible Without Mifepristone
Courts may restrict access to the popular abortion medication mifepristone in the United States. Telehealth providers have backup plans in place.
wired.com
A survivor of the Kent State Massacre rings the bell on campus today, May 4, at exactly 12:20, the moment his classmates fell, 56 years ago.
In 1964, when my father was 20 years old, he went to Mississippi to register voters as part of Freedom Summer. NPR interviewed us in 2021: www.npr.org/2021/07/14/1...
Today is a reminder that except for a brief period running roughly from Brown v. Board to Roe v. Wade, throughout its history the Supreme Court has been a reactionary force protecting the wealth of the wealthy and the power of the powerful, almost always hostile to equality and justice.
Justice Kagan: "I dissent. The Voting Rights Act is—or, now more accurately, was—'one of the most consequential, efficacious, and amply justified exercises of federal legislative power in our Nation's history.'
The billionaire tax has made it to the California ballot for a vote November. With 1,550,000 signatures, it nearly doubled the amount of signatures necessary to get on the ballot
Most teens are not going to social media for politics. Even so, more teens on TikTok and Instagram than on Snapchat cite keeping up with politics or political issues as a reason for using these platforms.
Teens’ Experiences on TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat | Pew Research Center
About this research This study is Pew Research Center’s latest effort to explore the landscape of teens and technology today. It focuses on social media and how the views and…
pewresearch.org
“I’m new here and love God, America,and Trump!!” Hundreds of accounts on social media featuring AI-generated pro-Trump influencers posting at a rapid pace about the “radical left” and “America First.” www.nytimes.com/2026/04/17/b...
Hundreds of Fake Pro-Trump Avatars Emerge on Social Media
nytimes.com
NEW: Virginia just passed a law to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, giving it 222 of 270 electoral votes needed to activate. This map and spreadsheet show which states could join to activate it by 2028 depending on the outcome of the 2026 elections docs.google.com/spreadsheets...
Legislators in Maine passed the nation’s first statewide ban on large data centers, part of a growing backlash to the energy-intensive facilities that fuel the rise of artificial intelligence.
Maine lawmakers pass nation’s first statewide ban on large data centers
The bill would block new data centers that draw more than 20 megawatts of power until the fall of 2027. It also calls to study their impact on the electrical grid.
washingtonpost.com
To give a concrete example: California paid for 70% of the UC budget and 90% of the CSU budget until the 1980s; now it’s down to roughly 10% and 40% rsp. Students pay most of the difference. One has to get paid a lot of money, as an ed economist, to not know this www.npr.org/2026/04/12/n...
Families across the U.S. are getting college acceptance letters — and tuition bills
NPR's Ayesha Rascoe speaks with economist Judith Scott-Clayton about the cost of college in the U.S. They discuss the difference between sticker and net price and the opaqueness of tuition costs.
npr.org
Super important project and was thrilled to be a small part of. Thanks very much to @i4replication.bsky.social and my replication coauthors Alexa Frederice & @anyastewart.bsky.social of @laiabalcells.bsky.social 's @thejop.bsky.social paper on the effects of visiting Transitional Justice Museums.
Institute for Replication@i4replication.bsky.social · 6mo ago🧵1/ Our first meta-science paper (with 350+ coauthors) is published today in Nature. It presents one of the largest-ever reproducibility projects in economics & political science. Here’s what we found 👇
New study out in Nature Human Behaviour: 37 million US users were exposed to deceptive networks on Facebook & 3 million on Instagram during the 2020 elections—roughly 15% and 2% of active users. 🧵
SUNY Chancellor John B. King @sunychancellor.bsky.social announces SUNY's "absolute & unwavering commitment" to DEI: "Some are cowering & backing away. We cannot and will not. We will not retreat, we will not back down... DEI is in our DNA." Super grateful & proud to teach @ SUNY!
“Jonathan Caravello, 38, faced up to 20 years in prison if he was convicted of the charge. The verdict is the latest blow to the Trump administration, which has thrown baseless assault charges at people who protest its mass deportation operations — but has repeatedly failed to secure convictions.”
Trump Admin Dealt Another Blow In Court After Professor Found Not Guilty
California philosophy professor Jonathan Caravello, who was arrested while protesting an immigration raid, faced up to 20 years in prison.
huffpost.com
"One paper’s acknowledgements thank 'Professor Maria Bohm at The Starfleet Academy for her kindness and generosity in contributing with her knowledge and her lab onboard the USS Enterprise'."
John Rogers@johnrogers.bsky.social · 6mo agoBloody hell. Researchers invented a disease, published two fake papers to see if LLM’s would ingest them and kick them up as fact — and then it broke containment and all the major AI’s bought in. Information pollution. www.nature.com/articles/d41...